7 ms·

How can the consensus ever change if we deplatform, defund, and ostracize all scientists (or would-be scientists) researching and publishing any evidence that c

How can the consensus ever change if we deplatform, defund, and ostracize all scientists (or would-be scientists) researching and publishing any evidence that contradicts consensus?

ChrisLomont 5y ago
We don't. We do that to people ignoring science that post things that demonstrably hurt people. Any scientist is welcome to publish science and have the truth of arguments win out. Science isn't done on Twitter or Facebook.
owisd 5y ago
How can the consensus change if only the side that can afford the most twitter ads get to put their position forward?
- rhino369 5y ago
  Allowing one side to advertise doesn't mean the other side doesn't get to "put their position forward."
  - owisd 5y ago
    If, as you say, not advertising on twitter doesn't mean you don't get to put your position forward then nothing of value is being lost by the twitter policy change.
    - rhino369 5y ago
      I'm saying that allowing A to advertise on twitter doesn't prevent B from advertising on twitter.
      - owisd 5y ago
        If one side has a financial incentive to push bad faith arguments, whereas the other side has no financial incentive or resources and is just interested in science for the sake of science, then by supporting having the debate via twitter ads you've created a system that locks out one side.
notatoad 5y ago
that's how dissent in science has always been treated, going back to things like "the earth is round". i'm not saying it's the best system, but it's not new. historically, science gets it right in the end, but shifting the scientific consensus is a long and slow process that happens among scientists, not something that uninformed masses contribute to in any meaningful way. the barrier to getting widespread acceptance of your dissenting theory is much higher than for getting widespread acceptance of your theory that matches the status quo. i don't think it's obvious that there's a benefit to making it easier to promote ideas that contradict the generally accepted science. if it's correct, smart people will eventually be convinced of that. promoting fringe theories on twitter amongst people who have no underlying knowledge of the subject matter won't do anything to advance the most correct ideas, only the loudest ideas or the ideas that most match our pre-existing biases.
- mach1ne 5y ago
  > if it's correct, smart people will eventually be convinced of that. That's not how science has historically worked. Smart people won't be convinced, new people will. Status quo changes when the previous generation is laid to rest. This is the result of the academia being just another human social system obeying the same laws of power as all the rest, thus inheriting all their flaws.
  - mannykannot 5y ago
    There are plenty of cases where things have moved much faster than that - e.g. the adoption of QM and relativity, dark energy becoming a respectable hypothesis, plate tectonics, dinosaur extinction via impact... In each of these cases, either new evidence or a new explanation for previously-puzzling evidence was key.
    - monort 5y ago
      It took 50 years for plate tectonics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics#History_of_the_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics#History_of_the...
wtallis 5y ago
Twitter is already pretty much the worst possible communication medium for engaging in scientific debate. Challenging scientific consensus in a way that is credible and easily distinguished from trolling or corporate PR requires a more in-depth discussion of facts and explanations than Twitter is designed to facilitate.
wslack 5y ago
That isn't what Twitter is banning. There are plenty of academics working to refine our knowledge around the climate. Conservatives who have dug into the full science have concluded that the consensus today has merit. This is knowable. It's like the difference between someone researching the exact strength of antibiotics and claiming that medicine doesn't work. One of those isn't science.
jcranberry 5y ago
By publishing their science in academic journals rather than twitter.
- beached_whale 5y ago
  This is it. The conclusions should match the weight of the evidence being written about, and that of existing papers. This can be seen with semi-recent FTL neutrino experiment… it was probably a faulty cable. There are often many reasons for counter evidence that explain it better than changing the current understandings. That has to be worked through first, and isn’t a headline grabbing process.
- pcl 5y ago
  Rather than twitter ads, in the case at hand.
- istinetz 5y ago
  Hypothetically: a study finds racial differences in intelligence, or something equally taboo. Do you really believe an esteemed journal would actually publish it? Or would they find a reason to politely decline, such as "it's out of scope", "didn't pass peer review", "doesn't align with out values, reword"? Do you believe, even if the study is published, that it would not destroy someone's career? And finally, if researchers believe there is a chance of that happening, would they actually start to investigate the taboo area? My answer to all these questions is "no". This is why when you say, "just publish in academic journals", I am highly skeptical. And why I am annoyed at yet another example of the social media oligarchy enforcing what ideas are allowed to propagate.
  - staticassertion 5y ago
    This is a silly hypothetical for a number of reasons. 1. There are a million reasons it could be rejected. For one thing, we have decades if not centuries of terrible science here, motivated by even worse agendas. A journal is going to be extremely skeptical of any study in this area for that same reason, and they would be for anything much less controversial that had centuries of garbage behind it. 2. Science is not morally exempt. A journal may ask themselves if the scientific implications of this paper are worth the practical implications of supporting the work at that stage - that's going to depend a LOT on the paper itself, and since this is a hypothetical, we have no way of discussing this point. > Do you believe, even if the study is published, that it would not destroy someone's career? I don't know, maybe? Again, it's a hypothetical. What is this paper showing? Who is it by? There's so much context missing here. I'd certainly think whoever did this research, with no other context, is probably an idiot, but I could be convinced otherwise. > And finally, if researchers believe there is a chance of that happening, would they actually start to investigate the taboo area? Maybe? Like, yeah, good point, I would definitely question the motives of anyone doing this research. But this is a hypothetical so it's impossible to say. > My answer to all these questions is "no". Given this extremely broad hypothetical it seems pretty absurd to answer any way definitively. Regardless, this in no way supports the idea that the research rejected by journals is somehow fit for Twitter ads. It is, at best, a criticism of journals, without any comment on what the right solution would be. The idea that advertising on Twitter is somehow the bandaid we need for purported issues with scientific peer review is absolutely fucking laughable and I think people on HN should seriously question the competency of the average user here.
Hammershaft 5y ago
This is a fair argument but it seems like the proportion of climate deniers who are driven by bad faith massively outweight climate skeptics acting in good faith.
azornathogron 5y ago
Even without any of the more modern forms of deplatforming, defunding or ostracization, people have been concerned for at least several decades about an inability for new ideas to make inroads and change overall scientific consensus or understanding. I am speaking of the idea often described as "science progresses one funeral at a time" - which Wikipedia informs me is sometimes known as "Planck's principle" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle
- enkid 5y ago
  How does allowing people to advertise on Twitter make that process better? I don't see it.
  - azornathogron 5y ago
    It doesn't, and I was not claiming anything like that. In fact I wasn't making any claim about anything at all. I was just pointing out some broader context that the way ideas spread and consensus forms or changes is a messy and human process and always has been, and that it's something people have been thinking about for a long time already, so there are plenty of ideas to read about the topic for anyone who is interested in it. If you do want a claim, my personal opinion is that Twitter's choices to ban or allow certain advertising will make no noticeable difference to the progress of scientific understanding, because I don't think adverts on Twitter are a communication channel that matters for the spread of ideas within academic communities. I can imagine that over time it might make a difference to lay-people's beliefs about some things, although I'm not sure whether Twitter has a broad enough audience to really change much here. Since I personally am fully onboard the "climate change is real, and it's real bad" train, I don't have any problem with Twitter banning adverts that spread the opposite idea. If it was a ban on what general Twitter users can post then I would have a problem with it, but I'm ok with a ban on adverts. Maybe that's inconsistent of me, I don't know.
staticassertion 5y ago
They can submit their papers to journals for review. No one is stopping them. Twitter is not the place for that.
enkid 5y ago
Advertising on Twitter should not be the way people try to change the consensus.
Certhas 5y ago
This is risible. Next we'll cry a tear for all the good scientists who can not get heard with their findings that Tobacco is harmless after all? There has been concerted funding and propaganda _against_ the science by an industry that is literally earning billions a week. Others have already pointed out that it's always been hard to go against the consensus in science. It's supposed to be hard. The consensus became the consensus for a reason. Overthrowing it is a monumental effort that gets you into the history books. This is not what this is about and this is not what is going on here though. In the 80s serious scientists debated man made global warming. They raised objections, and contradicted the models. Eventually all the reasonable and important objections were addressed. The debate settled. The evidence came in. We now have 30 years of observational data on top of that! And _now_ people complain that there is no scientific debate! No one was paying attention when the debate happened! That's why you are getting the conclusion! That's why people who object are told "Yeah we covered this, check the papers." Which doesn't feel like debate but in reality just shows that the person coming in hasn't done their due diligence or isn't arguing in good faith.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  >Next we'll cry a tear for all the good scientists who can not get heard with their findings that Tobacco is harmless after all? Don't forget that the consensus used to be that tobacco was harmless. The consensus can change from an incorrect position to the correct one.
  - devindotcom 5y ago
    I think you'll find that as soon as researchers began looking into the harmful effects of smoking, the link to cancer quickly became the scientific consensus. It did not become the popular consensus for decades because of the indefatigable opposition campaign funded by the tobacco companies. A good history of all this is here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22345227/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22345227/ Imagine if a company had prohibited tobacco advertising that asserted smoking was healthy. That's the parallel here.
alkonaut 5y ago
Do you think it changes with political ads on social media? I think this is completely decoupled from the science itself. Luckily.
pfdietz 5y ago
By presenting good evidence that the consensus is wrong, and then after the existing model is thrown into doubt, presenting a better model. But there actually has to be that evidence. Bogus evidence (such as that presented by global warming deniers) does not suffice.
KennyBlanken 5y ago
> if we deplatform, defund, and ostracize all scientists (or would-be scientists) researching and publishing any evidence that contradicts consensus Because the announced policy is none of those things?

How can the consensus ever change if we deplatform, defund, and ostracize all scientists (or would-be scientists) researching and publishing any evidence that contradicts consensus?

ChrisLomont 5y ago

We don't. We do that to people ignoring science that post things that demonstrably hurt people. Any scientist is welcome to publish science and have the truth of arguments win out. Science isn't done on Twitter or Facebook.

owisd 5y ago

How can the consensus change if only the side that can afford the most twitter ads get to put their position forward?

rhino369 5y ago
Allowing one side to advertise doesn't mean the other side doesn't get to "put their position forward."
- owisd 5y ago
  If, as you say, not advertising on twitter doesn't mean you don't get to put your position forward then nothing of value is being lost by the twitter policy change.
  - rhino369 5y ago
    I'm saying that allowing A to advertise on twitter doesn't prevent B from advertising on twitter.
    - owisd 5y ago
      If one side has a financial incentive to push bad faith arguments, whereas the other side has no financial incentive or resources and is just interested in science for the sake of science, then by supporting having the debate via twitter ads you've created a system that locks out one side.

notatoad 5y ago

that's how dissent in science has always been treated, going back to things like "the earth is round". i'm not saying it's the best system, but it's not new. historically, science gets it right in the end, but shifting the scientific consensus is a long and slow process that happens among scientists, not something that uninformed masses contribute to in any meaningful way. the barrier to getting widespread acceptance of your dissenting theory is much higher than for getting widespread acceptance of your theory that matches the status quo. i don't think it's obvious that there's a benefit to making it easier to promote ideas that contradict the generally accepted science. if it's correct, smart people will eventually be convinced of that. promoting fringe theories on twitter amongst people who have no underlying knowledge of the subject matter won't do anything to advance the most correct ideas, only the loudest ideas or the ideas that most match our pre-existing biases.

mach1ne 5y ago
> if it's correct, smart people will eventually be convinced of that. That's not how science has historically worked. Smart people won't be convinced, new people will. Status quo changes when the previous generation is laid to rest. This is the result of the academia being just another human social system obeying the same laws of power as all the rest, thus inheriting all their flaws.
- mannykannot 5y ago
  There are plenty of cases where things have moved much faster than that - e.g. the adoption of QM and relativity, dark energy becoming a respectable hypothesis, plate tectonics, dinosaur extinction via impact... In each of these cases, either new evidence or a new explanation for previously-puzzling evidence was key.
  - monort 5y ago
    It took 50 years for plate tectonics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics#History_of_the_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics#History_of_the...

wtallis 5y ago

Twitter is already pretty much the worst possible communication medium for engaging in scientific debate. Challenging scientific consensus in a way that is credible and easily distinguished from trolling or corporate PR requires a more in-depth discussion of facts and explanations than Twitter is designed to facilitate.

wslack 5y ago

That isn't what Twitter is banning. There are plenty of academics working to refine our knowledge around the climate. Conservatives who have dug into the full science have concluded that the consensus today has merit. This is knowable. It's like the difference between someone researching the exact strength of antibiotics and claiming that medicine doesn't work. One of those isn't science.

jcranberry 5y ago

By publishing their science in academic journals rather than twitter.

beached_whale 5y ago
This is it. The conclusions should match the weight of the evidence being written about, and that of existing papers. This can be seen with semi-recent FTL neutrino experiment… it was probably a faulty cable. There are often many reasons for counter evidence that explain it better than changing the current understandings. That has to be worked through first, and isn’t a headline grabbing process.
pcl 5y ago
Rather than twitter ads, in the case at hand.
istinetz 5y ago
Hypothetically: a study finds racial differences in intelligence, or something equally taboo. Do you really believe an esteemed journal would actually publish it? Or would they find a reason to politely decline, such as "it's out of scope", "didn't pass peer review", "doesn't align with out values, reword"? Do you believe, even if the study is published, that it would not destroy someone's career? And finally, if researchers believe there is a chance of that happening, would they actually start to investigate the taboo area? My answer to all these questions is "no". This is why when you say, "just publish in academic journals", I am highly skeptical. And why I am annoyed at yet another example of the social media oligarchy enforcing what ideas are allowed to propagate.
- staticassertion 5y ago
  This is a silly hypothetical for a number of reasons. 1. There are a million reasons it could be rejected. For one thing, we have decades if not centuries of terrible science here, motivated by even worse agendas. A journal is going to be extremely skeptical of any study in this area for that same reason, and they would be for anything much less controversial that had centuries of garbage behind it. 2. Science is not morally exempt. A journal may ask themselves if the scientific implications of this paper are worth the practical implications of supporting the work at that stage - that's going to depend a LOT on the paper itself, and since this is a hypothetical, we have no way of discussing this point. > Do you believe, even if the study is published, that it would not destroy someone's career? I don't know, maybe? Again, it's a hypothetical. What is this paper showing? Who is it by? There's so much context missing here. I'd certainly think whoever did this research, with no other context, is probably an idiot, but I could be convinced otherwise. > And finally, if researchers believe there is a chance of that happening, would they actually start to investigate the taboo area? Maybe? Like, yeah, good point, I would definitely question the motives of anyone doing this research. But this is a hypothetical so it's impossible to say. > My answer to all these questions is "no". Given this extremely broad hypothetical it seems pretty absurd to answer any way definitively. Regardless, this in no way supports the idea that the research rejected by journals is somehow fit for Twitter ads. It is, at best, a criticism of journals, without any comment on what the right solution would be. The idea that advertising on Twitter is somehow the bandaid we need for purported issues with scientific peer review is absolutely fucking laughable and I think people on HN should seriously question the competency of the average user here.

Hammershaft 5y ago

This is a fair argument but it seems like the proportion of climate deniers who are driven by bad faith massively outweight climate skeptics acting in good faith.

azornathogron 5y ago

Even without any of the more modern forms of deplatforming, defunding or ostracization, people have been concerned for at least several decades about an inability for new ideas to make inroads and change overall scientific consensus or understanding. I am speaking of the idea often described as "science progresses one funeral at a time" - which Wikipedia informs me is sometimes known as "Planck's principle" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle

enkid 5y ago
How does allowing people to advertise on Twitter make that process better? I don't see it.
- azornathogron 5y ago
  It doesn't, and I was not claiming anything like that. In fact I wasn't making any claim about anything at all. I was just pointing out some broader context that the way ideas spread and consensus forms or changes is a messy and human process and always has been, and that it's something people have been thinking about for a long time already, so there are plenty of ideas to read about the topic for anyone who is interested in it. If you do want a claim, my personal opinion is that Twitter's choices to ban or allow certain advertising will make no noticeable difference to the progress of scientific understanding, because I don't think adverts on Twitter are a communication channel that matters for the spread of ideas within academic communities. I can imagine that over time it might make a difference to lay-people's beliefs about some things, although I'm not sure whether Twitter has a broad enough audience to really change much here. Since I personally am fully onboard the "climate change is real, and it's real bad" train, I don't have any problem with Twitter banning adverts that spread the opposite idea. If it was a ban on what general Twitter users can post then I would have a problem with it, but I'm ok with a ban on adverts. Maybe that's inconsistent of me, I don't know.

staticassertion 5y ago

They can submit their papers to journals for review. No one is stopping them. Twitter is not the place for that.

enkid 5y ago

Advertising on Twitter should not be the way people try to change the consensus.

Certhas 5y ago

This is risible. Next we'll cry a tear for all the good scientists who can not get heard with their findings that Tobacco is harmless after all? There has been concerted funding and propaganda _against_ the science by an industry that is literally earning billions a week. Others have already pointed out that it's always been hard to go against the consensus in science. It's supposed to be hard. The consensus became the consensus for a reason. Overthrowing it is a monumental effort that gets you into the history books. This is not what this is about and this is not what is going on here though. In the 80s serious scientists debated man made global warming. They raised objections, and contradicted the models. Eventually all the reasonable and important objections were addressed. The debate settled. The evidence came in. We now have 30 years of observational data on top of that! And _now_ people complain that there is no scientific debate! No one was paying attention when the debate happened! That's why you are getting the conclusion! That's why people who object are told "Yeah we covered this, check the papers." Which doesn't feel like debate but in reality just shows that the person coming in hasn't done their due diligence or isn't arguing in good faith.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
_-david-_ 5y ago
>Next we'll cry a tear for all the good scientists who can not get heard with their findings that Tobacco is harmless after all? Don't forget that the consensus used to be that tobacco was harmless. The consensus can change from an incorrect position to the correct one.
- devindotcom 5y ago
  I think you'll find that as soon as researchers began looking into the harmful effects of smoking, the link to cancer quickly became the scientific consensus. It did not become the popular consensus for decades because of the indefatigable opposition campaign funded by the tobacco companies. A good history of all this is here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22345227/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22345227/ Imagine if a company had prohibited tobacco advertising that asserted smoking was healthy. That's the parallel here.

alkonaut 5y ago

Do you think it changes with political ads on social media? I think this is completely decoupled from the science itself. Luckily.

pfdietz 5y ago

By presenting good evidence that the consensus is wrong, and then after the existing model is thrown into doubt, presenting a better model. But there actually has to be that evidence. Bogus evidence (such as that presented by global warming deniers) does not suffice.

KennyBlanken 5y ago

> if we deplatform, defund, and ostracize all scientists (or would-be scientists) researching and publishing any evidence that contradicts consensus Because the announced policy is none of those things?