How can the consensus ever change if we deplatform, defund, and ostracize all scientists (or would-be scientists) researching and publishing any evidence that contradicts consensus?
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.
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.
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 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.
Any scientist is welcome to publish science and have the truth of arguments win out.
Science isn't done on Twitter or Facebook.
Because the announced policy is none of those things?
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.