Comment by s_q_b | Hacker News Reader

Comment by s_q_b | Hacker News Reader

First, I don't understand why rapid feedback is bad. Communication adapts to new mediums all the time, and academia goes with it. The arXiv pre-print system is a great example of a field adapting well to a new technology.

Secondly, addressing the article's main point, I'm being told that social media comments about their studies are so traumatic and detrimental that they leave their careers. That's a problem with the researcher's ability to handle digital hate mail. Doctors, lawyers, dentists, and veterinarians all get massive amounts of digital hate mail.

Finally, after the failure to replicate studies, "self-appointed data police" and "methodological terrorism"[0] sound like exactly what the field needs.

[0] I have to say, only an incredibly insular community could come up with such an insensitive name. Checking your methods is not terrorism. Someone doing preliminary reviews on research data is not terrorism. To compare data critics to terrorists both insults the victims of actual terrorism, and dilutes the definition of the term so far as to be almost meaningless. They may as well call them "Methodological Nazis."

    only an incredibly insular community

Or a community that has had previous success with adversarial labelling.

Ahh.. I forgot which field with which we're dealing.

However, I do like the ring of it. Instead of Data Scientist, I think my new title will be Senior Methodological Terrorist.

What about this resume/cv:

  Junior Open Data Vexationer(2008-2010)
  Associate Shameless Little Replication Bully (2010-2012)
  Lead Methodological Harasser  (2012-2015)
  Senior Methodological Terrorist (2015-2016)
  Chief Research Parasite (2016-Current)

All those terms have really been used to label people trying to get psych and medical research up to pretty minimal scientific standards. It is really telling about the kind of immature high school mentality that pervades those fields.

> I don't understand why rapid feedback is bad

She doesn't say rapid feedback is bad. She says online personal attacks and abuse are bad.

You are falling for a classic argumentative attack. Everyone agrees "abuse" (e.g. beating your wife) is bad, so Fisk just redefines "abuse" to mean "earnest, blunt, non-sugar-coated feedback" but you keep on using the connotations of the real definition.

Where can I find the redefinition?

In Fisk's statement. Unless she is actually referring to wife beating or something similar, which would be very confusing in context.

Like wyager said, she takes a term that usually applies to real, undeniable harm then applies it without evidence of equivalence to something controversial. She uses the same word, though. This is so reducing (controversial thing here) is equivalent to reducing "abuse." This is to setup the passive-aggressive (aka SJW) defense where anyone arguing against the controversial claim must also be arguing for "abuse." They can then side-track the discussion by accusing those that disagree of not caring about stopping "abuse" or being an abuse "apologist." You can insert any negative claim related to social justice into that construct and the setup still works on many readers regardless of logical claims of their opponent.

It's a rhetorical device that relies on readers being fooled into the equivalence of what practice the sophist wants to go away and some form of harm. There's no equivalence, though. It's just rhetoric to obscure their actual argument that's probably indefensible or just weaker to rational people. The author of the counterpoint shows that nicely by illustrating what the actual critiques were with evidence, showing the author that was griping had a personal stake in that evidence not coming out, and was just using sophistry to preserve preferred status quo and her career.

Do you understand the technique now? I can provide more links to disinformation tactics in general or the ones preferred by manufactured-harm subset commonly called SJW's if you need.

Funny, I don't even see the word "abuse" in Fiske's article.

I was generalizing it into one word that's a superset of all the others. Probably should've put it in parentheses or something. My bad. Here's her words that she uses to describe any critiques people have been doing:

"unfiltered trash-talk" "unmoderated attacks" "sheer adversarial viciousness" "methodological terrorism" "ad hominem smear tactics" "dangerous minority trend"

That's just first two paragraphs. All of these are verbal equivalence to "abuse" or "harm" that gives the perception that whatever was going on is something bad with no rhyme or reason and needs to stop. Because who could possibly argue with her if they were supporting "smear tactics," "trash-talk," and some kind of "terrorism?"

In reality, a number of scientists applied the principles of fact-checking and replication to a lot of work, including hers. The work failed these. They reported failures to use scientific method. Her side is resisting. Instead of addressing methodological failures, she instead calls it all trash-talk or terrorism while saying she can't or won't give examples of either the [methodological] terrorist attacks or "victims" of that abuse. Everyone should instead just keep doing things the broken way that made her career and only question things in the channels that proliferated these problems and that people like her control. Arguing against that is supporting "trash-talk," "attacks," "smear tactics," and "terrorism" coming from a "dangerous minority." Typical, SJW sophistry.

wyager actually introduced the word. You then said that Fiske used the term. I don't see the term anywhere in Gelman's article.

In fact, Gelman uses the term in a comment on the linked page:

>Frederic:

>I’m as bothered by anyone by trolls etc., and I’d’ve had no problem if Fiske had written an article about trolls, abuse of communication channels, etc. (ideally with some examples). But this has nothing to do with replication. These are two unrelated topics! What Fiske seems to be doing is conflating the replication movement, which she doesn’t like, with all sorts of “terroristic” behaviors which none of us like. I’d prefer for Fiske to write two articles, then I could say I agree with her article about bad behavior and I disagree with her argument about scientific criticism.

Gelman has lots of valid points. I just didn't see any real discussion on abuse...anywhere...and was wondering what was being discussed in regards to using and redefining the word.

I don't understand what methodological terrorism is, but I do see ad hominem arguments use. The words really should be defined somewhere for use to read, if they are going to be published. Also, examples of exactly what she is talking about would be really useful.

[We are in the thread about people just making shit up and publishing it, right?]

"I just didn't see any real discussion on abuse...anywhere...and was wondering what was being discussed in regards to using and redefining the word."

"[We are in the thread about people just making shit up and publishing it, right?]"

I already corrected that and you're still focused on the use of the word instead of the tactics we're saying Fiske (and others) used. The word was a tiny point in that which I already owned up to as a mistake or missing clarification.

What's your position on the characterization by Fiske of anyone that disagrees with her or doesn't use channels people like her control to post criticisms as (all the negative connotations like "smear tactics" or "terrorists" here)? And do you agree that scientists should only be allowed to do what established names in academia say (status quo) and be automatically labeled as supporting the same, negative things for any form of dissent? Or publish dissent however they choose so long as there's evidence like in the counterpoint?

I think people should be able to publish whatever they'd like. Honestly, I don't fully follow Fiske's argument. There are too many undefined phrases and an explicit unwillingness to use any examples.

I'd believe many engage in ad hominem arguments and abuse. I'd also believe that many engage in arguments of authority. I'd even believe that possibly most people who call themselves scientists make those arguments from time to time.

The thing about ad hominem and arguments from authority is that they are extremely easy to defeat. One simply needs to point out what is happening and continue going.

Good answer!

> wyager actually introduced the word.

No I didn't, the person above me did.

But it's true, Fisk didn't redefine this particular word, just some other ones (like "terrorism"). My mistake, I shouldn't have assumed the guy above me was correct.

Yep, you're right.

What about "earnest, blunt, non-sugar-coated feedback" that is useless, uninformed, and counterproductive to researchers? I was under the impression that that was the concern here.

Just because someone says something non-sugar-coated doesn't mean it has any truth or value to it. In my experience, a lot of the people who publicly congratulate themselves on never pulling any punches and telling it like it is and keeping it real, etc., aren't motivated because they feel like they have valuable feedback to offer (they usually don't), but rather it's just a way to act out and maintain a tough-guy public persona that they want everyone to believe in.

I'm 100% in favor of public peer review, I just question the value of stereotypical Linus Torvalds-style "I'm just telling it like it is, you idiot" feedback that some people fetishize in these parts. The best course of action here is by definition whatever leads to more and better research, with whatever the appropriate amount of public and private peer review is that leads to that outcome.

Just ignore poor or improper feedback. That's pretty much what all other scientists do.

> Linus Torvalds-style "I'm just telling it like it is, you idiot" feedback

Torvalds never starts out that way, and if you look at any given episode where he's shown to have done this, the historical commentary will show Torvalds trying to politely educate the other party, and the other party just not getting it (often wilfully).

As for fetishising it, I've never seen anyone here on HN laud Torvalds for doing that; quite the opposite, it's only ever brought up to denigrate him. Ironically, de Raadt's behaviour around OpenBSD does get fetishised by some around here. I've never really understood why de Raadt gets a reasonable amount of respect for that behaviour whilst Torvalds is a pariah for it here on HN.

That caused a lot of pshycological damage.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bric...

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