5 ms·

It is my experience that listening to experts normally is a good idea, but the idea of a scientific journal publishing research that we should all listen to sci

It is my experience that listening to experts normally is a good idea, but the idea of a scientific journal publishing research that we should all listen to scientists and not hold anti-consensus views, has more than a little possibility for bias on the part of the researchers. Moreover, would it not be odd if those who held anti-consensus views were not overconfident? People of average or lower-than-average confidence would defer to the consensus. It's almost like saying "people who disagree with others more, are more disagreeable".

sidlls 4y ago
It's saying that people who hold anti-(scientific)consensus views generally believe themselves to be more well-educated than they actually are. That's a far cry from merely being disagreeable. It doesn't seem to say anything about actually knowledgeable scientists holding anti-consensus views, except insofar as to reiterate the thesis.
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- honkkong420 4y ago
  Idk, anecdotally I don’t think I’m right about my heterodox nutrition views because I’m more educated, I just observe the consensus view of eating 12 servings of grain per day is wrong because I feel worse listening to their advice than eating what I naturally prefer. I don’t think education comes into play at all?
  - ryanklee 4y ago
    Education must come into play. Your own case illustrates this, as there is no such consensus view. And even granting the possibility that you are exaggerating for effect, it's hard to find a field of knowledge with more contention than dietary nutrition, so one has to be even more diligent about acquiring expertise and not fooling oneself.
    - honkkong420 4y ago
      Education matters for the consensus (for arbitrary reasons) but in my own life, my prior experiences with food inform my next meal. Education doesn’t come into play at all. Let me pose this another way, why would you expect me to change the amount of bread i eat because of another year education? I already had 13 years of teachers telling me it should be the foundation of my diet and it didn’t stick. Why would the next year of education be any different?
      - joshuamorton 4y ago
        The modern consensus (or perhaps official, since consensus may be different) is that you should be eating more vegetables than grains. So you appear to agree with the consensus of experts that grains should not be the basis of your diet. This has been the us governments recommendation for over a decade (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPlate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPlate)
        xboxnolifes 4y ago
        They probably weren't in primary schooling in the last 11 years. They were probably taught the food pyramid over my plate, and disagreed with it.
        joshuamorton 4y ago
        Sure but "my personal experiences match up with the expert consensus from the past decade" (and really longer, the 2005 food pyramid was for slightly more grains than veggies, not double) isn't a particularly strong argument for disagreeing with the expert consensus. If what you're saying is "I disagree with expert consensus from the 80s", well then sure, but so does the expert consensus! That's how the scientific process works (slowly).
        honkkong420 4y ago
        My argument is that my prior experiences seem to work better for guiding my meal choice than all the formal knowledge presented to me.
- oceanplexian 4y ago
  Maybe I’m one of the disagreeable people this article is referring to, but what is a scientific “consensus” exactly? A consensus in your country? A consensus in your region of the world? Fact is we live in a post modernist society. There is no such thing as consensus, only what particular bubble and social framework your frame of reference is operating from.
simonh 4y ago
So you think it’s obviously true, but also obviously the result of biased research?
- joe-collins 4y ago
  It seems true in a trivial sense, so remarking upon it seems less revelatory, and possibly backed by some ulterior motive.
aunty_helen 4y ago
Another part to this, listening to the experts in a particular field tends to disregard competing priorities from other fields. We saw this all through the pandemic, but it's common in everyday life too.
Julesman 4y ago
This was more or less my response as well. The 'academy as monolith of truth' is so 20th century. And, of course, disagreeing with Newton is very different that disagreeing with Freud. And we certainly aren't surprised that dupes got the Dunning Kruger. But I worry about the impact of this line of thinking as we see it repeated in mainstream contexts. "Consensus as measure of truthiness" is incredibly problematic.
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- ogurechny 4y ago
  Newton wrote enough esoteric works to match Freud. However, it is either skipped entirely or discussed as some kind of hobby because he was promoted into superstar of science long time ago, and anything that stuck out from that public image was cut without any regard to what Newton thought. So there's quite a lot to disagree with for a regular person, but the regular person simply have no idea it exists.

sidlls 4y ago

It's saying that people who hold anti-(scientific)consensus views generally believe themselves to be more well-educated than they actually are. That's a far cry from merely being disagreeable. It doesn't seem to say anything about actually knowledgeable scientists holding anti-consensus views, except insofar as to reiterate the thesis.

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honkkong420 4y ago
Idk, anecdotally I don’t think I’m right about my heterodox nutrition views because I’m more educated, I just observe the consensus view of eating 12 servings of grain per day is wrong because I feel worse listening to their advice than eating what I naturally prefer. I don’t think education comes into play at all?
- ryanklee 4y ago
  Education must come into play. Your own case illustrates this, as there is no such consensus view. And even granting the possibility that you are exaggerating for effect, it's hard to find a field of knowledge with more contention than dietary nutrition, so one has to be even more diligent about acquiring expertise and not fooling oneself.
  - honkkong420 4y ago
    Education matters for the consensus (for arbitrary reasons) but in my own life, my prior experiences with food inform my next meal. Education doesn’t come into play at all. Let me pose this another way, why would you expect me to change the amount of bread i eat because of another year education? I already had 13 years of teachers telling me it should be the foundation of my diet and it didn’t stick. Why would the next year of education be any different?
    - joshuamorton 4y ago
      The modern consensus (or perhaps official, since consensus may be different) is that you should be eating more vegetables than grains. So you appear to agree with the consensus of experts that grains should not be the basis of your diet. This has been the us governments recommendation for over a decade (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPlate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPlate)
      - xboxnolifes 4y ago
        They probably weren't in primary schooling in the last 11 years. They were probably taught the food pyramid over my plate, and disagreed with it.
        joshuamorton 4y ago
        Sure but "my personal experiences match up with the expert consensus from the past decade" (and really longer, the 2005 food pyramid was for slightly more grains than veggies, not double) isn't a particularly strong argument for disagreeing with the expert consensus. If what you're saying is "I disagree with expert consensus from the 80s", well then sure, but so does the expert consensus! That's how the scientific process works (slowly).
        honkkong420 4y ago
        My argument is that my prior experiences seem to work better for guiding my meal choice than all the formal knowledge presented to me.
oceanplexian 4y ago
Maybe I’m one of the disagreeable people this article is referring to, but what is a scientific “consensus” exactly? A consensus in your country? A consensus in your region of the world? Fact is we live in a post modernist society. There is no such thing as consensus, only what particular bubble and social framework your frame of reference is operating from.

simonh 4y ago

So you think it’s obviously true, but also obviously the result of biased research?

joe-collins 4y ago
It seems true in a trivial sense, so remarking upon it seems less revelatory, and possibly backed by some ulterior motive.

aunty_helen 4y ago

Another part to this, listening to the experts in a particular field tends to disregard competing priorities from other fields. We saw this all through the pandemic, but it's common in everyday life too.

Julesman 4y ago

This was more or less my response as well. The 'academy as monolith of truth' is so 20th century. And, of course, disagreeing with Newton is very different that disagreeing with Freud. And we certainly aren't surprised that dupes got the Dunning Kruger. But I worry about the impact of this line of thinking as we see it repeated in mainstream contexts. "Consensus as measure of truthiness" is incredibly problematic.

deleted 4y ago
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ogurechny 4y ago
Newton wrote enough esoteric works to match Freud. However, it is either skipped entirely or discussed as some kind of hobby because he was promoted into superstar of science long time ago, and anything that stuck out from that public image was cut without any regard to what Newton thought. So there's quite a lot to disagree with for a regular person, but the regular person simply have no idea it exists.