8 ms·

Scientists' and doctors' views on questions of "ought" can also be influenced by their background in weird says. A dermatologist might insist that people alway

Scientists' and doctors' views on questions of "ought" can also be influenced by their background in weird says. A dermatologist might insist that people always wear long sleeve shirts and pants outside. Even if moderate sun exposure causes people to statistically live a bit longer on net they see lots of people who die of skin cancer and no more people dying of heart attacks than anyone else so the former are a lot more salient for them. As the famous saying goes, "nothing is as important as you think it is when you're thinking about it". Every scientific discipline inculcates values that may be different from those held by the general public ranging from how important it is to give credit to the originators of ideas to the relative importance of difference species to whether naturalness is valuable or not. This isn't bad, its probably necessary. But it's something that has to be accounted for.

JadeNB 5y ago
> As the famous saying goes, "nothing is as important as you think it is when you're thinking about it". That seems like a very dangerous saying! As a scientist, I am biased, but I think it's also important to remember that nothing is as simple as you think it is when you're not thinking about it.
- w-j-w 5y ago
  Scientists often think about one topic at length, and therefore tend to overestimate it's importance. This is a bias that needs to be corrected for. Thinking that a topic with which one isn't familiar is simpler than it really is is another unrelated bias.
  - kbelder 5y ago
    I remember an ad on the radio from the American Podiatrist's Council or some such organization, recommending that everyone get their yearly foot exam. Sure, it was trying to stir up business; but I think that ad mainly existed because podiatrists really did, in good faith, think everybody should get their foot examined once a year. You just lose perspective.
- dnautics 5y ago
  As a (former) scientist, I should also admonish that it is generally in the professional scientist's best interest to prolong the perceived complexity of any given thing to keep the grants coming. Even if they're not influenced by an interest outside of their scope, it's a mental habit that can be hard to break.
- chalst 5y ago
  Perhaps wisdom starts by accepting the conjunction of both the saying and your retort, which is not so far from a better-known saying, "the devil is in the details".
version_five 5y ago
Reminds me of the stereotype of dentists giving out toothbrushes on Halloween. Maybe if you're life is about preventing cavities you think that's what kids should always have in mind, but life would suck if before every action we asked "will this contribute to tooth decay" - much more than it would suck with a few cavities.
satellite2 5y ago
And it would be great if the public debate was about what outcome is better given two policies produced by honest but differently focused scientists. It would also be good if all those models were used as basis to discuss divergent interests and that politics would remain politics as a tool to select policies that maximize a majority (but not everyone's) best interests. I feel, instead the issue is that it's become unacceptable to disclose what are someone's own best interests and to defend those. Instead everyone produce fallacious models that show that their prefered policy is in everyone's best interests.
- silexia 5y ago
  I agree completely: much of science now is highly politicized. We have seen what happens to professors or research scientists who try to take a position that countered popular opinion on a sensitive topic - they have protests against them, they are spat upon and assaulted, and they lose their jobs. All of the other scientists and researchers see this and adjust their own behavior and areas of study to avoid being mobbed. I have had to become increasingly cautious and wary of trusting all published science, especially that in social areas now.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  Politics is a fundamentally alien experience to most STEM people. Politics is manifestly not about the public good - not even with compromises. It's mostly about a few unpleasant - sometimes charismatic - individuals pursuing power for their own personal benefit, and covertly that of their funders and sponsors. Science has nothing to contribute to this, because the entire business is so hopelessly toxic and corrupt that rational debate about policy doesn't even get to first base. If you want rational policy you don't want politics. It's perfectly possible you don't even want democracy. What you want is administration - a very different process where mature competent executives and managers who do not have Dark Triad personality traits make intelligent, informed, and compassionate decisions in the public interest based on evidence, expert guidance, and their own good instincts. And their power is strictly limited to the lightest possible enforcement required to do the job. No country has even been run like this, but a few have managed to operate like this in selected subfields.
m0zg 5y ago
Fun fact: incidence of skin cancer in notoriously cloudy and rainy WA is substantially higher than in almost always sunny HI or CA or TX. I bet the vast majority of "scientists and doctors" don't even know this. https://gis.cdc.gov/Cancer/USCS/#/AtAGlance/ https://gis.cdc.gov/Cancer/USCS/#/AtAGlance/
- reissbaker 5y ago
  The rates are extremely similar once you control for race (which the page you linked allows you to do, by the way). White people get skin cancer at much higher rates than non-white people, because melanin acts as permanent mild SPF, and white people have less skin melanin than non-white people: that's what makes them white, after all. Since Washington is more white than Hawaii, California, and Texas, if you don't control for race it looks — counterintuitively — like Washington is more risky than the others in terms of skin cancer. But it's not, it's just that you're selecting different population demographics. Also notable is that sunniness doesn't really determine UV exposure; partial cloud cover can actually result in more UV-B exposure, counterintuitively: https://www.drgurgen.com/are-the-suns-uv-rays-really-stronger-on-cloudy-days-fact-or-myth/ https://www.drgurgen.com/are-the-suns-uv-rays-really-stronge... And even full cloud cover doesn't completely block UV. So WA and CA aren't as different as you might think. Meanwhile, as one might expect, most states that get freezing cold for months at a time have lower skin cancer rates than those that don't when controlling for race: if you don't go outside for more than a few minutes a day, while bundled up under multiple layers, for months at a time, well — you see less skin cancer. Some heavy farming states seem to have more skin cancer, but again that makes sense since farm workers are outside a lot. Vermont and New Hampshire seem like odd exceptions to this rule — but I suspect there's also just some other selection bias at play. UV exposure from the sun causes skin cancer at high rates in white people; trying to make assumptions about states isn't necessarily an easy thing to do, since many other factors are at play when considering who lives where and how much they go outside.
  - m0zg 5y ago
    That could have something to do with it, but as someone who lived in WA for quite some time - you don't go outside without clothing for ~7 months in any given year in WA either because it's raining and unpleasant. So that's where this hypothesis falls apart a little. My hypothesis is that constant relatively low level exposure to UV is more beneficial than acute exposure for just a few days / weeks in a given year. I don't have any data to support this hypothesis though.
TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Presumably this only applies to scientists and not to politicians, economists, think tanks and PR firms, and so on.
WalterBright 5y ago
I see all the time PhD's who, when dealing with matters in their own field, assiduously adhere to reason, facts, the scientific method, evidence, etc. But step outside that field, and they latch on to something that emotionally appeals to them, and all that reason, facts, etc., flies right out the window. Of course, I never do that myself.
- evv555 5y ago
  Critical thinking is domain dependent. For example, just because you can kill it on white board interviews doesn't mean you will be able to navigate relationship issues. The way I imagine many PhD's I've talked to is like the RPG character where you max out one line of development at the expense of all the other lines. The counter-example would be the "T shaped" development profile which is the ideal imo.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    A research PhD should be able to instantly recognize logical fallacies outside their field, but in my experience they fall for them every time.
    - esja 5y ago
      Absolutely! I often wonder whether the epistemology we are "born with" can actually be improved very much (in a general sense), or whether the best we can do is teach domain-specific techniques to override our defaults on those topics.
      - loopz 5y ago
        We all fall for it. Just search for: biases We also need to deeply care and understand ourselves.
- scelerat 5y ago
  INT and WIS are separate, orthogonal stats
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> Even if moderate sun exposure causes people to statistically live a bit longer on net This reminded me that the weight range we term "overweight" has lower all-cause mortality than the weight range called "normal weight". (There is another tier above "overweight", "obese", which has high mortality.)
- KingMachiavelli 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure the study you are thinking of [1] only applies to ages > 65 [2] for which there are a lot of possible explanations. Other studies have found that past a certain age no lifestyle choices matter including smoking & diet since it takes too long to influence when you die. If you look at [1], a ton of the studies they looked at adjusted for preexisting illness like hypertension and diabetes. It's basically like saying people who fall off sky scrapers don't die of cancer. It is also important to remember the associated costs and decrease in quality of life associated with being overweight. That said it is possible the lower-end of the overweight BMI range could be moved up a point or two but that's probably less than the variance between populations anyway. [1] https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/99/4/875/4637868?fbclid=IwAR1fXh3UxZE9QH3gfT6sUMpVhYTJVeSvP4L-MFog65mLMd2KDANPXxPS68Y https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/99/4/875/4637868?fbcli... [2] https://agsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1532-5415.2009.02486.x?casa_token=r1eQwQisjUEAAAAA:D7L2nOhGVgoSVaLV8qrKJnQafchckSsmKUUebltExU_YhQSLH5yCWAj6EeOxm4Q4heQoXdzULzN1 https://agsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/...

JadeNB 5y ago

> As the famous saying goes, "nothing is as important as you think it is when you're thinking about it". That seems like a very dangerous saying! As a scientist, I am biased, but I think it's also important to remember that nothing is as simple as you think it is when you're not thinking about it.

w-j-w 5y ago
Scientists often think about one topic at length, and therefore tend to overestimate it's importance. This is a bias that needs to be corrected for. Thinking that a topic with which one isn't familiar is simpler than it really is is another unrelated bias.
- kbelder 5y ago
  I remember an ad on the radio from the American Podiatrist's Council or some such organization, recommending that everyone get their yearly foot exam. Sure, it was trying to stir up business; but I think that ad mainly existed because podiatrists really did, in good faith, think everybody should get their foot examined once a year. You just lose perspective.
dnautics 5y ago
As a (former) scientist, I should also admonish that it is generally in the professional scientist's best interest to prolong the perceived complexity of any given thing to keep the grants coming. Even if they're not influenced by an interest outside of their scope, it's a mental habit that can be hard to break.
chalst 5y ago
Perhaps wisdom starts by accepting the conjunction of both the saying and your retort, which is not so far from a better-known saying, "the devil is in the details".

version_five 5y ago

Reminds me of the stereotype of dentists giving out toothbrushes on Halloween. Maybe if you're life is about preventing cavities you think that's what kids should always have in mind, but life would suck if before every action we asked "will this contribute to tooth decay" - much more than it would suck with a few cavities.

satellite2 5y ago

And it would be great if the public debate was about what outcome is better given two policies produced by honest but differently focused scientists. It would also be good if all those models were used as basis to discuss divergent interests and that politics would remain politics as a tool to select policies that maximize a majority (but not everyone's) best interests. I feel, instead the issue is that it's become unacceptable to disclose what are someone's own best interests and to defend those. Instead everyone produce fallacious models that show that their prefered policy is in everyone's best interests.

silexia 5y ago
I agree completely: much of science now is highly politicized. We have seen what happens to professors or research scientists who try to take a position that countered popular opinion on a sensitive topic - they have protests against them, they are spat upon and assaulted, and they lose their jobs. All of the other scientists and researchers see this and adjust their own behavior and areas of study to avoid being mobbed. I have had to become increasingly cautious and wary of trusting all published science, especially that in social areas now.
TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Politics is a fundamentally alien experience to most STEM people. Politics is manifestly not about the public good - not even with compromises. It's mostly about a few unpleasant - sometimes charismatic - individuals pursuing power for their own personal benefit, and covertly that of their funders and sponsors. Science has nothing to contribute to this, because the entire business is so hopelessly toxic and corrupt that rational debate about policy doesn't even get to first base. If you want rational policy you don't want politics. It's perfectly possible you don't even want democracy. What you want is administration - a very different process where mature competent executives and managers who do not have Dark Triad personality traits make intelligent, informed, and compassionate decisions in the public interest based on evidence, expert guidance, and their own good instincts. And their power is strictly limited to the lightest possible enforcement required to do the job. No country has even been run like this, but a few have managed to operate like this in selected subfields.

m0zg 5y ago

Fun fact: incidence of skin cancer in notoriously cloudy and rainy WA is substantially higher than in almost always sunny HI or CA or TX. I bet the vast majority of "scientists and doctors" don't even know this. https://gis.cdc.gov/Cancer/USCS/#/AtAGlance/ https://gis.cdc.gov/Cancer/USCS/#/AtAGlance/

reissbaker 5y ago
The rates are extremely similar once you control for race (which the page you linked allows you to do, by the way). White people get skin cancer at much higher rates than non-white people, because melanin acts as permanent mild SPF, and white people have less skin melanin than non-white people: that's what makes them white, after all. Since Washington is more white than Hawaii, California, and Texas, if you don't control for race it looks — counterintuitively — like Washington is more risky than the others in terms of skin cancer. But it's not, it's just that you're selecting different population demographics. Also notable is that sunniness doesn't really determine UV exposure; partial cloud cover can actually result in more UV-B exposure, counterintuitively: https://www.drgurgen.com/are-the-suns-uv-rays-really-stronger-on-cloudy-days-fact-or-myth/ https://www.drgurgen.com/are-the-suns-uv-rays-really-stronge... And even full cloud cover doesn't completely block UV. So WA and CA aren't as different as you might think. Meanwhile, as one might expect, most states that get freezing cold for months at a time have lower skin cancer rates than those that don't when controlling for race: if you don't go outside for more than a few minutes a day, while bundled up under multiple layers, for months at a time, well — you see less skin cancer. Some heavy farming states seem to have more skin cancer, but again that makes sense since farm workers are outside a lot. Vermont and New Hampshire seem like odd exceptions to this rule — but I suspect there's also just some other selection bias at play. UV exposure from the sun causes skin cancer at high rates in white people; trying to make assumptions about states isn't necessarily an easy thing to do, since many other factors are at play when considering who lives where and how much they go outside.
- m0zg 5y ago
  That could have something to do with it, but as someone who lived in WA for quite some time - you don't go outside without clothing for ~7 months in any given year in WA either because it's raining and unpleasant. So that's where this hypothesis falls apart a little. My hypothesis is that constant relatively low level exposure to UV is more beneficial than acute exposure for just a few days / weeks in a given year. I don't have any data to support this hypothesis though.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

Presumably this only applies to scientists and not to politicians, economists, think tanks and PR firms, and so on.

WalterBright 5y ago

I see all the time PhD's who, when dealing with matters in their own field, assiduously adhere to reason, facts, the scientific method, evidence, etc. But step outside that field, and they latch on to something that emotionally appeals to them, and all that reason, facts, etc., flies right out the window. Of course, I never do that myself.

evv555 5y ago
Critical thinking is domain dependent. For example, just because you can kill it on white board interviews doesn't mean you will be able to navigate relationship issues. The way I imagine many PhD's I've talked to is like the RPG character where you max out one line of development at the expense of all the other lines. The counter-example would be the "T shaped" development profile which is the ideal imo.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  A research PhD should be able to instantly recognize logical fallacies outside their field, but in my experience they fall for them every time.
  - esja 5y ago
    Absolutely! I often wonder whether the epistemology we are "born with" can actually be improved very much (in a general sense), or whether the best we can do is teach domain-specific techniques to override our defaults on those topics.
    - loopz 5y ago
      We all fall for it. Just search for: biases We also need to deeply care and understand ourselves.
scelerat 5y ago
INT and WIS are separate, orthogonal stats

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> Even if moderate sun exposure causes people to statistically live a bit longer on net This reminded me that the weight range we term "overweight" has lower all-cause mortality than the weight range called "normal weight". (There is another tier above "overweight", "obese", which has high mortality.)

KingMachiavelli 5y ago
I'm pretty sure the study you are thinking of [1] only applies to ages > 65 [2] for which there are a lot of possible explanations. Other studies have found that past a certain age no lifestyle choices matter including smoking & diet since it takes too long to influence when you die. If you look at [1], a ton of the studies they looked at adjusted for preexisting illness like hypertension and diabetes. It's basically like saying people who fall off sky scrapers don't die of cancer. It is also important to remember the associated costs and decrease in quality of life associated with being overweight. That said it is possible the lower-end of the overweight BMI range could be moved up a point or two but that's probably less than the variance between populations anyway. [1] https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/99/4/875/4637868?fbclid=IwAR1fXh3UxZE9QH3gfT6sUMpVhYTJVeSvP4L-MFog65mLMd2KDANPXxPS68Y https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/99/4/875/4637868?fbcli... [2] https://agsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1532-5415.2009.02486.x?casa_token=r1eQwQisjUEAAAAA:D7L2nOhGVgoSVaLV8qrKJnQafchckSsmKUUebltExU_YhQSLH5yCWAj6EeOxm4Q4heQoXdzULzN1 https://agsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/...