4 ms·

Disagree. It's trivial to question. It's non-trivial to do the work required to show evidence for or against some proposition. What is at "the root behind a lot

Disagree. It's trivial to question. It's non-trivial to do the work required to show evidence for or against some proposition. What is at "the root behind a lot of issues we've seen socially" is the easy path of questioning something without actually being able to do the work required to back up one's claims or counterclaims. So I believe the reaction which you think of as "trust the experts / science" is actually "do the work and show the evidence". If a paper is published which claims that such-and-such drug shows effectiveness against shingles, it's easy and trivial to say, "Not so fast my friend" followed by any number of statements about Big Pharma, citing previous situations in which a claim was later shown to be false, etc. But while all of those things may, in fact, be true, they don't bring to bear any actual evidence that this particular drug study is flawed and exactly how.

coldtea 4y ago
>It's trivial to question. It's also trivial to accept though. And in a world where you can't (for time and effort constrains) check every announcement personally, and where expert proclamations aren't always correct so thay you can just take them as granted, there are still reasons to have an estimation (as a layman but even as a scientist) of something being true or not summarily.
- craftsman 4y ago
  The alternative I've suggested is rather different than the suggested alternatives of accepting results or taking them for granted. In another comment I said: > I'd suggest reading every paper critically, realizing (as most people do) that the results are tentative, and either letting it go at that, or dig in and do the hard work to figure out what may be flawed in the work presented. Then work with the authors or publish a paper of one's own pointing out the flaw and the new resulting analysis.
permo-w 4y ago
I think the problem here isn’t the specifics, but the borderline-nasty beration of the commenter simply for questioning the result yes, I agree, it would be better if they had a specific criticism of the methodology, but an appropriate response is simply to ask for such a thing, not to jump on them for questioning it at all, which is what happened here. do you see what I mean? what happened: >I think there could be contamination of the samples >oh wow how adorable, what’s next from your big book of ideas, little one? what would have been healthy: >I think there could be contamination of the samples >interesting. do you have a specific criticism of their methodology?

coldtea 4y ago

>It's trivial to question. It's also trivial to accept though. And in a world where you can't (for time and effort constrains) check every announcement personally, and where expert proclamations aren't always correct so thay you can just take them as granted, there are still reasons to have an estimation (as a layman but even as a scientist) of something being true or not summarily.

craftsman 4y ago
The alternative I've suggested is rather different than the suggested alternatives of accepting results or taking them for granted. In another comment I said: > I'd suggest reading every paper critically, realizing (as most people do) that the results are tentative, and either letting it go at that, or dig in and do the hard work to figure out what may be flawed in the work presented. Then work with the authors or publish a paper of one's own pointing out the flaw and the new resulting analysis.

permo-w 4y ago

I think the problem here isn’t the specifics, but the borderline-nasty beration of the commenter simply for questioning the result yes, I agree, it would be better if they had a specific criticism of the methodology, but an appropriate response is simply to ask for such a thing, not to jump on them for questioning it at all, which is what happened here. do you see what I mean? what happened: >I think there could be contamination of the samples >oh wow how adorable, what’s next from your big book of ideas, little one? what would have been healthy: >I think there could be contamination of the samples >interesting. do you have a specific criticism of their methodology?