5 ms·

"As a Homeland Security official told congressional investigators, “common sense” behavioral indicators are worth including in a “rational and defensible securi

by sriku 6y ago

"As a Homeland Security official told congressional investigators, “common sense” behavioral indicators are worth including in a “rational and defensible security program” even if they don’t meet academic standards of scientific evidence." What does that even mean? ... like there is a separate standard of evidence and there is a "we can get by without evidence" standard of evidence?

graeme 6y ago
It can mean no one has done a study of a thing or existing studies are poor. I don’t know if that’s what the official means, but all kinds of common sense things never end up being studied because they’re commonly believed to be true. Edit: having read the article more closely, however, it sounds like the official may be referring to things scientists believe they have debunked.
runawaybottle 6y ago
Sounds like code for ‘profiling’ post 9/11, where it took very little due diligence to ship someone off to Guantanamo or pick someone out at an airport. Conjecture based on the department in question, DHS literally exists because of Islamic terrorists. I’ll add that I think profiling is a necessary evil in tense situations, and terrible as a blanket policy (racial profiling en masse).
doubleunplussed 6y ago
It's pretty obvious that there are useful truths that don't yet meet rigorous scientific standards of evidence. Like masks being useful in a pandemic or parachutes working. Non-serious "randomised trials" have been done with parachutes, and found no measurable effect - because for safety reasons the participants only jumped from an altitude of 2 metres or something. In sports medicine there are loads of things where the anecdotal evidence is fairly strong and yet there is no rigorous evidence in favour of something. Like foam rolling, or running on your toes instead of your heels. Sometimes these things are hard to study, or simply haven't been studied yet. In those cases it's OK to fall back on anecdotal evidence, particularly when you don't have reason to believe the evidence is biased (like it would be if someone was trying to sell you a product or an ideology). Some of these things I'm sure will turn out to not be real results, if and when "proper" science gets around to studying them. But in the meantime the anecdotal, uncodified folk knowledge is better than useless. When folk knowledge is "debunked" by science I sometimes still don't rule out that it might be true, because so much science is simply of too poor quality to be able to properly make any such conclusion. See the replication crisis. I'm a scientist with nothing but respect for the scientific method itself, but "has this been scientifically proven" can be a really weak way to determine what's true and what's not in many cases. In those cases you kind of have to do your own reasoning with the data you have, anecdotal or otherwise, and try to get closest to the truth that you can. Which I think can be a valuable process in practice that shouldn't be discarded merely because it's not "proper" science. Scientists are also flawed and sometimes publish results in a biased way to conform to an ideology. For example, I expect folk beliefs about gender differences to be somewhat accurate (not perfect), and for the official science to be hopelessly muddled.
- addicted 6y ago
  Your examples of parachutes and masks are not examples of useful truths that don’t meet standards of scientific evidence. They are examples of useful truths that have not been tested through double blind randomized control experiments. But they both have scientific evidence behind them, and by any reasonable definition of meeting standards of scientific evidence, they do. The efficacy of parachutes can be derived from first principles. We know parachutes slow descent. And we know the risk of injury and death caused by force of impact. We can calculate how much a parachute slows descent snd therefore reduces force of impact snd prevents death. The benefits of wearing masks in reducing the spread of COVID and serious disease through COVID can similarly be derived from first principles but more importantly, there are many comparative population studies that meet the standard of scientific evidence.
  - d0mine 6y ago
    Deriving from first principles is not the only way parachutes, masks can be proved to be effective. We don't need humans to be attached to parachutes, to test that parachutes work. There is various research on masks effectiveness too.
  - BurningFrog 6y ago
    Sure, but in a legal regulatory context, "scientific evidence" means different things than your "reasonable definition".
- d0mine 6y ago
  It is a too charitable interpretation. Another interpretation of not requiring hard evidence is to imprison somebody just because police thinks that they look guilty. Scientists are flawed. There is a replication crisis in soft science fields. Still scientific method is still a mile above anything else out there.
- revax 6y ago
  Here is the paper about parachute in your example: https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5343 https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5343
arbitrage 6y ago
It means it feels right, so they want it to be right. They will attempt to convince themselves AND you that this is the right choice. Hence, it's a pretty easy tell that this person is lying to you. Ironic.
simonh 6y ago
I can't be certain what they meant, but security agents and police will often find themselves in a situation where they need to decide how to devote investigative resources in situations where they have limited information. The information they do have might depend on their assessment of the veracity of what they are being told. In that case they may well have only their judgement to go on. I think that's reasonable, what else are they going to do? What we need to be careful of is making judgements about innocence or guilt based on subjective opinion.

by sriku 6y ago

graeme 6y ago

It can mean no one has done a study of a thing or existing studies are poor. I don’t know if that’s what the official means, but all kinds of common sense things never end up being studied because they’re commonly believed to be true. Edit: having read the article more closely, however, it sounds like the official may be referring to things scientists believe they have debunked.

runawaybottle 6y ago

Sounds like code for ‘profiling’ post 9/11, where it took very little due diligence to ship someone off to Guantanamo or pick someone out at an airport. Conjecture based on the department in question, DHS literally exists because of Islamic terrorists. I’ll add that I think profiling is a necessary evil in tense situations, and terrible as a blanket policy (racial profiling en masse).

doubleunplussed 6y ago

It's pretty obvious that there are useful truths that don't yet meet rigorous scientific standards of evidence. Like masks being useful in a pandemic or parachutes working. Non-serious "randomised trials" have been done with parachutes, and found no measurable effect - because for safety reasons the participants only jumped from an altitude of 2 metres or something. In sports medicine there are loads of things where the anecdotal evidence is fairly strong and yet there is no rigorous evidence in favour of something. Like foam rolling, or running on your toes instead of your heels. Sometimes these things are hard to study, or simply haven't been studied yet. In those cases it's OK to fall back on anecdotal evidence, particularly when you don't have reason to believe the evidence is biased (like it would be if someone was trying to sell you a product or an ideology). Some of these things I'm sure will turn out to not be real results, if and when "proper" science gets around to studying them. But in the meantime the anecdotal, uncodified folk knowledge is better than useless. When folk knowledge is "debunked" by science I sometimes still don't rule out that it might be true, because so much science is simply of too poor quality to be able to properly make any such conclusion. See the replication crisis. I'm a scientist with nothing but respect for the scientific method itself, but "has this been scientifically proven" can be a really weak way to determine what's true and what's not in many cases. In those cases you kind of have to do your own reasoning with the data you have, anecdotal or otherwise, and try to get closest to the truth that you can. Which I think can be a valuable process in practice that shouldn't be discarded merely because it's not "proper" science. Scientists are also flawed and sometimes publish results in a biased way to conform to an ideology. For example, I expect folk beliefs about gender differences to be somewhat accurate (not perfect), and for the official science to be hopelessly muddled.

addicted 6y ago
Your examples of parachutes and masks are not examples of useful truths that don’t meet standards of scientific evidence. They are examples of useful truths that have not been tested through double blind randomized control experiments. But they both have scientific evidence behind them, and by any reasonable definition of meeting standards of scientific evidence, they do. The efficacy of parachutes can be derived from first principles. We know parachutes slow descent. And we know the risk of injury and death caused by force of impact. We can calculate how much a parachute slows descent snd therefore reduces force of impact snd prevents death. The benefits of wearing masks in reducing the spread of COVID and serious disease through COVID can similarly be derived from first principles but more importantly, there are many comparative population studies that meet the standard of scientific evidence.
- d0mine 6y ago
  Deriving from first principles is not the only way parachutes, masks can be proved to be effective. We don't need humans to be attached to parachutes, to test that parachutes work. There is various research on masks effectiveness too.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  Sure, but in a legal regulatory context, "scientific evidence" means different things than your "reasonable definition".
d0mine 6y ago
It is a too charitable interpretation. Another interpretation of not requiring hard evidence is to imprison somebody just because police thinks that they look guilty. Scientists are flawed. There is a replication crisis in soft science fields. Still scientific method is still a mile above anything else out there.
revax 6y ago
Here is the paper about parachute in your example: https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5343 https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5343

arbitrage 6y ago

It means it feels right, so they want it to be right. They will attempt to convince themselves AND you that this is the right choice. Hence, it's a pretty easy tell that this person is lying to you. Ironic.

simonh 6y ago

I can't be certain what they meant, but security agents and police will often find themselves in a situation where they need to decide how to devote investigative resources in situations where they have limited information. The information they do have might depend on their assessment of the veracity of what they are being told. In that case they may well have only their judgement to go on. I think that's reasonable, what else are they going to do? What we need to be careful of is making judgements about innocence or guilt based on subjective opinion.