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Is it not reasonable to recognize that the majority of popular references to science fall into the logical fallacy category of an appeal to authority, where lit

• watwut 4y ago
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  • pjc50 4y ago
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    • SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
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  • PaulHoule 4y ago
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• adra 4y ago
  Sources welcome, and also can we please start criticising all those other people just trying to get shit done when in the middle of an emergency. I think those firefighters are doing shit jobs too, because you KNOW they could've put that burning building out better than they did!
  • sharperguy 4y ago
    It's more like. The building is on fire. The fire department denies it is on fire and calls anyone who claims it is on fire a liar. Then they admit it is on fire and pretend like they always said it was on fire. Then they point the water in completely the wrong direction, and call anyone pointing this out a liar. They use the fact that those same people were already known as liars as evidence, without mentioning that the 'liars' were in fact correct. Continue ad infinitum.
  • LewisVerstappen 4y ago
    > also can we please start criticising all those other people just trying to get shit done when in the middle of an emergency. I think those firefighters are doing shit jobs too, because you KNOW they could've put that burning building out better than they did! Do you mean stop criticizing? Also, what an absurd proposition. Should we not criticize George W. Bush & the US Government for invading the wrong country in the aftermath of 9/11? After all, it was an emergency! At what point does the response change from "it was an emergency!" to... jesus christ you people are incompetent. And you're attempting to censor all the competent people.... Insert some meaningless comparison to firefighters/other heroic profession
  • DontchaKnowit 4y ago
    Fire departments funding isnt contingent of producing outcomes which agree with political or economic agendas. Lets not pretend like "scientists" by virtue of their job title are moral paragons or even experts in their fields. Everyone on this website (or like 75%) is a "scientist" to some degree. If you are an educated adult with any sort of scientific background you are fully capable of adjudicating a research paper into the following catagories : utter garbage, a reasonable but unscientific paper, a solid paper, or a questionable but too outside my expertise to grok. Im no chef but I can tell instant ramen from filet mignon. The general public is not necessarily capable of this sort of discernment. Which is fine, but we ought not to let people get away with steamrolling people who are more educated and more reasonable by appealing to "science" "Science" as it is used in popular parlance is a farce.
• soco 4y ago
  Do you know what the scientific method is, when you have no idea what to do? You try things until something sticks. I fully agree this is not palatable when your life depends on it, but as with this pandemic, people didn't know much at the beginning so they tried things. Some didn't work, indeed, but what was the alternative? Wait and let God sort them out? You had to "move fast and break things" because there was simply no alternative approach.
  • miguelazo 4y ago
    I agree to some extent, but Fauci et al telling people they don’t need masks, when the Chinese had figured that one out months before seems particularly egregious (and arrogant).
    • ted_dunning 4y ago
      Provide an actual quote in context. What I remember is Fauci saying that to be fully effective, protective needs to be fitted and fit-tested and that due to limited supplies, PPE supplies with high levels of protection (i.e. N95 and above) should be reserved for medical staff in order to keep hospitals functioning. There were also numerous experimental studies testing how much reuse of N95 masks was viable. As supplies became more available, he moderated this position and recommended protective equipment for anybody likely to be exposed.
      • miguelazo 4y ago
        >Provide an actual quote in context. On March 8, 2020, Fauci said "there's no reason to be walking around with a mask," according to Reuters https://www.newsweek.com/fauci-said-masks-not-really-effective-keeping-out-virus-email-reveals-1596703 https://www.newsweek.com/fauci-said-masks-not-really-effecti... Spare me the excuses about PPE supplies-- even cloth masks would have helped, especially for original SARS-COV-2. Even if he had been concerned about supply issues (the popular excuse you suggest), he could have not lied to the public about effectiveness and asked (not to mention have the President order) for medical grade masks to be reserved for healthcare workers.
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• brookst 4y ago
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  • mmustapic 4y ago
    The Pol Pot view of intellectuals is to kill them, along lots of people. This was just some text in a website.
    • brookst 4y ago
      You weren’t trying to imply that intellectuals are likely to cause violence against themselves by continuing to say the wrong things to the wrong people? Because it sure looked like that’s what you were implying.
      • Chris2048 4y ago
        Where was the implication of violence?
    • anigbrowl 4y ago
      I don't think the top comments was especially insightful, but let's not pretend that in some cases 'text on website' consists of exhortations to and instructions for violence. There is a non-negligible number of people who fantasize on the regular about widespread hangings of people they believe to be traitors. You can go on Twitter right now and find plenty of people tweeting about their desire to 'hang Fauci' just in the last week.
  • n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
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• dfxm12 4y ago
  I don't understand, if one is upset at "popular references to science" (however you're defining that), then why would they be aggressive against "science"? Literate people would also understand that these are two different things. It seems like misplaced anger if this is the case.
• standardUser 4y ago
  This is a reasonable criticism. But it is primarily a criticism of science reporting and public health policy. Many people agree with what you are saying, but instead of deciding we need changes to the way the media and government handle science, they decide science is bullshit and we end up with a major and growing political movement based on proud ignorance.
  • _aavaa_ 4y ago
    Is this not a understandable (and even predictable) reaction to "trust the science" being used as a rally cry and cudgel by science reporting and public health policy?
    • standardUser 4y ago
      No, choosing to live in a fantasy world and believing in provably false conspiracy theories is not an understandable response. If I grew up hating the way history was taught and communicated because of pro-Western biases and whitewashing atrocities and American exceptionalism, and my response is to decide history is bullshit and I'm going to believe instead in some gibberish I found on a blog or a podcast, that is not understandable. It's a dramatic and seemingly emotional overreaction that not only fails to solve the issue, but significantly undermines my own ability to effectively view and understand the world in other ways. The difference of course is that anti-vaxxers and other anti-science types were and are literally dying due to their belief in nonsense and conspiracies.
      • _aavaa_ 4y ago
        Before disparaging all of these people, consider the "provably false conspiracy theories" in light of the public health approach taken by the government and major tech companies. The beginning of the pandemic, especially, featured a great deal of noble lies and "following the science". These things have yet to be acknowledged and there hasn't been an honest discussion and apology from those involved and there has been no indication that the right lesson has been learned. > that is not understandable. It's a dramatic and seemingly emotional overreaction I think what you mean is "rational" in some platonic sense of the word rational. It is entirely understandable that humans, as sometimes irrational and always emotional creatures could react this way. It is not all history that we're talking about, as your own example demonstrates, merely the "history" and the institutions that provided the history that you grew up with. > The difference of course is that anti-vaxxers and other anti-science types were and are literally dying due to their belief in nonsense and conspiracies. Plenty of innocent people died and had their lives ruined or negatively impacted because of the nonsense beliefs and decisions made by the "follow the science" crowd. Which science was being followed when hospitals decided they did not need a stockpile of masks? Which science was being followed when it was decided that schools must be closed? Which science was being followed when it was decreed that masking children would have no negative impact on their development?
• epups 4y ago
  Sorry, but your criticism is misguided. Hotez is talking specifically about the anti-vaccine movement, which was literally dead wrong about the safety and effectiveness of the COVID vaccines. You are equating that to (presumably) quibbles about effectiveness of masks and quarantines, where most governments erred on the side of caution. Those are simply not the same things. The government response was calibrated based on what the scientific consensus was at the time, and whoever followed those guidelines (including vaccination) had a much lower chance of suffering and dying in the last two years. The other "side" was trying to convince people to try hocus-pocus medicine and avoid the only effective strategy for prevention.
  • jahsome 4y ago
    They're not the same things _to you_ but I don't think there's a distinction to the type of person who's planning to storm the Capitol, or those who support that level of ... Whatever it is ... The calculator for evaluating truthiness in those people is missing functionality, or at least it's operating on a different set of rules. To "those people" there are certain lines, which after being crossed, make it impossible to recover any ground.
• pcdoodle 4y ago
  More people are going to be skeptical post 2020 because these "trust the science" morons were/are putting their crazy in plain view. Same crowd as "Why I hope to die at 75" and "You'll own nothing and and be happy". It's not hard to connect the dots of corporate profits and policy. If readers think eugenics is a barbaric relic of the past, I have a sweet lullaby to whisper in your ear.
  • ted_dunning 4y ago
    Would you mind toning down the ad hominem attacks here? I, for example, suggested to a number of non-scientifically trained friends that the scientific consensus about vaccines was pretty strong, that the vaccine studies were well conducted and that they should trust this scientific view of vaccines. Essentially, "trust the science" as opposed to "trust people trying to make political hay by fear-mongering". You are saying that I am a moron. In fact, I am not.
    • pcdoodle 4y ago
      Sorry, It was not directed at you dude. I believe trusting the science in this case was "jumping the gun" and a little bit of "blind faith". Now that the dust has settled, hopefully trust can be rebuilt.
      • ted_dunning 4y ago
        Well, if you are going to be as insulting as "the trust the science morons", could you be a bit more specific about exactly who you are insulting. Your description fit my own actions pretty accurately. Or, maybe, you could just be less insulting as opposed to going for the highly nuanced position of being less indiscriminately insulting.
• anigbrowl 4y ago
  The majority of popular science content defers to expert opinion because most people do not want to trudge through heaps of scientific detail and dry statistical language. You might be falling into the trap of projecting your own interest in science and technology onto the population at large. Because the pandemic pushed a lot of people toward videoconference etc, hardcore medical knowledge is actually more accessible than ever before. People who were really, truly interested in what medical scientists and public health experts thought about COVID-19 could go to youtube channels like the UCSF grand rounds and get the straight dope from doctors at the leading edge of policy and research, talking to an audience of other doctors and getting down into the weeds of cellular biology, DNA base pairs, and statistical significance. I've never seen any of the 'do your own research' crowds cite any of this work. When they cite something, it's wrapped in 17 layers of confirmation bias. If you complain about fallacies from people who are generally trying to simplify things for an audience that demands simple explanations, and then ignore that fallacious arguments coming from their intellectual or ideological opponents, are you wandering off into fallacy yourself?
  • motohagiography 4y ago
    Arguments that reduce to labeling something as a conspiracy theory are destructive to truth seeking and an adulteration of discourse - but they are consistent with the fear of criticism that they are intened to target and leverage. We can't launder poor arguments through complexity/uncertainty boxes like the USC grand rounds videos and say, "well, unless you understand this granular level, you can't disagree with this lateral and aggregate policy one." I wonder if on a basic level the people who argue like that aren't engaged in discovering truth, but actuated by merely avoiding criticism and seeking to align to something symbolic that protects them. This may be the crux of the disagreement. If I have an ideological position, it is that I believe my opposing team is engaged in the neutralization of discourse because for them to prevail in their power struggles they only need for principled people to do nothing. This is perhaps the divide. There are people aligned to an ideal of truth that originates in religious cultural beliefs, and people aligned to a fear of criticism that originates in a more materialist ideology. This scope shift from an "appeal to authority" to reframing it as a "deference to authority," in the counter argument doesn't counter my original point, which was that scientists may feel they are under seige because they have been exploited in appeals to authority, and feel blowback from some people who understood that ploy and rejected it. They are orthogonal concepts. Sure, media defers to experts, they tell stories that include them, but the variations like "this is true because authority says so", "authority said: do this or become a hate figure," and "you are suffering because of these non-believers, just ask these authorities" were disingenuous rhetorical devices employed by media and policymakers with no objection from actual scientists. Maybe these scientists would feel less threatened if they had less fear of criticism and more intellectual courage.
• dekhn 4y ago
  Outside of COVID can you give some examples of this "majority of popular references to science fall into the logical fallacy category of appeal to authority". Note that appeal to authority isn't a logical fallacy- because scientific arguments are not pure logic. Instead, we use priors (authority) to evaluate the quality of statements. | I don't agree the pandemic response was filled with malicious falsehoods; the public health officials acted in good faith. I think most people haven't benen public health officials during a global emergency and fail to appreciate the challenges of threading all the needles simultaneously.
  • Chris2048 4y ago
    I think there are a lot of social-science topics, where claims are made that are supposedly "backed by science", but looking into that yields stuff less solid, such as dubious methods, lack of replication or claims based on surveys or non-academic studies, inappropriate or overreaching conclusions e.g. specificities derived from generalizations, etc. I think the clearest example is IAT (implicit bias testing), which has dubious foundations, but seems to have taken off as a "scientific" thing, at least in the corporate world. Sometimes accompanied by a motte-and-bailey where the results of the test, and the correct conclusions of the results, are left vague; or what a "bias" is left undefined so you can easily be lead to believe it equates to e.g. racism.
    • dekhn 4y ago
      I'm not including social science, sorry, I should have pointed that out. I am including physics (excluding string theory), chemistry and biology; all quantitative things with falsifiable experiments. I agree entirely that social science news reporting is crap. I should have been much clearer about that.
      • SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
        I think you highlighted it though. There is a spectrum of science. In the middle there are the hard verifiable objective things. And on the ends are subjective or unprovable theories. The goal is to increase that middle band over time. Science, scientific papers, scientists, universities have always been subject to weaponizing in the past. Tell me... Are eggs good for you or not?
• 62951413 4y ago
  You aren't a true believer in science, are you? I bet you have a STEM degree or two, you naughty heretic.
• toss1 4y ago
  Evidently you cannot tell the difference between scientists & policymakers being "wrong" because science is self-correcting and actively seeks out its prior wrong/less-right answers, vs people actively and knowingly spreading deliberate lies as part of campaigns for personal scams or political aggression. There is no "appeal to authority" here; Hotez IS one of the worlds leading authorities on both vaccines and anti-science aggression, which is exactly what it is. Of course, you are free to believe the liars over the people who are actually doing the hard work of figuring out the real science. But do not pretend that you are doing anyone any good. I'm sure you feel all self-righteous "sticking it to the man" and aggressively countering a leading expert, and partaking of (pseudo-)"knowledge" that is exclusive to you (self-)select insiders. This is a known and scientifically studied part of the attraction of conspiracy and junk science. While you pride yourself to not being a slave to the "authorities", you are merely a slave to the scammers and hucksters. It is not your belief in some "contrarian" tropes that makes you a free thinker. What would make you a free thinker is the ability to look at evidence and science and freely adjust your beliefs accordingly.
• epups 4y ago
  "Scientists" came up with a safe and effective vaccine to the most important pathogen in the past century, in less than a year. Whoever took this vaccine reduced their chance of ending up dead or in the hospital significantly. The jury is still out on whether mask use and quarantining was effective (several studies suggest so, others don't). A large reason of why we in the West can come out and live life normally is because the vaccines worked. It seems odd that you point fingers at some of their perceived failures without acknowledging how many hundreds of thousands of people owe their lives to these scientists and policymakers.