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Comment by Cypher | Hacker News Reader

Skepticism requires an unlimited amount of work for verifying a chain of evidence, if one piece is wrong then the whole body of data could be unless. Not easy for a data journalist to standup and get a new set of data when there's a time constraint.

Even an average person isn't even going to spend the morning verifying a weather report demanding more data for an accurate prediction. Instead they'll elect individuals which they trust. And it's unfortunate that they're either wrong, corrupted or exploited.

Even today I can't even watch my old favorite youtubers without being pitched some VPN, Web hosting or audiobook service. I feel the people I trust for entertainment have been compromised to say and act a certain way to make some corporate CEO happy who is manipulate numbers so some data journalist can come to some incorrect conclusion about the world and award him some approval rating.

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> Skepticism requires an unlimited amount of work for verifying a chain of evidence, if one piece is wrong then the whole body of data could be unless. Not easy for a data journalist to standup and get a new set of data when there's a time constraint.

In theory, perhaps, but not in practice. In practice, the bar is usually at two standards:

1. at least two uncorrelated/independent sources of truth say the same thing (replication)

2. peer review turns up no clear flaws in methodology

Then your conclusions are good enough for most people. You will not be able to completely rule out the possibility of an incomplete understanding or a theory that is mostly right and a little wrong, but the vast majority of untrustworthy science in the news fails at basic diligence, not at "it looks right to the best of our knowledge but turned out wrong."

> "the vast majority of untrustworthy science in the news fails at basic diligence"

I totally agree. I think it's due to our times, because many people just replace religious certainties (which seem to make a come-back this days btw) by scientific certitudes. Yet it's not how science works...

> "it looks right to the best of our knowledge but turned out wrong."

It's the underlying of scientific process and it needs to be repeated until integrated :) With that in mind, you can hold opinions (because it's useful in life ^^) while managing to change your own mind if a better explanation appears (even if no one is immune to confirmation bias but we can try, can we ?)

Skepticism is the application of the null hypothesis. Building from nothing other than observables we can establish a system of order where in testable statements can be made to assert logical arguments to establish a set a first order principles via a criteria on true or false evaluations. This is the foundation of science and mathematics. To state:

>Skepticism requires an unlimited amount of work for verifying a chain of evidence

Is an equivocation that any statement that is attempted via conjecture and criticism is impossible. However, you are using a machine built entirely on those principles to communicate the idea that logical foundations are impossible. Congrats. You have won today's irony top score.

A lot of data journalism isn’t necessarily done on deadline, and when it involves public data (e.g. government records), oftentimes the resulting story is about how the data is wrong or insufficient.

Skepticism by definition requires no amount of work. What you are describing is the action of taking a position, or wanting to take a position be it for or against.

> Not easy for a data journalist to standup and get a new set of data when there's a time constraint.

Doing that is actively trying not to be a skeptic. A skeptic would wait for the party making the claim to present the set of data validating the position.

Now, I do not now if the default position in the media should be skepticism, but your misrepresentation of it makes me wonder if you are confusing what being a skeptic means and maybe that is why you find it so troublesome?

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