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Comment by justinjlynn | Hacker News Reader

I'm impressed by the number of specific studies and writings you've gathered which happen support your conclusion. Tell me, what evidence and studies have you collected and evaluated which do not support it?

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This comes across a bit disingenuous. Do you have evidence to the contrary? If so why not state what it is or that such evidence exists? I believe the Earth is spheroidal in shape and also haven’t collected evidence that supports it being flat. It’s not reasonable, in general, to look up the pros/cons of each belief. In the present case are you suggesting that people are cherry picking the studies to conform to a preconceived belief?

Yes, to your questions; however, do note that I am not the one publishing this unsatisfactory metastudy. As such the burden is on the publisher to produce something of value by looking up the pros and cons and comparing the two. Otherwise, anyone could just punch up google, print out the results for "flat earth" and claim to have done research which says you should believe it. Obviously, that's not the case.

This is not an academic forum and so the standards are a bit relaxed. Typically people post their beliefs along with a snippet of the reasons for said beliefs. Then others who disagree sometime respond by presenting contrary evidence. No one has a burden as such. We are not academicians beholden to standards of thoroughness.

My suggestion is that had you responded by stating that there are contrary studies and that those studies are better then your post would have been a lot clearer. At least it would have put the idea that the evidence presented was suspect into my mind. As it is it came across as unclear who has the stronger position objectively speaking.

Yes, of course, you're right. Unfortunately, Brandolini's Law often applies quite strongly. I simply do not wish to always subject myself to that and only wish to alert readers of the comment thread to think critically about the parent comment's contents. That is - the target of my comment is not the parent comment's author, but the reader of the parent comment. Generally, this is sufficient to meet my aims.

I understand that. I’m suggesting changing the wording. Your original post would have been a lot more helpful to people like me had it been of the form:

People should know that there are lot of studies and evidence to the contrary that is easy to find. The evidence presented above is flawed and you can look this up easily on your own.

My comment, as is, captures the tone I intended. Therefore, I will not edit it. Thank you for your kind suggestions. I will take them into account in future interactions where they are relevant.

What conclusion, besides the one you projected? He responded to a bunch of separate points the first of which actually addresses 'other studies.' Did you read it or have any thoughts on it?

I've read a number of these studies. My thoughts are that a number of them have confounders which are not well controlled for, and they often have limited statistical power, representation issues, or other technical faults which impact their expected validity. Further, in most cases, reproduction of the study is generally not possible. In any case, individual studies simply listed supporting a particular conclusion particularly without a listing of similar studies which present opposite conclusions - and a direct comparison therein - does not a metastudy make. What's attempted here is a metastudy and, as a metastudy, it's quite lacking.

Have you ever asked this question anyone else in any other context, when presented with scientific evidence?

It's an extremely important question to ask and especially when someone dumps a wall of text and a ton of studies on you that all support one viewpoint:

* Have you also evaluated studies that don't support this?

* If not, why not? Are you only looking for studies that support what you want to prove?

* If you have also looked at studies showing negative results, why have you decided not to include them here?

That's not really how debates work.

It is absolutely how debates about science work.

Yes and, especially, of myself.

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