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That's why I mostly look at incentives. Scientists funded by special interest groups could easily design studies in a way to show the results desired by their

That's why I mostly look at incentives. Scientists funded by special interest groups could easily design studies in a way to show the results desired by their benefactors. In fact, that's exactly what happened with Big Tobacco to 'disprove' the link between smoking and cancer. It's easier to introduce bias into a study than to prove that bias was introduced. It's like with complex computer simulations, if you change one seemingly insignificant variable, the simulation could give you a completely different result. Looking at incentives can lead you astray in the short term (due to complexity of incentives or hidden incentives), but in the long run, incentives provide the most predictable framework for figure out the behavior of people and animals.

breck 4y ago
I agree with this. Especially with multi-agent systems (anything to do with people or biology), which are inherently vastly more complex and harder to predict than mechanical systems, it's very important to know the incentives of the people making the statements. Most often they are overestimating their confidence with the bias toward their own incentives.
Paul-Craft 4y ago
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Paul-Craft 4y ago
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- vlovich123 4y ago
  It can be debated about whether that’s a logical fallacy. If you ask ten experts for their studies on something and you find a reasonable correlation (eg all the ones promoting smoking are funded by Tabacco lobbyists while the rest have a more natural distribution of results and don’t show any correlation of potential undue influence), it’s not a logical fallacy to suggest “hey, this argument is being made in good faith and the reason I think this is because of the funding sources for this person”. Indeed, we know this was an explicit strategy employed by Tabacco with lung cancer (they knew it was a problem but intentionally funded research to get the contrary results to muddy the waters) and oil companies with climate change (same thing).
  - Paul-Craft 4y ago
    Only if you believe that work should not be evaluated on its own merits. If the methodology is good, the sample sizes big enough, the statistics correctly done, etc., I don't care if Mickey Mouse wrote the study. The climate change example is bad because oil companies have been actively suppressing correct evidence showing the existence of climate change since the 1980s. I'm less familiar with the tobacco studies, but I wouldn't be surprised if they've been doing the same thing, just on longer time scales.
    - vlovich123 4y ago
      Most people tend to try to engage the world with how it is rather than how they’d like it to be. It’s definitely not as simple as you make it out to be. They employ both strategies - they try to suppress real studies and they try to generate bullshit on top to confuse them situation / overwhelm the capacity of the system to deal with it. Sure it’s an ad hominem attack to use past behavior to judge someone’s current or actions statements and taking actions as a result (eg ignoring them). And yet, is that a logical fallacy? I don’t think so but you seem to have an opposite conclusion.
      - Paul-Craft 4y ago
        I'm tempted to say that claiming it's naivete to expect people to do work to evaluate a research paper is naive, as well as ad hominem. If you don't have the time or expertise to do so, then do the rest of us a favor and don't try. Now, if you're talking about using such criteria as a heuristic to decide which papers to put effort into evaluating, then we have another discussion to have.
        vlovich123 4y ago
        That’s exactly what I’m saying. I don’t bother trying to evaluate a paper because a) my area of expertise only extends so far b) papers are largely worthless in their ability to communicate where the research done was valid. The replication crises and many many fraudulent papers surely would convince anyone that there’s a real problem with our current system. Maybe you’re a brilliant mind that can separate the wheat from the chaff. Most people, even leading researchers in the field, have trouble though so I don’t feel like I’m in bad company.
lazyeye 4y ago
Yes otherwise known as "Motivated Reasoning" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning which I'd suggest includes somewhere above 95% + of all reasoning (where possible)

breck 4y ago

I agree with this. Especially with multi-agent systems (anything to do with people or biology), which are inherently vastly more complex and harder to predict than mechanical systems, it's very important to know the incentives of the people making the statements. Most often they are overestimating their confidence with the bias toward their own incentives.

Paul-Craft 4y ago

[flagged]

Paul-Craft 4y ago

[flagged]

vlovich123 4y ago
It can be debated about whether that’s a logical fallacy. If you ask ten experts for their studies on something and you find a reasonable correlation (eg all the ones promoting smoking are funded by Tabacco lobbyists while the rest have a more natural distribution of results and don’t show any correlation of potential undue influence), it’s not a logical fallacy to suggest “hey, this argument is being made in good faith and the reason I think this is because of the funding sources for this person”. Indeed, we know this was an explicit strategy employed by Tabacco with lung cancer (they knew it was a problem but intentionally funded research to get the contrary results to muddy the waters) and oil companies with climate change (same thing).
- Paul-Craft 4y ago
  Only if you believe that work should not be evaluated on its own merits. If the methodology is good, the sample sizes big enough, the statistics correctly done, etc., I don't care if Mickey Mouse wrote the study. The climate change example is bad because oil companies have been actively suppressing correct evidence showing the existence of climate change since the 1980s. I'm less familiar with the tobacco studies, but I wouldn't be surprised if they've been doing the same thing, just on longer time scales.
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    Most people tend to try to engage the world with how it is rather than how they’d like it to be. It’s definitely not as simple as you make it out to be. They employ both strategies - they try to suppress real studies and they try to generate bullshit on top to confuse them situation / overwhelm the capacity of the system to deal with it. Sure it’s an ad hominem attack to use past behavior to judge someone’s current or actions statements and taking actions as a result (eg ignoring them). And yet, is that a logical fallacy? I don’t think so but you seem to have an opposite conclusion.
    - Paul-Craft 4y ago
      I'm tempted to say that claiming it's naivete to expect people to do work to evaluate a research paper is naive, as well as ad hominem. If you don't have the time or expertise to do so, then do the rest of us a favor and don't try. Now, if you're talking about using such criteria as a heuristic to decide which papers to put effort into evaluating, then we have another discussion to have.
      - vlovich123 4y ago
        That’s exactly what I’m saying. I don’t bother trying to evaluate a paper because a) my area of expertise only extends so far b) papers are largely worthless in their ability to communicate where the research done was valid. The replication crises and many many fraudulent papers surely would convince anyone that there’s a real problem with our current system. Maybe you’re a brilliant mind that can separate the wheat from the chaff. Most people, even leading researchers in the field, have trouble though so I don’t feel like I’m in bad company.

lazyeye 4y ago

Yes otherwise known as "Motivated Reasoning" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning which I'd suggest includes somewhere above 95% + of all reasoning (where possible)