5 ms·

I guess I could nitpick at statements like "Very improbable things happen all the time" which is by definition untrue (we're not talking about a huge space of a

I guess I could nitpick at statements like "Very improbable things happen all the time" which is by definition untrue (we're not talking about a huge space of any possible events here, just specifically medical reactions), but let's just focus on the nub of the disagreement here which is this: "Seriously? Do you think some other group has better idea on what reality is? How did they get it?" Often, a really good disagreement when studied turns out to be a disagreement on the exact definitions of words. When I said "over-abundance of trust in scientists", I was using the word scientist as it's normally used by governments and media, to mean primarily academic modellers, public health officials and so on. The people that are in control and get presented to us as "The Science". It doesn't mean (in this context) literally all working scientists and it definitely doesn't mean "people who use the scientific method to study a question". So does some other group have a better idea on what reality is? Sure, in my view, absolutely. However that group is difficult to precisely define because it isn't affiliated with any particular institution. It's the mishmash of people who are studying the data using logically and statistically rigorous approaches, and writing up their findings online, mostly to be found in a collection of Substack blogs these days, but also elsewhere. This group of people has no institutional credibility because they're not united under any particular institution and a few of them choose to or have to use pseudonyms, but they do have a lot of methodological credibility, because they're actually following the rules of logic, reason and indeed, science. Whereas many of the presented scientists turn out not to be, on close inspection. They are "The Scientists" but not scientists. No surprise that many of the people disagreeing with them actually do have scientific training or employment, just from different fields. In the end then we agree that at some point you have to trust other people, and no, I'm not arguing for some kind of dystopian trust-free world. It wouldn't work indeed. But in this case we have a big problem: a group of people calling themselves scientists, people who society allows to use the title, but who objectively are not following the scientific method. Their results are consequently poor (the scientific method isn't perfect but it's a heck of a lot better than nothing!) but people refuse to accept it because they over-generalize and assume all scientists are viewable as a single blog with a uniform level of trustworthiness. If our institutions functioned well that would be the case, but they don't, so we're back to having to evaluate trust on a one-by-one basis. Very problematic.

scotty79 5y ago
One of the most important tools of science is peer review. I don't see how could the people who choose to abandon it (usually because they can't satisfy it) have better insights about reality. Not to mention other tools they don't have access to like ability to conduct work that requires multi-year effort of teams of people or necessitates the use of top of the line equipment. Personally I prefer to listen to what scientists with large budgets and a lot to loose if what they are saying turns out to be crap. Pseudonymous rouge loner that has nothing to loose doesn't instill in me great faith about his capabilities, honesty of his process and his findings. Whole modern antivax movement spawned from misplaced belief in one such loners scientist.
- native_samples 5y ago
  What makes you think they abandon peer review? Some of those people do publish peer reviewed papers. Unfortunately, peer review is pretty worthless. I've read a lot of papers that passed through peer review yet had basic errors in the first page, in one case, one was saying something false about public statistics in the very first sentence! If you don't trust particular fields then peer review isn't a very convincing upgrade because it's bad scientists reviewing other bad scientists. I'm not sure who you mean by "one such loner scientist" - do you mean Wakefield? He was peer reviewed and it took years for his paper to be retracted! That's the sort of problem I mean. For COVID stuff, for better or worse the arguments are mostly about data and everyone is working off the same datasets. So you don't need fancy equipment. A computer is sufficient. I find the pseudonymous person to in some ways have more to lose. One thing that you realize very quickly reading bad COVID papers is that the people who write them never suffer any consequences. It doesn't matter if the predictions are wrong, or if the scientific method is violated, or even if they just flatly lie in the text itself. It seems universities will let their academics get away with almost anything. Look at Ferguson for a good example of that. The man has made an entire career out of being always wrong and nobody in Imperial College London seems to care. The non-affiliated researchers on the other hand are trying to build an audience, some are selling their analysis to readers. They know they can lose that income stream if they screw up. Plus the open comments sections works wonders - they are effectively being peer reviewed in real time by far larger numbers of people than there are in the academic process. I've seen mistakes caught that way a few times now and it usually leads to a quick admission and apology, something I never saw coming from academics even in the rare cases their paper was retracted.

scotty79 5y ago

One of the most important tools of science is peer review. I don't see how could the people who choose to abandon it (usually because they can't satisfy it) have better insights about reality. Not to mention other tools they don't have access to like ability to conduct work that requires multi-year effort of teams of people or necessitates the use of top of the line equipment. Personally I prefer to listen to what scientists with large budgets and a lot to loose if what they are saying turns out to be crap. Pseudonymous rouge loner that has nothing to loose doesn't instill in me great faith about his capabilities, honesty of his process and his findings. Whole modern antivax movement spawned from misplaced belief in one such loners scientist.

native_samples 5y ago
What makes you think they abandon peer review? Some of those people do publish peer reviewed papers. Unfortunately, peer review is pretty worthless. I've read a lot of papers that passed through peer review yet had basic errors in the first page, in one case, one was saying something false about public statistics in the very first sentence! If you don't trust particular fields then peer review isn't a very convincing upgrade because it's bad scientists reviewing other bad scientists. I'm not sure who you mean by "one such loner scientist" - do you mean Wakefield? He was peer reviewed and it took years for his paper to be retracted! That's the sort of problem I mean. For COVID stuff, for better or worse the arguments are mostly about data and everyone is working off the same datasets. So you don't need fancy equipment. A computer is sufficient. I find the pseudonymous person to in some ways have more to lose. One thing that you realize very quickly reading bad COVID papers is that the people who write them never suffer any consequences. It doesn't matter if the predictions are wrong, or if the scientific method is violated, or even if they just flatly lie in the text itself. It seems universities will let their academics get away with almost anything. Look at Ferguson for a good example of that. The man has made an entire career out of being always wrong and nobody in Imperial College London seems to care. The non-affiliated researchers on the other hand are trying to build an audience, some are selling their analysis to readers. They know they can lose that income stream if they screw up. Plus the open comments sections works wonders - they are effectively being peer reviewed in real time by far larger numbers of people than there are in the academic process. I've seen mistakes caught that way a few times now and it usually leads to a quick admission and apology, something I never saw coming from academics even in the rare cases their paper was retracted.