Why “Trusting the Science” Is Complicated
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The only time it really stops working is if people start treating it as doctrine, and demanding that you accept it on faith, and take any questions as evidence that you are an enemy of science. If anything destroys science, it is this line of reasoning.
Skepticism does not require a degree or a license from the government. The only intellectually honest thing is to admit to yourself that you do not know until you are convinced otherwise. Whether other people say they are convinced is honestly quite irrelevant.
I hate to invoke Godwin's law, but business people loved Hitler all around the world right up until his propaganda machine shut out their influence and he started invading the other half of their markets and supply chains. If the people running our country have learned anything from history they will quit encouraging irrationality and gullibility some time before the curtains close, so to speak.
it seems to be a reliable indicator that the person expressing it is a US citizen or at least resident in the US.
Isn't it debilitating to live in a place suffused with this opinion? Does it become self-fulfilling?
And to answer the question: the government is composed of people like you; critical thinking helps the government see how to improve society just as it helps you to improve your own life and prevent you from falling for scams.
It's universal knowledge; you will hear it whether you are talking to a conservative christian or a communist, although the particular culturally appropriate way of phrasing it will change. You will even hear it from comfortable urban professionals, although couched in a way that makes it look like they're not excessively upset about it.
I have heard a lot of opinions, some of them bonkers, but there is one I have never heard; I challenge you to find one single American who believes that Iraq was invaded due to popular demand.
I seem to recall it being fairly popular among the public back when it was proposed and first carried out, because there was a pretty widespread belief that Saddam did still have WMDs, and that he was somehow linked to 9/11. Those were both wrong, and there were certainly people who were skeptical, but it did have somewhat popular support at the time.
"Days before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Maines told a London audience the band did not endorse the war and were "ashamed" of US President George W. Bush being from Texas. The remarks triggered boycotts in the US and backlash from fans." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicks)
I wouldn't expect either to be part of the Overton window, and both to be rather unhappy with current society. As for upper civil servants, corporations and the media, one has to suppose their interests are all aligned, as opposed to being in disagreement over various matters. Sounds like something you'd hear conservative christian or communist say. Someone unhappy with the current form of government who supposes there is a grand conspiracy preventing their ideal conservative or communist society from being realized. Instead of a majority of people not wanting such a society.
Both have a narrative of the world as being controlled by dark forces brainwashing people, instead of it being a complex, emergent structure from a messy history with nobody in control.
One of the 2 major political parties in the USA has pushed this opinion for as long as I’ve been alive. They deny federal government any opportunity to improve then point at government as an example of why it doesn’t improve peoples’ lives.
I hope other still-functioning governments learn from the institutional failures of the USA in the 1970s and 1980s so as to avoid following the same path.
We stop trying to ascribe malicious motives to their actions and try to have genuine conversation with them. If they aren't convinced after that then we have more work to do.
It's interesting how much time and effort is spent trying to win people over to another way of thinking or opinion.
People tend to assume that if they cannot prove P and cannot prove ¬P, then ¬P must be assumed to be true. This is of course not correct at all, and most propositions can be rephrased so that Q=¬P and ¬Q=P.
If there is no evidence either way, then neither P nor ¬P is supported, and we should remain uncertain.
We're not discussing skepticism of nematode behavior, but of the politicization of a pandemic, which makes it opinion. You can't reason with someone out of an opinion who didn't reason themselves into it to begin with.
Rational bad actors abuse this notion that they have the right to play, to be heard, to have a discourse; when in reality they're repeating the same disinformation ad nausea to profit for themselves.
I find it easy to imagine and indeed can pinpoint many observed instances. A lot of "I'm not saying anything, I'm just asking questions" ARE in fact saying something, quite strongly, with minds made up and no curiosity or eagerness to learn, but are being disingenuous. It's not skepticism: they are not awaiting or hoping for data or facts or claims, rational discourse or healthy discussion; their mind is not open to change; they have an objective, they are aiming to persuade and recruit, or sow doubt. To the point that when a user made an innocuous comment in this thread and ended it with "not a criticism, just an observation:)" we all assumed he was in fact disingenuous and was criticizing, because that's the current (unfortunate!) norm for that form of statement.
A lot of cult-like institutions or groups understand, consciously or subconsciously, that their views are not agreed upon and appreciated. So they have devised disingenuous ways of promoting them. From naming ("Discovery Institute" is hard-core creationists, "National Vaccine Information Center" is hard-core anti-vaxx group etc), to appearances (websites are full of stock photos of people in white lab coats and charts, to appear science-y), to discourse (again, the frequent, "I'm not SAYING anything, I'm just ASKING"; "I'm not AGAINST vaccines, I just have QUESTIONS on the timing" - all pulled from distributed talking points),disingenuous skepticism has become the norm, I'm sad to say... and thus trivial to imagine.
edit: All forms of discussion like this ultimately converge to definitions; so to be explicit and hopefully drive us to point of mutual understanding, to me, skepticism implies seeking facts, data, truth; openness to change your mind; genuine looking for mutual objective truth and agreement. As such, there's disingenuous skepticism aplenty in this world of ours :-/
Their _skepticism_ is likely genuine and sincere, but their _engagement_ is not in good faith and is disingenuous.
One problem, I think, is that it the communities are self selecting. Skeptics who engage in good faith on well understood topics become converts; all who remain over time in the community of skeptics are those who do not engage in good faith.
It's a worthwhile question to ask why they don't engage in good faith, which I think has a more complicated answer than either straightforward ignorance or malice.
It is like fighting a squid. The moment you've caught it by one of the tentacles it slaps at you with the other 7 while the first 1 slips away.
And what do you do if the answer is "No amount of evidence"?
We asked her to take a pic of her oximeter reading and send it to us - it read 91. We told her she should get to a hospital where they could give her some oxygen, but she refuses (doesn't want to be in "the system"). She is the poster child for disingenuous skepticism and it's impossible to have a "genuine conversation" with her because she's so infected with conspiracy theories (including the Q conspiracy).
She doesn't seem at all disingenuous to me, what actions make you doubt her genuinity? To me it sounds like she may have some mental health issues to work out and that is an entirely different beast than this conversation.
Why are we so upset when people decide to refuse treatment?
The anecdotal evidence you gave (hospital abuse) is an outlier, not a norm.
A better question is, why wouldn't you be upset when a family member refuses life saving treatment, rationalized by disinformation?
Because unless I'm the parents of a minor child, it's ultimately not my decision.
Seems strange to be called "anti-vax" and, presumably, "anti-science" for questioning the logic in mass vaccinating with an experimental vaccine, built with experimental technologies, which since its deployment has been demonstrated through various data to be a spectacular failure in terms of safety and efficacy.
What about just questioning the policies themselves?
What about the fact that from where I'm sitting there's zero "science" supporting the use of cloth masks, yet they're attack vector numero uno when it comes to bifurcating the populace into angels and demons?
Back to basics: The government doesn't care about you. Any interventions are likely to sacrifice long term success for short term success.
Many scientists and doctors out there are obviously either completely uninterested in the truth or just toadies for the elite, if what you're describing is correct.
If so, they don't deserve our respect, our trust, or even our attention.
As an example, take covid antibody studies. It is interesting and useful to learn how covid vaccines elicit antibody production. OTOH, the immune system is not limited to antibodies. Extrapolating long-term immunity conclusions from an antibody study is unwarranted. Alas, the scientists performing antibody studies don't have the resources to perform long term studies. This creates an over-abundence of antibody studies, which are cheap and likely to produce measurable results. These studies are then used as incontrovertible evidence that 'science says' there is no such thing as natural immunity, and even if it were, vaccines are much better.
Probably true. But “scientists who seek political power” is a different set. See, Fauci
Totally agree. What's the number one rule of crisis management? Keep people calm. I cannot name a single "expert" who has attempted to calm people at all. In fact most have done the exact opposite. They have intentionally provoked fear.
If these people wanted respect, trust and attention they'd go out of their way to clearly articulate the risks of covid for each population group. Instead they act as if covid is a death sentence for anybody. They would actively stamp out misinformation like "4% kill rate" and "25% of people get long covid". They'd clearly frame "hospitals full" with the context of how busy an ICU is during normal times. They'd spend large chunks of their time calming parents who are fearful for their children.
More important, they'd offer hope and work to instill courage and bravery in people. They'd tell people what they can do to minimize symptoms. They'd remind people virtually everybody recovers and many don't even know they had it. They'd give people ways to meaningfully contribute "to the cause" within their communities.
Instead they've done nothing but crank up the fear factor and freaked the absolute shit out of people. They'd literally knocked screws loose from people I used to regard as level headed, rational people. And they keep at it. Never offering positive messaging. Never offering hope. Never communicating good news. Never calming people down.
Of course if they did any of what I described, I'd imagine most people wouldn't have accepted any of these mitigation measures at all. Because I believe a rational individual looking at the data would see almost none of what we've done over the past year and a half makes a single ounce of sense at all. The cynic in me says that is exactly why they don't do what I describe... cranking up the fear is the only way to sell lockdowns, masks, vaccine mandates, border closures, and whatever other human rights crushing crap these people want to shove down our mouths.
These "experts" are some of the most vile individuals I can think of. They don't deserve an ounce of respect, trust or attention.
That's odd, because here are some excerpts from President Biden's remarks on covid [1].
"THE PRESIDENT: Good evening, my fellow Americans. I want to talk to you about where we are in the battle against COVID-19, the progress we’ve made, and the work we have left to do.
And it starts with understanding this: Even as the Delta variant 19 [sic] has — COVID-19 — has been hitting this country hard, we have the tools to combat the virus, if we can come together as a country and use those tools.
If we raise our vaccination rate, protect ourselves and others with masking and expanded testing, and identify people who are infected, we can and we will turn the tide on COVID-19.
...
So, let me speak to you directly. Let me speak to you directly to help ease some of your worries.
...
We know that if schools follow the science and implement the safety measures — like testing, masking, adequate ventilation systems that we provided the money for, social distancing, and vaccinations — then children can be safe from COVID-19 in schools."
And here are some from a recent press briefing [2] by the COVID response team:
"MR. ZIENTS: Good afternoon. Thanks for joining us. In a moment, I’ll turn to Drs. Walensky, Fauci, and Murthy.
I’ll start by discussing the progress we’re making on testing, vaccination, and boosters — three critical parts of the President’s six-point plan to accelerate our path out of the pandemic.
First, testing: In the past few months, testing has increased, particularly at-home testing — a convenient option that came to market earlier this year.
To meet this increased demand, the President’s plan ramps up both the availability of tests and access to free testing. In just a matter of weeks, we’ve made significant progress on both fronts.
...
I’ll close with this: We’ve made tremendous progress over the past eight months, and we are executing well against the President’s six-point plan. We’re on the right track, but we need everyone to do their part."
The experts are saying "stay strong and we'll get through this". Meanwhile you are talking about how wearing a piece of cloth on your face is "human rights crushing crap" like we're one step away from the death camps. How is that calming anyone down? And who exactly do you mean when you say "them" anyway? It's a really worrying sign when "they" are always doing all these nefarious things just to frighten and control people. Do you know many in your life who acts that way? If not, why do you imagine that "they" are any different from the people you know? Where do you think "they" live? What do "they" want to do when "they" get home from work today? Do you think "they" read to their children before "they" tuck them in at night?
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...
[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/202...
It doesn’t highlight anything. It’s just doomsday nonsense and is yet another example of exactly what I’m talking about.
Covid isn’t space aids. It’s a damn respiratory virus. The vast majority who get it recover. It’s a non event for kids. These are facts backed by solid data. President didn’t state that at all.
And gaslighting about a “piece of cloth” is another example. It’s a “piece of cloth” that doesn’t do a damn thing besides divide people. Masks should never have been raised to the pedestal they were raised to. It’s people acting like they have some kind of moral high ground when they occupy anything but.
No
If you've ever been pregnant or had a pregnant wife, you'd know that the list of medications which they can avail themselves of during pregnancy is tiny. This is because due to ethical concerns, testing pharmaceuticals on pregnant women is almost never done. So doctors tell pregnant women to never take most things while pregnant.
The studies for the covid vaccines intentionally excluded pregnant women from their cohorts, for the same reason.
Therefore, by the definition of unsafe that we've used for generations of medical advice, the vaccines are unsafe for pregnant women. No study on pregnancy? Not safe.
And yet, pregnant women are recommended the vaccine every day.
That's just one among many.
As for failure, that's blindingly obvious at this point. If you disagree, please let me know how your view changes as you prepare for your fourth booster.
You are ignoring the difference between a disease which is highly contagious (therefore difficult to avoid) versus pregnancy complications that are easy to avoid because they aren’t contagious diseases.
You are also projecting typical ethical concerns around medical research on pregnant women and the mounting body of evidence that COVID vaccines are safe for women who get pregnant after vaccination. It turns out it is easy to study this after billions of doses are administered. The CDC is currently studying the effects of these vaccines on pregnancy: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/recommend...
“That’s just one among many”
Perhaps some of the “many” might stand up to scrutiny…
No, I am not. I am using the same definition of "safe" as doctors have for pregnant women for several generations, at least 60 years. Untested on pregnant women == unsafe for pregnant women and their babies. Period.
Of course, it's possible that the covid vaccines are safe for pregnant women and their babies. It's also possible that all the various pharmaceuticals that women are told not to take are safe too! The risk is unknown, as you state, but where you're mistaken is that the precautionary principle for pregnant women is taken much more extremely, for good reason. So to medical doctors, unknown is equivalent to unsafe, for pregnant women.
Sure, CDC is studying the effects now--they're studying it unethically on human experimental subjects in the general population, who have been mislead into thinking that the vaccines are safe for pregnant women--a total lie.
What do you mean by "spectacular failure"? I live in Romania, one of the least vaccinated countries in the EU (together with Bulgaria) and we're now in the middle of a very, very bad Covid wave because of the low vaccination rates. The other EU countries don't go through the same thing as us. I don't call the vaccine a "spectacular failure" in terms of safety and efficacy, quite the contrary, it demonstrates that it has been doing its job pretty well.
Meanwhile, the most vocal vaccine skeptics are catching and dying from the virus with such frequency that there are multiple subreddits devoted to their stories.
The 3 vaccines authorized / approved in the USA all significantly reduce the probability of severe disease, the duration of contagiousness, and the magnitude of contagiousness.
I would agree that severe disease is already exceedingly rare among that population, but the contagiousness issue is more of a trade off of multiple factors.
Children have a very low risk of COVID complications, but the risk of vaccine complications is even lower.
> Conclusions
> Myocarditis (or pericarditis or myopericarditis) from primary COVID19 infection occurred at a rate as high as 450 per million in young males. Young males infected with the virus are up 6 times more likely to develop myocarditis as those who have received the vaccine.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.23.21260998v...
I sorta caught COVID from my kid and stuff. She sat in a class for 3 days with another infected child whose parents knew the child was infected but who also did not have an adequate plan in place to care for him during the day. It was a complete shitshow, and I permanently lost most of my sense of smell.
But thanks for your information.
Wat.
There are 6 major vaccines which are approved for use in most countries. Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, J&J, AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, Sputnik. Most are extremely safe (obviously risks are non-zero, but those risks are orders of magnitudes better than the effects of the disease). Some are extremely effective (at reducing severe disease and/or reducing the spread of disease), at least for the first several months. Some are even very effective against a variant that didn’t present until after development and testing were done. Only 2 are mRNA based, which I presume is what you mean by “experimental”. These vaccines have been administered in billions of doses and side effects have been monitored for over a year. Your statements completely overstate the facts as observed.
Who is calling you these things? Are they government epidemiologists or just randos on the internet? If the latter, then why do you care what they call you? Opinions are like models: they are all imperfect and only some are useful.
Questioning policies is fine, but you have to recognize that you aren’t the only person espousing your position. There is a seemingly endless stream of opinions about how policies should be changed, so your voice is grouped together with other voices (some louder, some uninformed, some come with death threats, some come with violence).
And it doesn’t help your case when you discount the actual scientific evidence that masks (even some cloth masks) do a non-zero amount of intervention. Never mind the fact that cloth masks are available, cheap, safe, and visible. You may not agree with these qualities, but you aren’t (I’m going out on a limb here) a government official charged with maintaining public health. Policy makers have to factor in things like effectiveness, cost, ubiquity, ease of implementation, effectiveness, and how it affects public order. If you aren’t applying all of these in your calculus, then you are just complaining without suggesting a viable solution.
Well yeah, that is hilariously bad anti-science. There's nothing scientific to support any of that.
I'd like to define what these terms mean. Right now, I think the mainstream technique is anyone who questions vax/mask/science gets the anti- prefix.
It opens up for these fringe movements is to present themselves as scientific, since they too have papers they can point to, and arguments that mirror the form of the scientific establishment.
The way to beat them is to be very clear about the limitations of science, and stop trying to misrepresent it as having a larger degree of certainty than it has. Science is demonstrably wrong sometimes, especially early research like the stuff that was circulating in the beginning of the C19-pandemic, and to make matters worse, a large part of science is dedicated to identifying instances where science is wrong.
That clashes with the official message is "trust the science" and makes devastating ammunition for undermining its credibility, especially nowadays when it is very easy to go back and check what claims were made in the past against which claims are made today.
Look, I didn't get vaccinated because I was told to by pharmaceutical companies. Those shady bastards are on TV all the time selling stuff that seems super sketchy.
ALSO, I didn't get vaccinated because I was told to by doctors; I've had enough experiences with them getting things wrong in what they tell you to do.
I got vaccinated because doctors and health professionals THEMSELVES got vaccinated without hesitation. Was lucky enough to see a good friend, a quasi-famous black doctor, get the jab on TV, which sealed it pretty quickly for me.
AFAICT, there aren't. Very small numbers have left (permanently or temporarily) jobs for that reason, whether fired, quit, or suspended. On the order of hundreds out of ~17 million health care workers covered by mandates.
Lots of political opponents have pointed to mass firings as hypothetical future consequences of mandate policies, and then reacted as if these hypothetical future outcomes were present reality.
There are 17 million employees in the healthcare industry as a whole, but so far it's a handful of healthcare systems that have announced this firing policy, primarily (but not exclusively) in NY and California, and an even smaller subset has actually gone through with firing people. Of course, even 1% of 17 million healthcare workers is 170,000 people, and even if 95% are vaccinated, that's still 8,500 people to be fired. And 95% is optimistic.
As to the claim that only hundreds have been fired, I'm not sure where you are getting your data. One healthcare provider in NY fired 1400 people[1]. 87% of New York's hospital workers are vaccinated and 64% of New York's general population are vaccinated.
So if the providers in extremely blue areas are faced with firing 13% of their healthcare workers, I'm a little skeptical that only hundreds will be fired, or that this is even a workable plan. But who knows, I don't think anyone has the full count for the nation at the moment. If you didn't just make it up, then please do share your source. More facts and less speculation are needed when discussing this issue.
[1] https://www.axios.com/new-york-northwell-health-vaccine-mand...
As of Sep. 28, CBN could find only 843. And, oh, look, they linked to https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/hospitals/how-many-employee...
Kaiser Permanente and Northwell Health were the largest with 1-2% of their workforces, although Kaiser's are on "administrative leave".
But right now you must be in one of the two fields: you are either an anti-vaxxer or you believe in science and will do everything your government says. There are no room for rational discussion about important issues anymore. You just choose your team and fight for it till death.
Also, some of these stats include nurses that are still registered but not currently working anywhere so it's unclear that their vaccination status is correctly recorded.
The scientific method is practiced by imperfect people with biases and external motivators. That is why thorough peer review is required (and sadly lacking).
There is certainly some of this happening as with every issue, but echo chambers can easily emerge and sustain themselves without the need for coordinated bad actors. I believe the larger issue is simply lack of education rather than bad guys doing bad things.
If we allow politicians to turn science into a dogma instead of an investigative process, progress will come to a grinding halt.
For flat earthers in particular this video sheds some light on why their way of thinking is harmful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44
To be extremely reductive, allowing false beliefs into one's web of beliefs corrupts it. This typically gives rise to a multitude of other false beliefs. Flat earthers almost never only believe one obviously false conspiracy theory. They become epistemically susceptible, and worse still, they tend to spread these awful ways of thinking with great zeal.
In the more general case, I recommend you learn about the ethics of belief. The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy page on the topic is a good starting point: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-belief/
Maybe someone can come along and answer your question in a more succinct yet equally (or ideally more) convincing way. This request that you commit several hours to educating yourself is the best I can do at this time.
And what's wrong with arguments against democracy? We are in a thread explicitly discussing questioning anything and everything and talking about the virtues of being averse to dogma. What if democracy is not as good as it gets? What if there's an alternative that is not authoritarianism?
I've tried this (by sharing data) with friends and family members - it doesn't work/matter. They simply dismiss the data as "fake news" and shift to a new argument. This is why I classify it as "disingenuous skepticism".
Their actions (anecdotally) are driven by culture and politics, not data.
You are right, simply presenting people with data doesn't work. If it did, you would never see a fat nurse, or a doctor who smokes, or... the list is endless.
pumaontheprowl's suggestion is to design a (thought) experiment that involves the skeptic. There are various ways to do this, but history is literally built on this exact phenomena. Getting people to change their mind on an issue requires that you have a real conversation with them. You can't just shove data in their face and see "See, look dummy you're wrong I'm right!" There are all sorts of people that do this for a living: helping people leave cults/white supremacy groups/etc.
And remember, the way most people are finding out about this "shared data" is via the media that just got done spending 4 years accusing trump of being a russian agent. So, they're biased or they're liars. Hence the skepticism.
I'd argue 40% of societies response to this pandemic is culture and politics. 30% is media fear mongering. 20% is intellectual error and 10% is actually disease mitigation.
Requiring fully vaccinated individuals to wear masks is culture & politics.
Shutting down outdoor restaurants is culture and politics
Casting moral shame on people who get covid is culture and politics
Saying it is totally okay to go to a BLM rally while not being able to attend a football game is culture and politics.
Closing the birthday card isle in the grocery store is culture and politics.
The list goes on and on...
In fact the very core of lockdowns is premised in culture and politics and not science. Science doesn't create policy. Human values do. For example places that place more emphasis on living life instead of protecting life were probably the first to drop restrictions.... a perfectly valid stance.
Science doesn't tell us what to do. It is merely a process for testing hypothesis in an attempt to get to the "truth" of something. That's all it does. Science didn't tell us to lockdown, it doesn't tell us to require vaccinated individuals to wear a mask, it doesn't tell us to shut down our borders, or any of that. All those decisions were driven by culture and politics.
Isn't this really asking "how do you have ideas that stand up to the Socratic method?"
Coordinated inauthentic ideas are not intended to withstand rigorous review. They are intended to tickle the limbic system and to get retweeted before the reader’s cognitive mind has a chance to weigh in. The author will shed that idea or identity and move to another. For this reason, they are also called a “disinformation firehouse”.
All these studies conducted around masks are being done in the heat of the moment in a highly politically charged environment. Releasing a study that says masks don't work will get the authors labeled as "anti-science" and probably destroy their careers. All the studies performed prior to this mess were inconclusive, at best.
Just because you disagree with somebody doesn't make that person anti-science and doesn't make them dangerous, "disingenuous" or "unauthentic". People have plenty of good reasons to call BS on almost all of our mitigations.
Descartes was excommunicated.
Semmelweis was mocked.
How you should approach anti-vax/anti-mask people is to consider that they may have a point.
But your FAITH in the science of your narrative precludes you.
From what I can see, good faith skepticism makes science sturdier, but in bad faith it seduces the less knowledgable and burns the time of the more knowledgeable.
On the flipside, most flat earthers don't seem to be arguing in bad faith.
There's malicious "I know what I'm saying is a lie / broken argument, but I'm willing to make it because my righteousness / beliefs justify winning." (Fixable with... nothing?)
But there's also ignorant "I don't understand the foundations of this information, and so arrive at an erroneous conclusion." (Fixable with education)
One of the failures of scientific proponents (especially pop scientific proponents) has been to treat the second group as synonymous with the first.
I live near glacier national park. In the 1990s, some climate model predicted the eponymous glacier would be gone by 2020. Signs around the parks' entrances were erected boldly stating this claim. In January of 2020, the signs were removed because the glaciers hadn't even shrunk.
If there were real scientific interest in climate change, there'd be some interest and funding in ascertaining why that prediction was proven incorrect. But there is no such study, no funding for it, no interest whatsoever.
The climate change alarmists have zero opposition in all major institutions. Anyone who says their models are bullshit, or who says maybe the Sun is having a larger impact on the climate than are GHGs, is ridiculed without their arguments even entertained. You belie this with your statement that any such skepticism is "bad faith".
When it comes to climate change in particular, a field that seeks to study an incredibly complex collection of phenomena, whose leading experts have raised blood-chilling alarmist calls for action for decades and many of whose forecasts have proven totally bunk, who study a system far more complex than even the economy (are economics skeptics bad-faith too?)... Well, if you think YOU have a lock on what's true, and everyone with varying opinions is an obvious quack or a shill, then I think it's you who doesn't understand science.
I'd love to have a look at the original publication that the USGS used when it decided to create those signs, but its buried so deep under partisan schadenfreude that I can't find it to even analyze it.
With respect to Greenhouse Gases: what's hard to understand about conservation of matter?
GHGs cause some warming; you can do lab experiments on flux and gas mixtures in identical glass containers to prove this.
The Biosphere (that is, the surface of the earth and all its organisms) has some essentially fixed amount of carbon distributed between critters, plants, soil, air, and dissolved in water. It's a closed system. When something dies and decomposes, it releases its carbon into the soil and atmosphere where it is endlessly recycled. Only in rare (and extremely slow) circumstances does the carbon get removed from the biosphere and put deep into the earth as coal, oil, or natural gas.
When you dig up carbon that is currently out of that cycle and put into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels you are adding additional carbon to the system. It has to go somewhere. Some of it will temporarily become plants (until they die, rot and release the carbon again), some of it will dissolve into the ocean and raise the acidity, and some of it will stay in the atmosphere and cause some warming.
This part of "climate change" is very simple to understand. The earth previously did just fine with a higher fixed amount of carbon in the biosphere, but it was a lot warmer, wetter, and humans weren't around.
Don't you and the guy you responded to want the same thing: answers from the scientific community? You can criticize the right wing news sources all you want... the existence of the signs saying the glaciers were going to disappear is pretty indisputable. Clearly, someone at some point had enough belief in that prophesy that they made a sign.
This is also why it's important to clarify what we mean by "global warming skeptic." Are we talking about someone that denies that human behavior creates greenhouse gases that warms the climate? Or are we talking about someone who views predictions about the specific effects of that warming on our environment on a particular time scale with great skepticism? These are two very different positions to take.
Yes, we can create an ideal lab "climate" and demonstrate some GHGs cause warming.
The global climate is much, much more complicated. What is the impact of GHG-caused warming on cloud formation? What is the impact of same on jetstreams? Chaos Theory was started as a result of the complexity of weather prediction, which is simply short-term climate forecasting. The two variables I mentioned are just two, and they are dizzingly complex to model. It is not as simple as "GHG++ == HEAT++".
Further, taking a step back: If we could agree on exactly how GHGs impact the global climate, then can we get a number on how much humans impact the climate at all? The way climate change alarmists seem to think, the climate would be absolutely static were it not for our industrial revolution. So what is it? If humans got GHGs to zero, how much less would the climate change? Are we responsible for 1% of overall change? 50%? 100%?
Pretending these are simple or obvious questions is absurd. I've read hundreds of papers on climate change. These topics never seem to come up. Rarely do climate scientists mention the sun, which seems to be treated like a static heat bulb in the sky that gives off an steady, constant flow of energy, which couldn't be further from the truth!
Even the name of the topic, Climate Change, describing it as some kind of problem in itself--if the climate were static it'd be a HUGE alarm! The climate has always changed.
Then a step back even further: The climate has changed throughout civilization and it appears that large-scale civilizations grow in population during periods of warming, and shrink (sometimes drastically), during periods of cooling. So how much warming is acceptable? It seems the goal is to get to zero change (lol) or to cooling. Why is that the necessarily best way?
The entire field is super-complex, and because of the political environment, even asking questions such as the above make it impossible to actually do science--only one view is acceptable.
The Climate is extremely complex, and will not be entirely understood in our lifetimes; but I’m not interested in litigating my way to a perfect climate model. I’ll leave that to climatologists or whatever.
I’ll state my policy position (the end result of whatever one’s understanding of the problem is anyway) and leave it at that:
My position is that mankind ought to follow what I was taught in scouts: “leave no trace”.
Return GHGs to preindustrial levels, control all other pollutants in a similarly strict sense. Work towards solving the problems we have with deforestation and destruction of habitats, etc. All while maintaining freedom of reproduction for everyone, and continuing to improve quality of life for humans everywhere. Not exactly an easy feat.
That world (the preindustrial world) changed according to its own whims and patterns, but it was beautiful and humans thrived in it.
Knowing that a much warmer planet would look different and likely be less hospitable makes me want to avoid that outcome; however I’ve made my peace with the high likelihood that I wont see “garden earth”. We’re working with a system we don’t understand against a timetable we can’t see while people make money every time they slow us down.
This position isn't really coherent on its own, because with enough time, it doesn't matter what we do: there won't be a trace of us left. So really, you need to say what you mean by "trace" and on what time scale. Your time scale can't be zero, because then we couldn't build anything. But it can't be arbitrarily long either, because then it ceases to be any kind of restraint at all.
In the very long term it would be awesome if our industrial systems emitted only manageable waste heat and the produced good, with all waste streams recycled or otherwise kept from contaminating the environment; but this is pure sci-fi utopian optimism on my part.
I didn't tell you what I believe. I was trying to communicate how y'all might be talking past one another.
If anything, teasing apart these positions (and the positions inbetween) is exactly the opposite of a spherical cow. Which seems to be exactly what you're saying. So it seems like you've completely misinterpreted my comment.
These statements are contradictory.
"Modelling the impact of solar variability on climate" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13646...)
"Climate change and solar variability: What's new under the sun?" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00128...)
"Significant impact of forcing uncertainty in a large ensemble of climate model simulations" (https://www.pnas.org/content/118/23/e2016549118.short)
"Has solar variability caused climate change that affected human culture?" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02731...)
"Do Models Underestimate the Solar Contribution to Recent Climate Change?" (https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/16/24/1520-0...)
Hell, Roy Spencer has made much of his career off blaming what climate change he admits exists on solar variability.
Seriously? How hard did you look? https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/08/us/glaciers-national-park-202...
Also, if you want a science source, Google scholar is your friend. This doesn't look like the original source, since it's from 2003, but it makes similar predictions. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/53/2/131/254976?...
> In the 1990s, some climate model predicted the eponymous glacier would be gone by 2020. Signs around the parks' entrances were erected boldly stating this claim. In January of 2020, the signs were removed because the glaciers hadn't even shrunk. [GP]
No, the source backed up the GP, because the prediction was that the glacier would be gone. Whether or not it shrank is secondary.
Except the same article explains how the glaciers have shrunk. It's not secondary, it's core to the FUD argument made.
A critical examination of the theory which produced the incorrect prediction seems to be missing. That's the point.
It's not reasonable to point to partial fulfillment of the claim; if that was the standard of evidence, a perpetual motion enthusiast could reasonably point out that they almost broke even.
From what I've understood, the reasonable arguments on either side boil down (heh) to the rate of change, because climate varies so much naturally and we seem to be accelerating it. If the rate is not what was predicted, that's a big deal and makes this failed prediction all the more relevant.
[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/08/us/glaciers-national-park...
[1] https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/09/fact-check-no-the...
[2] https://doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2003)053[0131:MCIGCI]2.0.C...
I really didn't, and I feel that you did not attempt to engage with a charitable interpretation of my argument.
I used climate change denial as an example, because there clearly are people that make those arguments in bad faith, for monetary compensation. The same was true during cigarette legislation. I made no all statement at any point.
> Well, if you think YOU have a lock on what's true, and everyone with varying opinions is an obvious quack or a shill, then I think it's you who doesn't understand science.
Dude are you arguing with me or a million other people?
"Between 1966 and 2005, Agassiz Glacier lost a third of its surface area. ... Between 1966 and 2005, Ahern Glacier lost 13 percent of its surface area." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_glaciers_in_Glacier_Na....))
Blackfoot and Jackson Glaciers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackfoot_Glacier#/media/File:...)?
Chaney Glacier (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaney_Glacier)?
Dixon Glacier (45%)? Whitecrow Glacier (47%)?
Anyway, here's the USGS on Glacier National Park: https://web.archive.org/web/20120511154502/http://www.nrmsc....
You may be interested in knowing that work on climate models has progressed significantly since the 1990s. Also that Glacier National Park does not have an eponymous glacier.
Bad faith actors exist but the bad faith label appears to be an overused and a lazy way of shutting down debate. Not everyone who was skeptical about the link between smoking and cancer worked for the tobacco companies or were addicted to smoking. How often are medicines we're told are safe taken off the market because it turns out they're not? Are people who were skeptical of that safety bad faith actors until they were proven correct?
Why are there "scientific" subjects for which skepticism automatically bad faith? What is the criteria for being able to question the mainstream dogma and still be considered arguing in good faith? The people who proposed the possibility of a lab leak were not long ago considered to be arguing in bad faith. How did those arguments one day suddenly stop being bad faith arguments?
I know you're asking this to demonstrate, but I'll answer anyways, because it's obvious: The elite who have very effectively captured the press, big tech, and the scientific institutions used their leverage to ensure that all such skepticism was "bad faith", even though it very clearly was not.
You can tell when someone is arguing in bad faith by the fact that he disagrees with The Science. Duh.
(I'm being sarcastic here, but that's what a frightening fraction of the population actually thinks.)
I would even say that the vast majority of people who argue that climate change is not real do not argue in bad faith, they really believe it. But in both of my examples there _are_ bad faith shills, and they poison the discourse.
Bad faith is when your external motives supersede your opinion on the topic. Good faith is engaging directly with the topic.
Another example:
If someone is arguing that abortion should be illegal because it is dangerous for the woman, and they believe this because a friend of theirs was injured in an abortion, or because they heard it on Fox news, they are making an argument in good faith. For whatever reason, they really believe in the risk to the health of the woman.
If someone is making the same argument, after understanding the statistics on abortion and childbirth, because they care about the life of the unborn child, they are making an argument in bad faith. Their feelings about the effects of abortion are motivating an argument about the safety of abortion.
I never said it was easy to distinguish - but clearly bad-faith skepticism exists. If you leave it be it will poison discourse. Engaging with and understanding the worldviews of people you are discussing with is expensive and it is painful if the person on the other side has no intention of engaging with your or even their own arguments.
There is another point when "skepticism" as a principle fails, and that is when it is being weaponized by political and/or financial interests. Climate change is the most obvious example with oil companies funding all sorts of quackery, derailments and misinformation (such as BP did by inventing the "individual carbon footprint" in the 70s, see https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sh...), but also the tobacco and alcohol industry - and in the last two years, COVID deniers who branded themselves "skepticists" only to renounce the most basic bits of societal solidarity such as wearing masks and getting a recommended vaccination.
Skepticism should always, always come with at least some provable (!) claims - for example, with COVID vaccines, the issues regarding AstraZeneca and blood clots. These claims can then be investigated and validated or disproven. The problem is that modern and/or "alternative" media simply takes skepticist claims and reports them as gospel either because they don't have journalists with a science background any more or (as is the case with OAN/Newsmax/Fox/Murdoch/Axel Springer) they follow their own/their owners' agenda.
The root cause at the bottom of weaponized skepticism is the truly horrible state of teaching and the attitude towards science in schools in most Western countries. "Creationism" should not be seen on any curriculum worth its name, the fact that students get ruthlessly bullied as nerds/know-it-alls/autists/<insert whatever label you were bullied with here> without consequences and that such behavior is culturally accepted (e.g. in "teenage movies" and sitcoms, where "nerds" are routinely portrayed in absurd cliches), the total lack of media education (aka what bias is, how it works, and what the pitfalls of modern mass media like clickbait, deceptive ads masked as journalism etc. are)... our societies are rotten from the core.
Weaponized anti-science attacks people with statements that sound credible at their level, and require higher level to understand the deception. This does not happen accidentally; it is constructed so on purpose. So the person with elementary-school knowledge reads the statement that seems to make sense from the elementary-school perspective (it does not contradict anything taught at elementary school), but a high-school students could see why it is completely wrong. So the person can only conclude: "as far as I can understand, it is correct... and there is this one guy saying that it is wrong, but his arguments I can't understand". Similarly, you target people with high-school knowledge with statements involving undergraduate-level deception, etc.
This is for me the most frustrating part of debating smart people who believe pseudoscience -- as far as they know (in my bubble that typically means undergraduate level of math, plus high-school level of everything else), the science often checks out. Someone who graduated in given area will be completely frustrated by hearing the "proof", because it contradicts many known and well-tested things... but to convince the person who is ignorant about it all (but is completely willing to trust his own Dunning-Kruger syndrome and Nassim Taleb's twitter over thousands of peer-reviewed papers), you need to hunt for the subtle error in the mathematical proof.
Indeed. However, basic media literacy training could help people to differentiate between quacks (Alex Jones, un-attributed opinions in social media share pics not grounded in any scientific facts), actual experts but not in a relevant field to a debate (e.g. a PhD in art history or psychology in a debate about the infectiousness of coronavirus), and actual experts (e.g. Christian Drosten, one of the discoverers of the first SARS Coronavirus).
A bit of common sense in media entities such as newspapers in TV stations - such as not giving quacks and non-relevant experts airtime and having scientific expertise on-call - would do the rest to further civilized debate.
This is true for the subset of "scientific professionals, devoting significant amounts of time to their field". That's not all of the public. That's not even all of most scientific disciplines.
The scientific method is perfect.
The scientific method as practiced by fallible and irrational humans is subject to starts and stops, groupthink and cargo culting, and politics ad nauseam.
The even more common case of "laypeople, with limited technical background knowledge, devoting limited amounts of time to understanding issues, who want to appear informed and intelligent about issues" is significantly more fraught with danger. And the source of most ineffective outcomes.
Nonsense. Nothing is perfect, especially nothing ever created by a human. The scientific method is the best we have developed, in my opinion, but it's not perfect. The scientific method itself was developed by "fallible and irrational humans". Even with the best of intentions and the utmost in effort, all humans are susceptible to fallibility and irrationality. You are, I am, everyone is.
The 3/4/5 right triangle is perfect. The perfect fifth in music is (tautologically) perfect. "p or not p" is perfect. Perhaps none of these things can be reproduced in the physical world in a perfect manner, but the concepts really are perfect. Anything in idea-space can in fact be perfect, and the scientific method lives in idea-space.
In the realm of perfection, there isn't really any difference between "developing" something and "discovering" it. Did we "develop" the scientific method or "discover" it? I think that's a meaningless distinction. It's the loop that describes how inductive reasoning is applied by limited observers to a structured universe. People were doing it before it was "developed".
> Perhaps none of these things can be reproduced in the physical world in a perfect manner, but the concepts really are perfect.
Ideas like these must be judged based on their actual real world performance, and not on the lofty promises of the ideologues that promote the ideas.
Luckily science doesn't require perfectly rational practitioners. It still works even if practiced human beings.
>The scientific method as practiced by fallible and irrational humans
This is giving me flashbacks to Catholic school :)
'Christ is perfect, his earthly church is not. Because the church consists of fallible human clergy and laity it is vulnerable to corruption, ambition, lust, and politics, oh the politics'
It's interesting to know that secular students get the same arguments just in defense of scientism instead of Christianity. All apologists sound alike.
Not a criticism, just interesting
Sorry I failed to communicate that more clearly!
That said, there is something to be said for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_analogy
The word "perfect" is problematic to me. It's ascribed to God to contrast with man, as most of us would agree that nothing we do is perfect. Using it implies the same religious status of being above man's foibles.
I like the word "useful" here, or "anti-fragile" in the original comment.
Further, I like defining context. Useful in what class of problems? For I don't think the scientific method is regarded as particularly useful in all domains. Consciousness and the subjective are valid realms of human experience worth dedicated inquiry, for which the scientific method seems woefully lacking.
The parent noticed this similarity because both are in the same business.
Religion is the result of evolutionary processes and like all evolutionary processes it changes slowly and is not perfect. D.S. Wilson's Darwin's Cathedral is the go-to book for this argument and contains a beautiful section that goes like this:
We look at a bird's wing and marvel that it is so wonderfully adapted for flying. But we do not scorn birds for not being able to fly faster than the speed of sound. Their wings never required that to be successful in their evolutionary niches. Why do we look at religion which is also a marvel of adaptation for helping humans live together and get mad at it that it has not brought about world peace? World peace or perfection were never required for them to be successful in their evolutionary niches.
My point is that the central dogma of science is to be skeptical of existing thought and to update the model. The central dogma of most religions is to preserve tradition and be skeptical of challenges to existing thought.
An inherent conservatism avoids a lot of weird, faddish behavior.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2011-12&ve...
>Is the scientific method perfect though? Isn't it the result of the same fallible human minds that make it's implementation inherently flawed as well?
Maybe the scientific method is not perfect, but itself is still open to improvement in fundamental ways. This is more interesting to me than debates about ancient Judaean fig tree parables.
But in case you're curious! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursing_the_fig_tree
Another example is the discovery of the empty tomb by Mary Magdalene and possibly some other women. At the time women were considered to be more untrustworthy, so the argument was that if the story was fabricated, surely the author would have decided to make the empty tomb discovered by a group of men since it would have been viewed by contemporary readers that this (already implausible) story was coming from a more trustworthy source.
Of course, the most prominent example is the crucifixion itself, since crucifixion was reserved for traitors and the lowest criminals. If you're trying to argue that this man was the Son of God, why write a story in which at the climax he is executed as a despised criminal?
(1) Fig trees bear a type of pre-fruit. If that pre-fruit isn't there in the earlier season, then you know it won't bear any fruit in the final season.
(2) It's super obvious from the context that the fig is a metaphor for Israel. The temple system hasn't been bearing fruit because the Pharisees/scribes running it have so misinterpreted God that they will end up killing his Son. This is a foreshadowing of the destruction of the temple sacrificial system (begun in ~32 AD when Jesus died, finalized with the temple's destruction around 70 AD, never to be rebuilt again because the Muslims have built dome of the rock there now).
What it probably was is a representation of one of Jesus’ goals for his time here. The Israelites were being their usual disobedient selves as they always have been. Instead, the job of spreading the gospel has been relegated to the gentiles, since the Israelites were not producing fruit…ie spreading the gospel, following the law, etc.
At the present time, AD, we are in the age of the church…where the gentiles are the ones working. Israel won’t be back to being the focus until sometime in the future. Thus that situation could be an allegory for what was going to happen.
The story of the fig tree takes place within a Markan intercalation. Jesus’s entrance into and cleansing of the temple is sandwiched between the cursing of the fig tree and the observation that the fig tree has withered. Edwards’ central thesis is that “the middle story nearly always provides the key to the theological purpose of the sandwich.” The fig tree is best interpreted through the lens of the temple.
In the middle of the cleansing of the temple, Jesus declares “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers” (Mark 11:17, NRSV). The quotation is from Isa 56:7, which takes place amidst an eschatological vision of the covenant being extended to Gentiles. The failure of the second temple to adequately address Isaiah’s vision suggests that it is not the ultimate fulfillment of Isaiah’s promise. The phrase “den of robbers” comes from Jer 7:11. Kirk comments that word den is “aptly chosen to represent the practice of a people who see the temple as a place of safety to which they can flee after committing various forms of injustice in other spheres.” Thus, the leaders who are in the temple are not merely condemned for their practices in the temple, but for the way in which they assume participation in the temple system guarantees their forgiveness and safety regardless of their unjust actions elsewhere. They are not the sort of people Isaiah commended, who “maintain justice, and do what is right” (Isa 56:1) but rather seek their own profit and work to kill the Messiah (Mark 11:18).
This is why Jesus’ teaching in response to Peter’s comment in Mark 11:19 focuses on the destruction and replacement of the temple. His explanation in 11:20-25 focuses on prayer and how “this mountain” (i.e. the temple mount toward which they were heading) may be thrown into the sea. The use of the demonstrative pronoun τούτῳ in reference to the mountain indicates that Jesus was referring to this specific mountain, not offering a discourse on the general power of prayer. The mountain serves as a metonymy representing the entire temple system, which is to be overthrown; the fig tree serves as an additional symbol of how this temple system will be cursed. To further clarify, Jesus proposes an alternative pathway to fulfill the function that the temple performs. Rather than perform sacrifices in the temple to receive forgiveness from God, the disciples need only pray and forgive others. This alternative route to forgiveness indicates the temple system is no longer necessary.
Shortly following this sandwich is a story with parallel language that also illuminates the meaning of the passage: the parable of the tenants (Mark 12:1-11). The two words καιρὸς and καρπῶν are found in both passages. Few commentaries have focused on the use of the word καιρὸς, likely because it is such a common word. However, a closer look indicates that it is used in the gospels primarily in two ways: either as a common phrase (e.g. Ἐν ἐκείνῳ τῷ καιρῷ in Matt 12:1) or with an eschatological reference point (e.g. ἄχρι οὗ πληρωθῶσιν καιροὶ ἐθνῶν in Luke 21:24). Unlike the other synoptics, Mark never uses καιρὸς as a common phrase, which suggests that there may be greater linkages between passages where he uses the term. The placement of these words so closely to one another would likely raise more commentary if the fig tree was not already part of a Markan sandwich. Specifically, the themes raised in Mark 11:12-25 continue to be raised in the subsequent chapters in complex ways, such that the fig tree may be part of a “double intercalation” or triple decker sandwich.
Needless to say, I was very hungry after writing this paper...
Individual interpretations outside of a conciliar approach to Christianity (which started in the Book of Acts with the Counsel of Jerusalem, and continued into the Ecumenical Councils) has never resulted in anything but sectarianism and confusion.
At least from a perspective of consistency, readers may be interested in the perspective of conciliar, dogmatic foundations which cannot be changed in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
As regards for Mark 11: https://catenabible.com/mk/11 This website provides a range of commentaries which one can choose the earliest Church Fathers. However, blessed Theophylact is the most accessible commentary, largely based on St John Chrysostom, which is a harder read due to depth and language.
Cyril of Jerusalem AD 386 Remember at the time of the sin of Adam and Eve they clothed themselves—with what? Fig leaves. That was their first act after the fall. So now Jesus is making the same figure of the fig tree the very last of his wondrous signs. Just as he was headed toward the cross, he cursed the fig tree—not every fig tree, but that one alone for its symbolic significance—saying: “May no one ever eat fruit of you again.” In this way the curse laid upon Adam and Eve was being reversed. For they had clothed themselves with fig leaves.
St John Chrysostom: https://catenabible.com/com/5735de63ec4bd7c9723b9c17
Eastern Orthodox history of the canonization of scripture: http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/ntcanon_emergence.aspx
We build stuff out of trees, so I think he straight-up killed that tree to build a parable out of doing it. It was in his sovereignty to uproot what isn’t Good. In the very next paragraph, he does the same by throwing the merchants out of the temple.
His response to his apostles after they mention the dead tree is interesting. It seems like he ignores them to explain that if they pray about anything, it will happen if they believe it. I think this has something to do with 1) the role of faith in avoiding the tree’s fate so that they may be bear the fruit no matter how impossible it seems since it was “not the season for bearing fruit”, or 2) a picture of the reality of the Kingdom after the harvest, where the Good will have reign to move mountains.
Proofs blossom like trees from epistemic axioms. It’s confounding to believe “Christ is perfect”, but it does bear fruit, however confounding it is. Theology isn’t popularly known, but it’s there if you’re curious.
If you can make it through the paper, I'm happy to answer any further questions more specifically: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FLh6voQlieHMfUMckU83C2gNKjF...
That said, religion is based on the idea of worshiping a core idea, that shouldn't be contested, while science is based on the idea of contesting your core ideas, and never accepting pure belief. They are similar on the way that opposite things always have some similarity.
(Anyway, "the scientific method is perfect" is a very bad misquote of the OP. Believing your method is perfect is anti-scientific, you should be always on the hunt for a better method.)
:o
It's not a misquote, the comment I replied to really said that!
But the original is "the scientific method is anti-fragile, The harder you attack it, the sturdier it becomes." The comment you replied to threw a lot of nuance away when it was replaced by "perfect", and you threw the context that kept it reasonable away when you decided to compare with a similar phrase from anpother context. So, you both together made a misquote.
The method itself is simple. It is agnostic to bad faith implementations, to bad measurements, to completely fallacious conclusions, etc. It is intended to be iterative; individual errors wash out in time with enough new experiments.
What non-scientists learn from secondary or tertiary sources is irrelevant — those misunderstandings do not mean the Method “failed”.
It's good principles but really is less a method and more guiding principles.
That is the good and the bad of the scientific method. Implementing any one of the steps poorly and you've got crap studies which technically followed the scientific method but are ultimately "unscientific".
You get into the same sorts of arguments as a result. "Agile is pefect, but scrum sucks" "The scientific method is perfect, but nutrition survey studies suck".
The part that the scientific method lacks is determining what a good implementation looks like.
That seems like a feature, not a bug, to me. Descriptions of good implementations are likely subjective and vary based on what is being tested. It may even change over time as human knowledge improves.
> Nothing is perfect.
Meh. You are being unnecessarily pedantic here. If nothing is perfect then we wouldn’t have a word for it. It is so close to perfect for anything that humans have made that it is almost indistinguishable. In fact, language evolves with how people use it. The word perfect has another definition which very well applies here.
Fact is that The Method is resilient to the infallibility or maliciousness of scientists or charlatans. It has survived hundreds of years of charlatans running bad experiments, faked data, lots of oversimplified press coverage, etc and The Method itself is every bit as accurate and useful as it was when first formulated.
Your picking precise word definitions and expecting me to guess which ones your using and yet calling me pedantic. The irony.
The scientific method is not perfect, but the best method that we currently have.
In the "marketplace of ideas" practising the scientific method isn't antifragile in the face of such reckless certainty, it's downright fragile, because it's requires being the only side of the argument which will admit that its hypotheses aren't proven and some of its previous theories were wrong. Worse still, when the motivated sceptic has their "stopped clock" moment, practising the scientific method requires conceding they are right. The more science you practice, the more the opponent gets to point to the stuff you've conceded wasn't quite as expected.
Science might become sturdier in terms of better theory in response to attacks (where said attacks are accompanied by experimentation) but it's more vulnerable to losing trust
Here are just a few questions that expose the imperfection of the scientific method:
1. Does it require you to do experiments?
2. What P value threshold does the scientific method require?
3. What can it be applied to? Just the natural world? People? Economies? Artificial machines? Is AI research using the scientific method, or is it just engineering?
4. How should uncertainty be treated? Does the scientific method require the use of subjective or objective Bayesian theory, or does it not matter at all?
5. If you build a statistical model, are you allowed to use assumptions? If yes, how many and of what type? If there are no restrictions on it, what stops astrology being scientific?
6. Does the scientific method require pre-registration of studies? If it does, then does it mean every study before this became a common approach were unscientific? If not, then why are scientists encouraged to do it?
Etc.
Nothing destroy science, people can always opt to not believing in science, sometimes to their own peril.
> accept it on faith
I accept GNU/Linux on faith, having not analyzed its (public) code or build, because I trust that other people have done their best. And science is honestly an even easier decision.
> More than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments. Those are some of the telling figures that emerged from Nature's survey of 1,576 researchers who took a brief online questionnaire on reproducibility in research.
If 70% the GNU/Linux installations failed to boot, are you sure you'd take it on faith?
But it's not that 70% that matters, it's the stable branch OS that you're running. It's the science that has been there for decades, that is the backbone of that faith.
Sadly I see a lot of skepticism expressed that I think is just driving to a result people already believe.
If we no longer can trust the data, and don't have money to gather our own data... well, yes, then the only option is to admit that we don't know.
Science can be much cheaper, but nobody's interested in cheap science if it doesn't advance their careers.
It's similar to how NASA was obsessed with putting people into space for a long time. That's basically adding a gigantic expense to the exploration of space. When they decided to stop all that shit and use robots and probes and leave the human out of it, the science of exploring space became much cheaper (relatively) and we got far more out of it.
We now have a significant number of people who are rejecting the Covid vaccine because they're "skeptical" or "waiting for the evidence" or, the worst, they've "done their own research".
Hint: some random guy talking about this in his basement and putting the video up on YouTube is not "research".
The fact of the matter is that we simply can't be skeptical about everything and research everything. It's physically impossible. It's why we delegate authority to people and institutions who do actual research and have credibility. It's why I listen to the CDC about diseases and CERN when it comes to physics.
"Skepticism" these days is often a euphemism for confirmation bias.
How are you to convince a flat-Earther that the world is round? You can show photos of Earth taken from the moon, but clearly you have to trust NASA. You can show global flight traffic patterns that only make sense if the Earth is a sphere, but then you have to trust the FAA or wherever you're getting the airline data. You can dig up whatever evidence you want but at some point you'll need them to relinquish their skepticism and accept that these institutions are not part of a vast conspiracy to hide the shape of the Earth. Now apply that to vaccines, climate change, election results, economic theory and everything else that matters.
Institutions are imperfect. They have their own agendas and sometimes they happen to be wrong, and sometimes they flat out lie. If you only trust people that you like, you're liable to fall prey to charismatic charlatans. If you demand absolute certainty, you'll never get past a bedrock reality of cogito ergo sum. You have to make some sort of reasonable balance between trust and skepticism and accept that sometimes you'll be wrong.
But there is another factor here: trustworthiness or credibility.
If an institution or an individual is caught more than once being dishonest, putting their agenda above the truth, etc., should they be trusted again, or should anything they say or do be treated as a curiosity and thought experiment at best, until it is agreed with by someone credible and trustworthy?
There, I said it.
But it does.
In the end all evidence in the public sphere is second hand. If you don't already trust the scientists, there's an alternative universe of quacks who will give you what you're after.
"I injected the boys with fluid from cowpox victims, and they didn't get smallpox later."
"I don't believe you"
Turtles all the way down. At best we can say the quacks hold everyone else's evidence to a higher standard than their own.
I wonder where we'd be today in science/physics if the Catholic Church (the authority of the day) was successful in stopping Galileo Galilei, in 1615, from "spreading misinformation/disinformation" that the Earth circled the sun, and pushing back against the prevailing "science" of the day.
If he were alive in 2021 and pushing something that went against "current wisdom," of that magnitude, he would be banned from media, ridiculed, and cancelled.
It was a lesson I had thought the West had learned. It appears not. Censor and treat science as a religion at your (our) own peril.
The problem is, for every Galileo who is thinking against the mainstream understanding and right, there are millions of others who are outside the mainstream and wrong.
I don’t see how any society could function if it didn’t have a strict anti-bullshit filter, even if it may accidentally filter out geniuses who are ahead of their time.
Basically, I don’t think the BBC refusing to give time to flat earth era is cancel culture. Even if there’s a non-zero chance they were right all along
> Basically, I don’t think the BBC refusing to give time to flat earth era is cancel culture
No one is making that argument. Talk about a Wuhan lab leak and see if it doesn’t get a lot harder to speak from your position.
What does a non-zero chance that the Earth is flat look like? That we live in a simulation fooling us into thinking the empirical evidence is spherical? The evidence is overwhelming. There's not really any chance for it being correct, short of some odd metaphysics being the case.
Scientifically speaking, it's 100% wrong. Some beliefs are simply at odds with the vast empirical data, and can only be right if something else is producing false empirical results.
I don't see how science can ultimately function if you aren't allowed to push back and legitimately question things. All things. How many times have we, years or hundreds or thousands of years later, come back and disproved something that was a "scientifically proven" thing in the past? How would you accomplish that if you aren't allowed to talk about it? Relatively few things in science are actually indisputable, and I question even that. Some things that we think are indisputable today we might laugh at a thousand years from now, just like we laugh at some of the primitive thoughts our ancestors had, but were cutting edge for the day. Science is the pursuit of truth through rigorous testing and pushback. Eventually, if proven enough times, we call it a law. You have to be open to being completely wrong to actually obtain that level. Free speech is paramount to science, as well as society.
Society, as a whole, has worked fairly well without "bullshit filters." It's when you start putting them on that you start having issues, and often in areas that you didn't anticipate, because at that point you're acting on a belief and not a fact.
I highly recommend reading Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Here's an interview to give a preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JpQFVXGzUI
When has society ever not had bullshit filters? Intellectual debate goes both ways. The more your ideas go outside of the mainstream understanding of your peers, the more push back, ridiculing, and “cancelation” you will likely be subjected to by the scientific community
Very few geniuses are appreciated until after their death. scientific consensus takes time
I absolutely accept "I don't have to listen to you" as a bs filter. "That guy's nuts, I don't believe a thing he's saying." I don't accept "we won't allow others to listen to you question things" as a filter.
Can you demonstrate an understanding of the things you are questioning? Do you have reasonable arguments to support your questions? And most importantly, are you doing your questioning in good faith?
Worrying about "good faith" is a pointless waste of time. You don't know, and can't know with certainty, whether a question is in good faith. Your assessment of good faith is based on feelings and those don't have a scientific basis. If you reject or criticize a question on the basis of an actor's "good faith", then that actually makes you the one who is unscientific.
But the great thing about this is that this doesn't even matter. Bullshit questions will be easily refutable. And if they're not, it's because those doing the science haven't done a thorough enough job yet.
Ideas will be attacked relentlessly by society until proven useful. That’s how it all works
If you feel that your science won't stand without harassing heretics, perhaps it is the problem with the soundness of your science and not the folly of the heretics?
I think the problem was that it takes much more resources to react to the wrongthinkers while simultaneously selecting the most capable wrongdoers to the point that the wrongdoers are able to overthrow the government.
The Galileo story is a very nice tale of what happens when you mix science and politics.
Galileo also wasn't jailed for the heliocentric model, Galileo was jailed for writing a book, where The Pope was the stand in character for an idiot, overtly. And while we are more liberal, at the time insulting the pope in published material, in Italy, was a rather poor choice.
It's interesting to see how we today project our science/fundamentalism schism onto culture of the past, when in reality, there wasn't that much of a dichotomy before the Scopes trial in the 1930s.
To say this would not have progressed is to ignore the important work of non-European scientists.
Ironically the notion of a Muslim golden age of free thought and science followed by a long dark age of no progress and oppression is also largely imagined.
It also is a bit of a misnomer to blame it all on religion, it was mostly just an assload of war.
What that means is that for nearly any generally accepted position, you can find studies that invalidate that position.
This all comes into the need for looking into meta analysis over single studies.
The perfect example of this is climate change. There are, literally, thousands of studies supporting the notion that human made climate change is real. However, there are 100s of studies that call it into question.
That is where you can get 2 individuals saying "I'm following the science" that talk past each other because each is clinging onto the set of studies that confirm their beliefs.
Skepticism is fine, however, if you aren't challenging your own position you aren't being a skeptic, you are simply using it as a cover for what you want to believe. The example here is flat earthers that would all describe themselves as "skeptics".
Agreed with everything you wrote. We should be especially vigilant when politics/media gets involved in science. Science is just as corruptable, especially in the short term, as any other field.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man
The more obvious example being the purging of "jewish science" from germany during ww2.
Consider the skepticism regarding the health effects of smoking cigarettes.
One of the problems today for me is that most people is skeptic because they cannot understand the answer to the question they ask.
Sooner or later I have to rely on an expert in most areas of science. Which would be fine for me if I could trust that the expert actually answers in his expert opinion and not because he was bought to give a certain answer.
Schooling is mandatory up to a certain level in my country. I'm going to pull dates out of my ass, because I'm too lazy to compare them to what you actually learn in school, but the level of math for the average person is probably 19th century of science, as well for chemistry and physics, with some basic knowledge about stuff from the 20th century.
Most people are not equipped with the tools to understand most of modern day science. They approach it with opinions based on feelings or what their random favorite actor/actress or singer thinks. And we cannot expect them to be equipped with the right tools either.
Reality doesn't change even if people deny it, but is science as a field really resistant if most people just flat out deny science, especially if politicians starts doing it and deny funding due to it?
When I hear someone say "trust the science", I hear, "institutions have worked out for me so far". As much as we wish it were based on rational belief, it is almost certainly personal experience.
George Carlin was right: "they" want you to be smart enough to keep the system moving, but too dumb to see how inequitable the system is.
EDIT: Addressing the "that's just capitalism, not science" point.
You can't really separate the funding from institutions from the products / science. Governments limit the possible research that can be done, media brings in attention and recognition, universities placate their owners (corporate, government, academic, investors). None of the institutions are really motivated by what the base needs or wants apart from avoiding actual anarchy and chaos. It's not a conspiracy. It is power getting more power and power corrupting, quite naturally and with people making rational choices in their own self interest.
There are political decisions that cause it to be ruinously expensive in the US. The messy bit is where science necessarily interacts with politics.
Just go see how well the ruling class is treating the doctors that are actually fighting covid on the front lines, showing it's a treatable ailment, saving lives. Since their perspectives don't align with Team Elite's clear agenda (inject everyone, boosters forever!), they are ridiculed, shamed, relegated to alternative or "low status" press.
You’re confusing economic class and social class. PhDs might not be rich, but they have a much elevated social status compared to the vast majority of the populace.
The professional class are the foot soldiers of the elite class. I subscribe to the view put forth in “Disciplined Minds,” a great book on the subject.
This is why we talk about peer review including the scientific community, not the community of all people. It is an elite group with specific skills.
In general, I think questioning (within reason) government and other institutions helps weed out bad policy and hold them accountable.
You're right that insulin price has nothing to do with science, but rather economics and societal institutions/policies. The trust in the institution presenting the science is important. The purpose if science is to answer questions in fact objectively through reproducible observations. Telling people not to ask reasonable questions and just "trust the science" is appearently antithetical to people who understand the process.
Then there is the fact that someone can be a respected scientist in e.g. linguistics and simultaneously a crackpot in e.g. quantum physics, or vice versa. So you need to be careful even with trusting the actual scientists. (Similarly, the doctor talking about covid... is he an epidemiologist, or does he just fix broken legs?)
Trying to think about best solution to make the actual science accessible to average people... the "ask science" subreddit is probably the best currently existing option.
The problem is when these people try to public support certain government policies. Knowing climate science or quantum physics does not qualify you to be a policy maker. It does qualify you to inform policy makers on your narrow area of expertise.
I've seen a lot of scientists pull appeal to authority fallacies by saying, I'm an expert in X and I say the government should do Y. Most people aren't scientists but they are smart enough to know that scientists don't know everything and usually not any more adept at politics or government than anyone else.
Politicization of science by scientists has done more damage to the public trust in scientific institutions than anything else.
Disclaimer: I have not read anywhere near every news article published on either topic, and if you want to make the case that the media is presenting a consensus different from scientist's, that would be worth looking in to.
Moreover, my understanding of the actual science (and it's hard to say for certain because again, science is complicated and institutions distort) is that natural immunity performs at least as well as vaccine immunity (and maybe even quite a lot better), but a lot of people are (perhaps understandably) upset at "vaccine passport" policies which don't make exemptions for the naturally immune. Moreover, "the science" i.e., the media, governments, etc seem (or at least seemed--I haven't kept up with the issue recently and perhaps the media has finally picked it up?) very reluctant to talk about the merits of natural immunity. So even in what seemed like a slam-dunk, happy path where "the science" and the actual science seemed to align, the picture seems plausibly distorted. :(
- Someone who has been vaccinated is several times less likely to catch it than someone who has not.
- Someone who has had it and gotten better is several times less likely to catch it again than someone who has been vaccinated but has not caught it yet. (This is one definition of "natural immunity.")
- For some reason, many registries won't count a positive test followed by a negative test as evidence for immunity.
The first two are clearly laid out in the Israeli study and are what I'd call "the scientific consensus," gathered by reading what actual scientists are saying. I'm lost at the jump from the first two points to the third because I can't see why it's done that way. The media is not completely silent on natural immunity, I think I saw one article about the Israeli study somewhere.
That anyone, after the past couple years, could think that the elite are in any way well-meaning is absurd--I think the most charitably you could interpret the data is that they are so incompetent they shouldn't be trusted to judge a high school gymnastics competition.
When it comes to the scientific institutions, I think Horton, current editor of The Lancet, sums it up well: "The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness."
I guess the lesson here is to educate folk that "science" doesn't set insulin prices?
Is that a widespread belief?
catchphrases like 'trust the science' don't even make sense everyone knows it really means just 'trust who ever is in-charge'
credibility problems all-around
I don't really know what that means.
Dude working on COVID research didn't create the medical industry...
Trust doesn’t scale. If somebody could solve this society would be a lot better off.
If we're talking about people who think of medical prices as part of "science" but apparently also are worried if they can trust a given researcher who happened to be working on COVID?
I don't think any of this is how people actually think / what motivates them.
And of course, these kind of shenanigans further discredit the media--including the science media--to the poor, minorities, and conservatives thus propagating a cycle of division. It's not enough to have a media that shares our (wealth, predominantly white liberals and progressives) biases, we really need to get back to a media that aspired toward objectivity and neutrality.
EDIT: to put a finer point on it, when we politicize science, we make it harder for people on the outside to trust science. And we have some pretty big problems to tackle right now--covid and climate with the latter being orders of magnitude more serious than the former--and we should want to make it as easy as possible for people to trust the science and do what they can--specifically vote--accordingly. And with respect to climate and covid, it's not liberals who are primarily responsible for distorting the science, but we do distort it on a wide array of social issues and it's hard for lay people to know which science is distorted and which is reliable. If we care about these things, we need to put on our grown-up pants and stop using these issues as political footballs (this means not responding to this comment with some variation of "but the other side is worse than us!" as though it absolves us of our own responsibility). /soapbox
While I agree insulin prices are way too high and the government allows Big Pharma to profit off death and the taxpayer, this is really nothing to do with science and all to do with the legislation around intellectual property that, for example, prevents the import of cheaper and equivalent substitutes from Canada and elsewhere.
Being a gentleman scientist, back when it was a thing, required you to be a gentleman, that is, rich... and well, usually a man too, but that was how it was back then.
Science needs years of study, training in the use of complex machinery and strict methods, access and being able to understand scientific publications meant for peers.
Chances are you're not a peer. With much effort, under the right circumstances, maybe a stroke of luck in your youth, you could aspire to be one of such.
But you probably aren't, and trusting the science means trusting scientific institutions, men and women in white robes delivering what's, at this point in time, accepted as truth.
That's a big responsibility to bear of them, and if there's an erosion of trust in social institutions, then people won't bestow it upon them either.
Today we have peer review journals, LHC, computers etc and we use that when we practice Science but the tools and the social structure are not Science. Science is a process and anyone can do it.
That even people with Ph.D.s fall for this just shows that we, as humans, really like a simpler world, a world with known facts and truths, where you don't have to check things because someone else already did it for you. However, this is not the world we live in. The world we live in is complex, messy, almost entirely made out of shades and very little black and white. Most things are not known and won't be known. People telling and selling you things as fact are invariably acting on agendas. Scientific consensus is not a fixed thing, and concerning many questions it is not a thing at all. The closest thing you can do is "trusting the scientific method", but that is very, very different from what "Trust the Science" means.
All of it? Some things and not others? Which things? Which others? Do I take your word for it? Do I not take your word for it? Do you see how I've watched 'Reading Rainbow' in questioning you like this?
If over time actual evidence emerges that there was a potential lab leak, that doesn't in any way vindicate people making baseless claims early in the pandemic.
But this, too, is complicated, because despite what people say on Twitter, as humans we actually can reason from first principles, assign probabilities, and discount or promote less or more likely explanations -- especially when hard evidence isn't forthcoming.
When there's "no evidence" for something, that doesn't mean all explanations are equally likely.
This absolutely qualifies as evidence. If there were no such lab, that would pretty much conclusively rule out the lab leak hypothesis, right? If observation X is evidence against a hypothesis, then observation not-X must be evidence in favor. We could debate about how strong this evidence is, but it's definitely evidence.
If MichaelDickens did not exist, it would rule out his having robbed the bank. However, MichaelDickens exists, and therefore it is evidence, however weak, that he robbed the bank.
It isn't that we "like" a simpler world, it's that we need a simpler world. We have to feed ourselves and keep a roof over our heads, therefore we don't have time to become independent experts on every subject. Even worse, because of Dunning-Kreuger, we often find ourselves with the strongest opinions on the things we don't realize we understand the least about.
And because of the particular set of values we've decided to define as the core of our society and as the motivators of all useful progress, we demand that everyone become a predator. Every source of information is actively trying to deceive you in order to make more money. This is what we can't survive. We did not evolve to constantly deal within an environment filled with trickery, with people engineering their communications with you to exploit your ignorance and desire to trust.
"Trust the Science" is just another way to say "trust us." "Trust us" worked (at least in the US) on white guys, if not anyone else (and it didn't matter whether anyone else bought into it.) It's not working on them any more, because white guys have gradually lost position while going in and out of cycles of trust in authority. And because the institutions are filled with predators working purely looking out for themselves, with no overarching ideals. At least the protection of white men (or judeo-christian western states' rights civilization, or whatever euphemism is current) is a value, and offers stability compared to the solipsistic nothing offered by pure liberalism.
White guys have come to the conclusion that institutions aren't working for them anymore, even though it's really only their working class that has lost material ground; their managers and and millionaire gentry are upset because they've lost the respect they were used to. This is where everyone else already was - others never believed that institutions were working for them.
The only people left to "trust the science" are the professionals who create it, and who have mates, children and parents who create it. "Trusting the science" is the best indicator that you're upper-middle class that there is. It's the conservative position of comfortable people who only trust institutions because they populate them. Either 1) their trust lives in a strange Gell-Mann amnesia bubble where they know that their own workplaces are corrupt, and they know their own employment is to come up with and execute strategies to deceive people, but somehow think that other institutions are different, or 2) they've decided that since they're good people, the things that they are doing must be good.
They keep airing a particular commercial about covid vaccination where they keep cutting between random doctors who repeat "trust us" over and over again like a hypnotic mantra. I don't know anyone who trusts doctors. Right now, the people in charge are the people who do; they trust doctors like white townies from sundown towns and segregated cities love cops. They identify with them. They don't trust because of their independent research into the validity of the scientific consensus, they trust because of their cultural and class affinity. They trust because they want to be doctors, or marry doctors, or could imagine their kids growing up to be doctors.
People who see that as out of reach, don't.
Sorry for rambling on. It's just that the alternative to "trusting the science" is no good either. It's tribalism all the way down, and for you too, because you're eventually going to have to trust someone.
Also in rare cases where I can actually read and understand the paper outside of my field that may or may not increase or decrease the belief in its correctness. Realistically outside my field of expertise I'll be only able to see things like dodgy statistical methods, small number statistics, crappy plots which are clues of untrustworthy results, but not proofs.
"Trust the Science" coming out of the mouths of politicians is especially questionable. Politicians are not known to make scientifically sound decisions.
"Trust the Science" is merely a proxy for "Believe in and defend the Neoliberal agenda against scientific criticism".
If you're still uncritical of it, you might want to start reading the science.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7
"At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases..."
Am I looking at the wrong graph? There is a clear downward trend from 35-40% to the 70%+ categories.
I am not sure why looking at the median county is better than just grouping all the counties in each category and looking at the cases per 100k, but looking at the latter (which the authors provide as a link [0]), and the latest available date (7 day period ending October 8th) the number of cases per 100k is 110 in the 70%+ group of counties, and it's 220+ for any group of counties with less than 55% vaccination rate.
Having twice as many cases per capita (ignoring all the other factors on how densely populated the counties with higher vaccination rates are, etc.) for every county under 50% vaccination rate compared to the ones with 70%+ vaccination rate is "largely similar"?
[0] https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiZGE1NDBmZTctYWUyZi00N...
EDIT: Also of relevance, is the fact that the country data is from September 3rd, when Israel was at the peak of cases with the delta variant. Israel is far from having vaccinated a large enough fraction of the population to achieve "herd immunity" (just 63% fully vaccinated, Portugal has 86% for example) [1]. Another confounding factor is that Israel was one of the first countries to vaccinate a large number of people, which means the effectiveness of the vaccine is now declining compared to countries that vaccinated later. They have administered booster shots to vulnerable populations [2] and the rates of covid infections have (as expected) dropped precipitously.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccina...
[2] https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-virologist-says-delta-defe...
"Vaccines don't slow the spread, therefore..." what, exactly? What I've consistently heard since the vaccination campaigns started was that they reduce your chance of severe illness, hospitalization, and post-covid syndrome. Which is still absolutely true, in spite of the fact that (as the authors note) this effect has waned with the Delta wave. So, so what?
I've been listening to the "this week in Virology" podcast, along with Dr. John Campbell on YouTube, since Feb 2020. The difference between what I hear from the actual professionals and what I'm told by people online who use phrases like "Neoliberal agenda" that the professionals say is striking to the point that I wonder if those people are even bothering to listen to science communicators before making straw-man fallacies.
Covid numbers presented in US for example are based on an endless set of definitions and interpretations. Dr a in state b may not use the same parameters as Dr c in state d to define a covid death or vaccine damage.
In a minuscule society full of obese people with a high percentege of a frail elderly population, such as Iceland, feel the actual result no matter what nature.com or timesofisrael state.
Our high vaccination rate drove down hospitalizations from 5% of the infected to about 2% ehich is where we are as of today.
We have an extremely obese population in Iceland I might add. This is crucial for covid-19 development.
Apologies for using an icelandic website, it is an article from today citing the state epidemiologist in Iceland
https://www.visir.is/g/20212169078d/skipti-gridarlegu-mali-a...
“Tilfelli á hverjum degi séu enn 20-60 og af þeim leggist tvö prósent inn á spítala.“.
translation 20-60 cases per day. 2% of them are hospitalized.
Our immunization rate is 88% of all age 12 and up.
Science is and will always be our best shot at being correct about the universe, but it's performed by imperfect humans. There's very little we can know for certain, so we have to pick our poison - either trust strangers who claim to have done their research, or trust our own fallible instincts.
I don't think there's a single correct answer to that question, but don't pretend like you're not choosing a poison. These "I believe in science" mantras are no more scientific than any other attitude.
Sure science is flawed, but we don’t have a better option to fall back to. Consider people strongly objected to seatbelts and we still need to promote their use. Trusting your instincts means wallowing in exactly that kind of ignorance.
Edited: before comments.
The problem with experts is that often they became experts by just trusting other experts, and going back the chain a bit all of that was just based on a single persons opinion a century ago.
What you’re describing isn’t science. I think people forget is how new all this is, plate tectonics for example didn’t exist 100 years ago.
Sure some old ideas are still around, but they have also been put to the test.
edit: Also, the case of seatbelts vs no-seatbelts is a fairly easy example, because the evidence is readily available through life experience. I think most people know someone who was injured or killed by not wearing one (I knew a few). So you don't even need to refer to an expert opinion to make that call.
Now imagine anything even slightly less ambitious and think are my instincts going to be accurate or should I look into the actual research? Saying anything other than research is simply unjustifiable.
If there were research showing that putting certain plastics in the microwave were shown not to be harmful to humans, it wouldn't make a difference to me, because I still don't feel comfortable putting any kind of plastic in the microwave.
While being overly cautious tends to have minimal penalties. Letting superstition reduce the quality of your life is still making an objectively poor choice.
"Is it OK to curb freedoms and force medical procedures in order to save a million people?"
"Trust the science" people either think we all agree on those questions or they believe that their positions are the correct ones.
Also, "trust the science" used to mean things like "electroshock your abnormally behaving child." It's hard to fault people for a lack of trust.
Anyone who believes that policy can directly flow from science is mistaken.
It's the job of science to make predictions: if these circumstances occur, we can expect the outcome to look like that. But this says nothing - can say nothing - in judgment of how good or bad that outcome is.
To create policy, we must weigh the costs and benefits of the various expected outcomes. That's not a scientific exercise, it flows only from our values as individuals and as a society.
So if you're interesting in bringing about a particular policy, or forestalling a different one, the way to do this is by making your case for relative values of the outcomes that science predicts - not to hoodwink people into believing something other than what the science predicts.
Examples of such misapplication:
* Science shows that the climate is changing, caused by human action, such that in 50 years, some coastal cities will have ground level below high tide. Therefore we must do everything possible to limit CO2 emissions.
* Science says that after (whatever) weeks gestation, a human baby could be viable outside the womb. Therefore we must forbid abortions after that term.
In both these examples, a value judgment is being smuggled in that imposes unacknowledged values into the situation. Those values have nothing to do with science, and so the conclusion is a-scientific.
(That's not to say that either of the conclusions is wrong given some values, including possibly the prevailing cultural values. But assuming that is so is certainly anti-scientific.)
What is valuable are specific principles like dedeuctive reasoning and the scientific method, upon which we've built our greatest achievements as a species.
Trusting "the Science" without understanding what that really means is basically just another form of religion, complete with its own priesthood and people who demand that whatever the priests say must be taken on faith because it's moral and good.
Philosophers have observed that this blind belief in "the Science" is actually worse than belief in religion. Because while religion roots its authority in the divine (which either doesn't exist or chooses not to get directly involved), the church of Science roots its authority in men. Men declare a truth and a morality based on what they claim to be scientific, then go on to commit atrocities they rationalize from it. The greatest mass murderers in history were atheists like Stalin and Mao. They were the little gods of their own secular personality cults and they committed genocide on a scale that had never before been seen.
It is perfectly rational to believe X in this scenario even if I didn't test all of it myself.
I don't trust people who claim Y, get angry whenever I try to test any part of Y, the few things I test about Y aren't true, the people I know who tested other things about Y also saw that they weren't true.
It is perfectly rational to assume that Y is just nonsense in this scenario even if I didn't test all of it myself.
The reality is that we all are trusting "science" to one degree or another. I absolutely agree that all experiments should be repeatable and independently verifiable, but in the real world science (in my opinion) very much depends on trust. We don't all have time to verify every experiment.
Both of which are common.
Will you publish "X is associated with Y", or "we observed weak correlation between X and Y in self-selected subgroups from already self-selected population"?
Unfortunely, first approach dominates observational studies.
All fields of science have dogma's. It's the very reason why science progresses one funeral at the time....
Also, no living soul has time to read all the papers that are pooped out by all the worlds scientists, so the shortcut is to fall back on "people in the known" AKA you can pick whom you want to believe. Of course a rational person will say he picked a source because trustworthiness, not because he or she liked that person...
For most of human history you didn't get many options. Before the printing press, King and God were the roots of trust and truth, because churches and states were the only ones with the power to disseminate information reliably on a regional, national, or global scale.
The printing press added newspapers as potential roots of trust. Then radio stations. Then TV stations. Still, with limited papers and channels, and large barriers to entry, institutions arose and the status quo was not too much changed.
Now we have an eruption of information as anybody can create a massive following for any idea with sufficient effort. The implications of this have yet to be realized.
One thing is for sure: You can't really trust the science. Definitely not the media. And certainly not whoever you follow on Youtube, the links you see on HN/Reddit, or the posts shared on Facebook. It's hard to say you can know anything for sure these days.
These sciences are much more open to interpretation than, say, physics. Yet people will link research papers in these fields and push them as 100% fact without thinking critically about these papers.
Let's say that your paper claims "X reduces negative behaviors in children such as aggression". In my experience on Reddit and Hacker News, people will link papers like this and claim you are anti-science for questioning anything.
Yet there are some important questions that should be answered like:
"How do you even measure aggression?"
"Did X also reduce assertiveness (which is linked to aggression)?"
"Is aggression always a negative behavior? Who decided this was an appropriate classification?"
"Holistically, is this a better outcome overall or were there drawbacks to doing X?"
It's to the point where I have serious doubts about the validity of papers in soft science fields. Unless of course your paper measures something directly like serotonin levels.
I live in a rural community of about 15,000 people, attend church, and sports for my kids and generally spend a lot of time with people in the community. These are people who don't trust the science.
They aren't stupid, they aren't uneducated, and they mostly aren't believing radical misinformation. There are two really important things to consider though.
1. They don't have experience with Science or Statistics. Outside of a high school classroom 20 or more years ago. [It's easy to get through college without any meaningful science education]
2. They have been screwed by the medical system, government, and economy.
Their decision making and behavior is primarily driven off of their intuition and second hand information from people they trust. The vast majority of unvaccinated people that I know don't believe in microchips or that the vaccine will kill them. They just think they don't need it cause they aren't at risk or because they have already developed natural immunity.
Some of them are right and some of them wrong. They are just people and doing the best they can.
> They don't have experience with Science or Statistics (...) It's easy to get through college without any meaningful science education
Maybe understanding science/statistics needs to be higher on the list of criteria used to determine if someone is "educated".
~ Richard Feynman
When someone says, “Science teaches such and such,” he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach anything; experience teaches it. If they say to you, “Science has shown such and such,” you might ask, “How does science show it? How did the scientists find out? How? What? Where?”
It should not be “science has shown” but “this experiment, this effect, has shown.” And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments–but be patient and listen to all the evidence–to judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at.
“Trust the science” is a dismissive statement intended to terminate discussion/dissent and denigrate the dissenter as a simpleton.
“Science” isn’t some belief you hold.
That's a reasonable position. For myself, I'd modify that statement to read:
The process is steeped in an understanding that the
scientific method will give you results that inform
us whether as to whether the theories and
hypotheses that we use to describe the universe do
so better than others.
And there is a belief that such processes will
eventually lead to a more precise description of
the universe and its workings.
Fair enough.
I am uncertain as to which "specific worldview" you think I wish to maintain. If you'd expand on that, It would be appreciated.
belief: 1. an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists 2. trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something.
You are taking the position that you know something while at the same time you are acknowledging that it might be wrong because science often reveals that we have insufficient models or tenets for some understandings. This fits as belief. You probably think it's a detriment to use a term you associate with spiritualism, so you avoid it.
The best way to describe this behavior of denial is that it's baked into your worldview (think supermario bros, not the earth). Thinking that answers that science have provided are more valid (for some value of valid) than other belief means that your belief in science can't be belief and it certainly isn't "faith" (complete trust or confidence in someone or something.)...oh I guess it is.
Not sure why people think this does anything but confuse discussions about reality when treating the religion of science differently because it is a practice and tenets born of humans rather than a flying spaghetti monster (which we are quickly outgrowing). It's the SAME THING from a different source and just as likely to be used for evil (eugenics, political messaging, smoking doctor ads, etc).
Putting science aside, how can I be confident that the basic facts presented in, say, a NYT article, are correct? I can trust the reputation of the NYT as an institution, and I can also trust that any inaccuracies in the article will be called out by other publications. But if I feel everyone's in on a conspiracy to push a particular viewpoint, then I need to anchor my knowledge in a different institutional framework - even if that might just be a random Facebook group of strangers, or my weird uncle, or a niche radio station.
This, incidentally, is why the censorious push against "disinformation" is misguided in principle. It's sweeping the underlying problems under the rug in the hope that they disappear spontaneously. In an open society, truth can only be established as a result of public discourse, anything else is just the representation of the perspective and interests of some authority. Whatever its source, the seemingly growing distrust in public institutions will not disappear simply because we make social media companies remove its most obvious symptoms.
It used to be that you had to trust the institution, because they were the best suited and capable to verify and validate the data and the individuals. Trust problems were both not publicized widely, and also did not have any obvious solutions.
Today, we are technically capable of validating and verifying the entire chain of custody or traversal for any given piece of information, and the only thing missing is the infrastructure to do so. On the other hand, if an institution demonstrates untrustworthiness, it is difficult to conceal.
I think that, more and more, we will demand to see the entire chain of creation and origin for a piece of information, and either validate it ourselves, or delegate that validation to a party we personally trust. That validation can then itself be validated with reputation.
Imagine, for a minute, if an article came with a list of all the writers, contributors, scientists, interviewees, editors, etc., who contributed to the article. And not only that, imagine you can see the entire social graph between you and those people. That is what the future looks like, IMO.
Unfortunately those who 'mistrust science' usually do. Snake oil salesmen will sound trustworthy to them, because they also 'mistrust the science' (which happens to disagree about the usefulness of the product/opinion they are offering).
We could do a better job of teaching the science alongside the history of the process of its discovery and validation and incorporate actually reading scientific papers rather than just textbooks. We can emphasize science as an ongoing process rather than simply a "just so" story, but we absolutely have to teach its results and not just the methodology.
I made a statement about the argument (and title) of the article we are commenting, it doesn't automatically assert that everything else I'm not mentioning is not important/valid or should not be done at all.
Since that was not your intent, what exactly were you trying to say? Which specific "sciences" are you advocating should not be taught and should be replaced by only teaching the scientific method?
"Trust the scientific method."
You come up with an idea, TEST, see if it works, evaluate and so on. That tends to work out a great deal and has provided humanity with a lot of great things / protections we don't have to worry about / progress.
It doesn't mean the outcomes are always optimal, but they're better than every other option if you keep at the process.
Sadly it's not so simple as most 'tests', papers etc. are crap even if they look reasonable on first glance.
I don't think the gist of your statement makes much sense.
Fauci has done more damage to "science" than any 100 religious authorities ever did. The above quote is pretty much what he said when he claimed people criticizing him are criticizing science.
One of the most important things for a scientist to say in public is "Just look at what I wrote; I'm not important."
The main insight I have is that say we found out COVID or one of its variants had a 30%+ death/hospitalization rate as the months went on. I firmly believe more people would get vaccinated due to the obvious severity of it. This current ~1% IFR is at a point such that some think its not deadly enough to warrant the hypocritical restrictions and mandates, and some believe that it is.
Lets say on the other hand that as the months went by, we discovered COVID had a 0.000001% IFR. 1 out of a hundred million people that caught it died. [assume long COVID does not exist]. We could see that ~50-100 people would die worldwide. I think most people would call you foolish if given this IFR, had you been calling for continued mass restrictions.
We are at an inflection point such that we have vaccines, we have mandates, we have restrictions, yet some clamour it isn't enough, while others clamour its too much. These all are based around the perceived deadliness, not the true deadliness of COVID.
(1) - I don't recall the exact number
What matters is that you make a claim that has the potential to be tested. i.e. there exists an observation that could potentially contradict your claim.
And if this observation arises, the result is that the hypothesis has an opportunity to refine itself and the process continues.
Newtonian mechanics were falsifiable, they were falsified in particular domains (the very small and the very large) and now they have been refined as they are still applicable given certain contraints.
From there, it's difficult to have any trust in science at all. I can't blame people.
Trusting the Science means something completely different in the domain of socializing information.
^This takes work, complicated work. And then humans, being human, can muck up the interpretation. And so on...
I blogged about this thing a few months ago. We misunderstand Popper. Hell, Popper probably misunderstood his own ideas. Falsifiability works precisely because it's imprecise. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
For more depth, obligatory link: https://danielbmarkham.com/negatives-stack-positives-dont-a-...
Never. Happened. Disingenuous comments like this are why institutional trust is at an all-time low.
"The findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Advances in Therapy, were based on five days of 20-minute treatments with ultraviolet A (UVA) light using a catheter inserted into the patients' tracheas."
https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/reduced-viral-loads-se...
You have been proven totally wrong. Now, does your media-driven hatred of Trump trump your ability to admit you were wrong, and you've updated your beliefs, and you're ready to move on more educated than you were before you read this comment? If not, you lack the basics to make you able to engage with scientific thought.
I mean, we can all wonder what was going through the man's head, but there you have it.
You can literally watch him come up with the idea all on his own in real time.
I think most people watching that clip wouldn't ascribe malice to him, but it does demonstrate why the man was an incredibly Dangerous person to have as president.
Maybe he thought a sarcastic reference to ingesting disinfectant would liven up his advanced knowledge of obscure experimental UV therapies?
I'm going with the alternate hypothesis that he was an layman with a very limited grasp of what he'd been told would kill the virus fumbling around trying to find reasons for the public to believe that a cure was imminent. That is sort of his job, and whilst I think most politicians would convey such messages less ineptly, to be honest I have less issue with Trump in this particular instance than the people who actually ingested bleach to own the libs, or continued to insist even after Trump himself had walked back the remarks by claiming they were [very inappropriate] sarcasm that Trump was passing on advanced medical knowledge and the only problem with those remarks was that the media and medical didn't appreciate them enough.
1. Science is a process. If you've ever seen the typical graph explaining the scientific method it's important to note that it's a loop. Science is iterative;
2. I'm not sure I agree with the characterization of falsifiability here as making predictions that can be proven wrong. The essence of scientific theory is to make testable predictions, that is the theory can be used to make predictions that can be experimentally tested. Scientific theories are never proven right per se, at least not without making assumptions. They simply become accepted given enough of a track record of testable predictions and continued failure to find a counterexample;
3. By (2), creationism clearly isn't science. It makes no testable predictions. Efforts to conflate creationism as science continue the long losing trend of religion pitting itself against science (eg Capernicus, Galileo) and it's not science;
4. There are an awful lot of people who don't understand or have no interest in understanding that science is a process and are merely looking for confirmation of what they already believe. These people tend to reject anything that contradicts their world view;
5. In the US in particular, there is a long history of anti-intellectualism that's deeply tied to religion; and
6. Ironically, the people who reject accepted science are typically the most easily manipulated by religious dogma, jingoism or the like; and
7. There are people who are quite willing to manipulate others for financial gain and/or power. It's why every living president, all but ~3 Senators, all but a handful of Congresspeople, all governors and the likes of Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are all vaccinated but continue to fan the flames of anti-vaxxers for their own gain.
Sean Hannity has continuously supported vaccines (has unequivocally stated he thinks they're the best way to deal with the pandemic); he's just against mandates, and believes you should speak with your own doctor about them. If that's being an anti-vaxxer, then most people are.
Anything else not factual may be called “science”, “healthy skepticism“, or “common knowledge”; and that is easily misguidable by the few in the know.
Looking at you, PolSci, Econ101, and pyschobabble.
I'm fairly sure the goalposts moved here somewhat...
"If an elderly, respected scientist tells you something is possible, he is very likely right. If he tells you something is impossible, he is likely wrong." --- An old SF fandom saying.
If a ginormous herd of scientists tell you something, possible or impossible, they may not be right but that is the way you want to place your bets.
[Edit]
"But there are broad guidelines that could help. We might insist, for example, that those wishing to challenge the scientific consensus do their homework, demonstrating a competent (but not necessarily expert) understanding of the theories and empirical data they wish to displace. We might require that they have reasonable arguments concerning the theory or data’s flaws that do not presuppose, as some anti-vaccine arguments do, the existence of a large-scale conspiracy to distort the truth. And we would be well within our rights to demand that they argue in good faith and not — as historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway have shown for many climate change denialists — as professional water-muddiers, following a playbook first written by cigarette companies attempting to obfuscate a known connection between smoking and cancer."
Ooh, I like that.
Being skeptical that a vaccine is safe enough for mass use is not the same as believing that a vaccine is not safe enough for mass use.
Being skeptical that climate change is primarily caused by man is not the same as believing that climate change is not caused by man.
Skepticism is fine. Belief in an opposite without evidence is not fine.