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Said another way, don't get nerd snipped by people who are trying to weaponize your professional scepticism for ulterior motives. This means that most of the t
by tgbugs 5y ago
Said another way, don't get nerd snipped by people who are trying to weaponize your professional scepticism for ulterior motives.
This means that most of the time when dealing with adversaries you have to go against your usual scientific instincts, assume your position is correct, and reframe the conversation at a higher level about power, money, etc. Controlling where attention goes in these conversations is critical.
Refusing to engage adversaries at the technical level seems wrong, but is the only way to defend against the fact that science operates by default at a level of doubt that the normal population simply cannot sustain without being driven to apathy (which is the objective of the adversaries).
- quantified 5y agoPart of the issue is recognizing adversaries and bad faith. In much of science, disagreements are still in good faith. But engaging bad-faith actors with the same tactics as good-faith ones, and engaging with the journalling public in the same way that you engage with other good-faith scientists, leads to losing the game that they’re playing.
- tgbugs 5y agoHeh, yeah. We need to add another class to the ethics courses. "How to interact with parties who would be politically or economically impacted by the results of your research."
- allemagne 5y agoHow much do we really want scientists writ large trying to optimize for the job of ensuring that the public is properly educated at the appropriate level of doubt? The adversaries we're trying to defend against will only have something else to point to and say "they have an explicit goal of manipulating public opinion to downplay climate/covid/round-earth skepticism", which isn't really that far off from what you're describing. Trying to properly gauge how new information is processed among hundreds of millions of people just seems like an expertise that is totally orthogonal to having a deep understanding of a scientific discipline. What you're talking about not only seems wrong, but just doesn't seem like the best way to go about solving the problem.
- tgbugs 5y agoI actually think forcing someone acting in bad faith (to use the sibling response's nomenclature) to accuse scientists out loud and directly in such a way is the right approach here. The reason for this is that it forces the bad faith actor to enter the scene, they can't just slink away once the damage has been done and point back at the "doubt." It breaks the 4th wall in a sense, forcing the audience to realize that there is an active party with their own agenda in the scene. Effectively all a scientist has to say is "The literature is an evolving work that reflects our current understanding. There are many factors that are involved in making public policy, and it seems that you are looking for a way to limit the influence that science can have on that policy to further your own goals that are driven by other factors that seem to be at odds with the public good." It would be nice if they could also say "Anyone can read the literature for themselves ..." but unfortunately that is not currently the case.
- allemagne 5y agoSimilar accusations against scientists have been ongoing for decades and I don't think the 4th wall dynamic is playing out at all like you're expecting. Realizing that there are parties with agendas in the scene also implicates scientists. I think the result has actually been that adversaries have seen unprecedented success at discrediting scientific institutions and scientists themselves.