And for the science to change under new evidence, again the consensus of experts is required, otherwise the new change remains on the fringe.
i don't think it's obvious that there's a benefit to making it easier to promote ideas that contradict the generally accepted science. if it's correct, smart people will eventually be convinced of that. promoting fringe theories on twitter amongst people who have no underlying knowledge of the subject matter won't do anything to advance the most correct ideas, only the loudest ideas or the ideas that most match our pre-existing biases.
That's not how science has historically worked. Smart people won't be convinced, new people will. Status quo changes when the previous generation is laid to rest.
This is the result of the academia being just another human social system obeying the same laws of power as all the rest, thus inheriting all their flaws.
But that was reaching, and they must have known it.
This is knowable.
It's like the difference between someone researching the exact strength of antibiotics and claiming that medicine doesn't work. One of those isn't science.
Do you really believe an esteemed journal would actually publish it? Or would they find a reason to politely decline, such as "it's out of scope", "didn't pass peer review", "doesn't align with out values, reword"?
Do you believe, even if the study is published, that it would not destroy someone's career?
And finally, if researchers believe there is a chance of that happening, would they actually start to investigate the taboo area?
My answer to all these questions is "no". This is why when you say, "just publish in academic journals", I am highly skeptical. And why I am annoyed at yet another example of the social media oligarchy enforcing what ideas are allowed to propagate.
For those who aren't aware: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Emil_O._W._Kirkegaard
> Emil Ole William Kirkegaard is a Danish far-right eugenicist, perjurer[3] and activist for legalising child pornography. He has a wide range of crank views and is a global-warming denier, anti-feminist, ableist, anti-vegan, homophobe, Islamophobe, transphobe and has promoted white supremacy. He is most notorious and obnoxious online for his ableism and calling transgender people, liberals, feminists and pretty much anyone with left-wing political views who merely disagrees with him as "mentally ill".
> Aside from his controversial writings on eugenics and race, Kirkegaard has been involved in other activities such as publishing personal data of 70,000 OKCupid users without permission, including their sexual preferences,[10] considered by Vox to be "without a doubt one of the most grossly unprofessional, unethical and reprehensible data releases".[11] His writings on race and intelligence[12] have caused controversy and because peer-reviewed journals refuse to publish his work, he set up the OpenPsych pseudojournals.[13] However, after this journal was discredited he now publishes pseudo-scientific race articles in the open-access Psych journal.[14][15]
[...]
> His highest qualification is a Bachelor’s in linguistics. Having dropped out of his Masters degree, instead preferring to be "self-taught in various subjects"
[...]
> Kirkegaard’s own personal blog is home to topics such as "Is miscegenation bad for your kids?" and how one could empirically verify a Jewish conspiracy
a) whoever wrote the wiki really doesn't like him. A lot of the claims about him are a stretch.
b) he does make some good points
2) You're broadly dismissing factual statements as "claims" with no supporting evidence. Given the statements on RW are backed extensively by citations, please support "a lot of claims about him are a stretch" with citations of your own.
3) I take it your "hypothetical" example about race and intelligence isn't actually hypothetical but something you actually believe?
You seem to be forwarding an idea of an information ecosystem where what is an "esteemed" journal is static. Like you cannot imagine Nature being anything but the top journal - so Nature must publish works they find suspect because otherwise nothing will change.
Frankly, that's not how anything works. Groups of people organize around beliefs and there is a relatively stable (but shifting) understanding of the prestige of those organizations. Look at, for instance, the understanding around the stonewall riot / protest (depending on who is describing it). If these heterodox views are correct (and for the record I think the race 'science' that claims to show non-white people consistently test below white folks is obviously and embarrassingly wrong. I encourage you to check out this critique of the bell curve[1]) then they will, over time, become more and more accepted and their articles in "alternative" journals will be key in that process.
The way that previously alternative views have come to the center is that they were published in their own "fringe" publications for years - and then, over time, as those view were more and more accepted, the papers start appearing in 'mainstream' publications. The "years in the wilderness" is a feature not a bug! You have to let subaltern movements develop their own ideas and voice outside of the mainstream to see if they really have a substantial critique of the mainstream - because inevitably any real critique involves getting the mainstream to let go of one or more central axiom of their worldview.
If you are serious about supporting these ideas (and I really hope you are using 'race science' as an attention grabbing flash point rather than a thing you believe), you really should start talking about them like you're aware of the history of how previously controversial ideas become mainstream.
>The "years in the wilderness" is a feature not a bug!
You just invented that. Never have I heard a suggestion that for a new theory to become mainstream, you must first create a new fringe journal that can exceed the existing journals in reputation.
In fact, I can think of several examples of brand new findings that upended the mainstream that were published directly in Nature or Science.
You literally just invented this entire process just to give a reason why politically taboo ideas are unpublishable.
1. There are a million reasons it could be rejected. For one thing, we have decades if not centuries of terrible science here, motivated by even worse agendas. A journal is going to be extremely skeptical of any study in this area for that same reason, and they would be for anything much less controversial that had centuries of garbage behind it.
2. Science is not morally exempt. A journal may ask themselves if the scientific implications of this paper are worth the practical implications of supporting the work at that stage - that's going to depend a LOT on the paper itself, and since this is a hypothetical, we have no way of discussing this point.
> Do you believe, even if the study is published, that it would not destroy someone's career?
I don't know, maybe? Again, it's a hypothetical. What is this paper showing? Who is it by? There's so much context missing here. I'd certainly think whoever did this research, with no other context, is probably an idiot, but I could be convinced otherwise.
> And finally, if researchers believe there is a chance of that happening, would they actually start to investigate the taboo area?
Maybe? Like, yeah, good point, I would definitely question the motives of anyone doing this research. But this is a hypothetical so it's impossible to say.
> My answer to all these questions is "no".
Given this extremely broad hypothetical it seems pretty absurd to answer any way definitively.
Regardless, this in no way supports the idea that the research rejected by journals is somehow fit for Twitter ads. It is, at best, a criticism of journals, without any comment on what the right solution would be.
The idea that advertising on Twitter is somehow the bandaid we need for purported issues with scientific peer review is absolutely fucking laughable and I think people on HN should seriously question the competency of the average user here.
Intentionally miss my point, misrepresent my claim, insult me in the last sentence. Nice.
I am speaking of the idea often described as "science progresses one funeral at a time" - which Wikipedia informs me is sometimes known as "Planck's principle"
If you do want a claim, my personal opinion is that Twitter's choices to ban or allow certain advertising will make no noticeable difference to the progress of scientific understanding, because I don't think adverts on Twitter are a communication channel that matters for the spread of ideas within academic communities. I can imagine that over time it might make a difference to lay-people's beliefs about some things, although I'm not sure whether Twitter has a broad enough audience to really change much here. Since I personally am fully onboard the "climate change is real, and it's real bad" train, I don't have any problem with Twitter banning adverts that spread the opposite idea. If it was a ban on what general Twitter users can post then I would have a problem with it, but I'm ok with a ban on adverts. Maybe that's inconsistent of me, I don't know.
There has been concerted funding and propaganda _against_ the science by an industry that is literally earning billions a week.
Others have already pointed out that it's always been hard to go against the consensus in science. It's supposed to be hard. The consensus became the consensus for a reason. Overthrowing it is a monumental effort that gets you into the history books.
This is not what this is about and this is not what is going on here though. In the 80s serious scientists debated man made global warming. They raised objections, and contradicted the models. Eventually all the reasonable and important objections were addressed. The debate settled. The evidence came in. We now have 30 years of observational data on top of that!
And _now_ people complain that there is no scientific debate! No one was paying attention when the debate happened! That's why you are getting the conclusion! That's why people who object are told "Yeah we covered this, check the papers." Which doesn't feel like debate but in reality just shows that the person coming in hasn't done their due diligence or isn't arguing in good faith.
Don't forget that the consensus used to be that tobacco was harmless. The consensus can change from an incorrect position to the correct one.
A good history of all this is here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22345227/
Imagine if a company had prohibited tobacco advertising that asserted smoking was healthy. That's the parallel here.
The problem I have with this is they will almost certainly allow things that contradict the consensus. Let's say the consensus is like 2C increase in 50 years. If somebody says it will actually be 3C they would be contradicting the consensus but probably would be allowed the ad. If somebody says it will only increase 1C they would probably not be able to sell an ad.
If the scientific consensus threatens assets and income of powerful industries they run massive lobbying and ad campaigns against it and try to interfere with the scientific process itself by funding biased studies.
Pretending like the people that exaggerate the effect of climate change are a comparable issue is dishonest and not backed by facts. Classic false symmetry fallacy.
Also, the scientific consensus is conditional: If we emit like this, then that will happen. The IPCC report doesn't predict a certain amount of warming.
No? Tobacco companies themselves knew tobacco wasn't harmless. Just like oil companies have known for almost a century that humans were causing drastic climate change due to CO2.
Because the announced policy is none of those things?
Any scientist is welcome to publish science and have the truth of arguments win out.
Science isn't done on Twitter or Facebook.
Remember “Eppur si muove”? It is impossible to establish who the “experts” are by the old truths — we need the new truths for that.
To channel Max Planck, scientific revolutions happen not publication to publication but funeral to funeral as old experts die and people grow up with new truths.
The proper way to evaluate this system is not to cherry pick a few rare examples and claim it as the norm. The correct way is to take all inputs, true and false, and see the outcome. Then you compare this info to other systems that have been tried. And maybe propose new systems, but only after you understand the problems with previous systems that led to the current one so you don't simply repeat past errors.
No it doesn't. I can't believe people are even claiming this. Science has NOTHING to do with consensus. If evidence is produced that goes against a consensus then the consensus is wrong. Consensus has nothing to do with science. Consensus is a problem of humans that disrupts the scientific process.
I don't think each of these are as solid as the other. Climate science is certainly less testable than say particle physics. Not that we shouldn't work together as humans to model, understand and keep our (only) planet stable as best we can.. but "scientific consensus" is less meaningful in this field.. used as a political word to motivate people at the expense of more nuanced understanding.
But like vaccines, it's probably better to act now before we understand it all.. (on the day before we go extinct).
To be more specific, then the consensus may be wrong. The bar to demonstrate that something is wrong and be taken seriously is meant to be higher than simply claiming one can produce evidence to the contrary.
When such evidence is discovered, the idea is that one would present that evidence to peers, who would attempt to replicate the findings, and support them if they are able to do so, or otherwise publish their counter-findings in response. This is obviously more complicated in practice because we're dealing with humans and not ideals (and thus we have things like the replication crisis), but that is the theory of how we advance the body of knowledge that we derive from scientific theses and experiments.
We do not advance it by claiming that evidence has been found and then leaving it at that, in a vacuum. So it's not exactly that science "works on consensus", in the sense that just a majority doesn't prove anything, but -- convincing, using evidence, the majority of the scientific community in your field, is certainly part of the process.
No, no, consensus is the only reason we have science, or language, or much of anything humans find interesting. Let me explain:
Science is a thing humans do. Without humans around, I don't see ants doing science anytime soon :) When humans share the stuff they do and reach agreement, that is called consensus.
In other words, any word you use, it is because humans wanted to communicate and reach consensus, so they invented a word for it.
So you have it backwards, it's humans -> consensus -> science, not science -> consensus -> humans.
I doubt any modern science breakthroughs are done by someone who mastered none of the previous consensus to learn where to dig.
Heliocentric theory and antiseptic theory was scoffed at by the mainstream.
Consensus is merely a guide, there's no such thing as settled science.
The reason is, we're studying an infinite universe with the limited technology and when that technology or that current mode of understanding changes, our entire understanding of the univ. changes.
This is scientistry, not science. Science works on observation and experiment. In a perfect world perhaps consensus would be established scientifically, but that’s observably at odds with the history of science.
Convincing yourself that your ideas are right is a low bar. The key part of doing science is convincing yourself that your ideas are wrong. It's about telling the difference between actually discovering something new and making mistakes in experiments and reasoning. If you fail to convince yourself, you ask others to convince you that your ideas are wrong. If they also fail, you are starting to build a consensus that maybe you have actually discovered something.
Believing in something that contradicts the consensus is politics. Building a consensus among experts who are skeptical but open to new ideas is science.
The problem is one of confusion. There are at least three distinct things that we call science. Primus, the social enterprise itself. This is where “consensus” applies. Secundus, the method for understanding the rules governing the system of the world. This is where what you call “low level” activities are. Tertius, the body of accepted knowledge that’s been ascertained. Unfortunately, this doesn’t necessarily follow from the scientific method. Sometimes it instead follows from the needs of the social enterprise of science, which we rather clumsily call politics.
It’s only by clearly and distinctly considering these three concepts that we can avoid frankly intellectually crippling confusion.
Those things take hundreds of years. We don’t even have a working model of climate change which is why they average out hundreds of them.
The science on climate change is far from settled.
It’s pretty easy to take any given climate change model and watch it give inaccurate predictions.
That's not how it works for most of science. Most consensus ideas are theories because they are impossible to prove well enough to call them a law.
For all intents and purposes until we have better modeling climate change is largely a political topic.
People for the most part have a pet form of energy generation they want the world to switch to and use wildly inaccurate climate models to beat everyone who disagrees with them over the head with.
See Germany and switching to oil and gas over climate friendly nuclear and trying to get gas added as a renewable form of energy and nuclear removed.
F=MA fails really obviously at high velocity but the error doesn’t go away at low speed it just becomes small enough to be ignored. Even the most known Law of conservation of energy fails in expanding space time.
The basic rule of thumb is can you write a useful equation? And for climate change it’s just too complex for that.
This is absolutely and completely wrong. “Hypothesis -> Theory -> Law” is not actually the scientific pipeline. Theories and laws not only can co-exist, but often do.
From Wikipedia [0]:
> Scientific theories explain why something happens, whereas scientific law describes what happens.
An example of this is the theory of gravity [1], which contains laws of gravity [2].
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law
[1]: https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/ESSAYS/Bekenstein/bekens...
[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_law_of_universal_gr...
The “settled” science of climate change makes wildly inaccurate predictions on earth, during time periods we have lots of data on.
Aren’t we past the point of no return 8 times over now?
1) Newton's Law of Gravity is not wrong, it is just incomplete. Newton's Law of Gravity is a critical formula used for calculating rocket trajectories and behaviors. It is correct but has 'boundaries' where Einstein's General Theory of Relativity takes over.
2) I'm not sure what this means.
3) I'm not sure what this means.
3)Dates for “Certain Doom”, with regards to the climate, have been proffered by prognosticators of climate science. Much like those that predict the religious End Of Time, these dates invariably pass with no notice or fanfare.
The 2022 version for example basically says 1.5C above preindustrial levels by 2025.
That’s not some doom that’s basically exactly where we are now and only relevant because the keep updating past predictions. Go back to reports from 1990 and 1.5C in 2025 is well within error bars. We are experiencing negative effects that could have been avoided in 1990, then again things could also have been worse before now without quite a lot effort into improving efficiency etc.
Predictions further into the future assume net emissions continue and therefore the effects will be worse. That’s not some “doom” that’s cause and effect. 1.5C, 2C, 2.5C, and even 3C, as long as net emissions continue we well eventually reach all of those milestones. Arguably what’s changing is 2025 and 2040 etc don’t seem to be in the distant future they way they seemed in 1990. Kids today are thinking they could be around in 2100.
I think wrongness is inherent to any well-proven theory, because each theory is a model.
It’s just understanding where the theory falls apart and where it makes accurate and useful predictions.
Like Newtonian physic. Even where it’s accurate, the math can get hard for very simple scenarios.
The classic three-body problem can be computed; but it’s also inherently chaotic so any computation quickly becomes inaccurate (sensitive to initial values).
I think they compute many different times with different initial conditions, to generate probabilities.
I imagine the climate science of “what happens” is also the same: We may not turn into Venus, but we also know all that excess heat and energy has to go somewhere and in our fragile global supply chain it won’t take much to make a disaster.
Still, I don’t like the quasi-religious aura that climate journalism has. It’s very off-puttingz
Also modelling basically anything is hard. Applying the laws of thermodynamics to a kettle well enough that you can predict it's exact dynamics is not a simple task.