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It is difficult for most people to defend against weaponized anti-science. The reason is that no one can become an expert scientist in one day or even one year.

It is difficult for most people to defend against weaponized anti-science. The reason is that no one can become an expert scientist in one day or even one year. First you learn elementary-school science, which by necessity involves some simplifications, and some things are left unexplained. Then you learn high-school science, which explains some of the gaps of the previous level, and improves some of its simplifications; yet it comes with its own simplifications and gaps. Then you learn undergraduate science... and after many years you hopefully become capable of understanding and evaluating the most complex scientific claims. Weaponized anti-science attacks people with statements that sound credible at their level, and require higher level to understand the deception. This does not happen accidentally; it is constructed so on purpose. So the person with elementary-school knowledge reads the statement that seems to make sense from the elementary-school perspective (it does not contradict anything taught at elementary school), but a high-school students could see why it is completely wrong. So the person can only conclude: "as far as I can understand, it is correct... and there is this one guy saying that it is wrong, but his arguments I can't understand". Similarly, you target people with high-school knowledge with statements involving undergraduate-level deception, etc. This is for me the most frustrating part of debating smart people who believe pseudoscience -- as far as they know (in my bubble that typically means undergraduate level of math, plus high-school level of everything else), the science often checks out. Someone who graduated in given area will be completely frustrated by hearing the "proof", because it contradicts many known and well-tested things... but to convince the person who is ignorant about it all (but is completely willing to trust his own Dunning-Kruger syndrome and Nassim Taleb's twitter over thousands of peer-reviewed papers), you need to hunt for the subtle error in the mathematical proof.

mschuster91 5y ago
> The reason is that no one can become an expert scientist in one day or even one year. Indeed. However, basic media literacy training could help people to differentiate between quacks (Alex Jones, un-attributed opinions in social media share pics not grounded in any scientific facts), actual experts but not in a relevant field to a debate (e.g. a PhD in art history or psychology in a debate about the infectiousness of coronavirus), and actual experts (e.g. Christian Drosten, one of the discoverers of the first SARS Coronavirus). A bit of common sense in media entities such as newspapers in TV stations - such as not giving quacks and non-relevant experts airtime and having scientific expertise on-call - would do the rest to further civilized debate.

mschuster91 5y ago

> The reason is that no one can become an expert scientist in one day or even one year. Indeed. However, basic media literacy training could help people to differentiate between quacks (Alex Jones, un-attributed opinions in social media share pics not grounded in any scientific facts), actual experts but not in a relevant field to a debate (e.g. a PhD in art history or psychology in a debate about the infectiousness of coronavirus), and actual experts (e.g. Christian Drosten, one of the discoverers of the first SARS Coronavirus). A bit of common sense in media entities such as newspapers in TV stations - such as not giving quacks and non-relevant experts airtime and having scientific expertise on-call - would do the rest to further civilized debate.