Article: Threaten My Group, and I’ll Belittle Your Science

[steveo73]

But I still think the modern badge/attribution of "skeptic" bears all the resemblance to "high priest of real knowledge all you ignorant peons should believe if you knew what was good for you", although I didn't think of that analogy until just now.

I'm not going to argue (maybe more nicely put debate) this with you because you might be right. Its not like I hang out on the weekends with a group of skeptics debating why the rest of the world is so stupid. I might think that but I don't state it.

My weekends typically consist of wrestling grown men, going on bike rides, reading, watching footy and fighting and the occasional movie. I don't think I fit your profile of a skeptic.

[theanimal]

Related Nat Geo article.

Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/ ... nbach-text

[IlliniDave]

As we say in my religion: "Peace be with you." Or you could substitute the Force or "Live Long and Prosper" for the same sentiment.

But I still think the modern badge/attribution of "skeptic" bears all the resemblance to "high priest of real knowledge all you ignorant peons should believe if you knew what was good for you", although I didn't think of that analogy until just now.

I think there may be a capital-S "Skeptic" and a little-s "skeptic" out there in the world. The little-s variety, of which I am often one, I believe is a reaction to the "high priest of real knowledge all you ignorant peons should believe if you knew what was good for you", which tend much more often to be those going around capital-P Professing than those doubting. To borrow a phrase from one of my favorite bands, I tend to bristle when "Those who know what's best for us/must rise and save us from ourselves", especially when it runs contrary to my own first-hand experience of cause and effect.

[Dragline]

Yeah, I'm over-reacting. You can tell I get fixated sometimes with etymology as popularized by media and advocates for their positions, mostly because I see it as an insidious form of propaganda -- the naming of things or people to imply positive or negative attributes. Repeat word until you are brainwashed into believing that the so-identified item or person is actually good or bad as implied by the label. And run to bathe yourselves in "good" labels and your opponents with "bad" ones. Much of what passes for discourse these days is really just labeling exercises, especially if you watch TV news or read the comments on popular websites.

I spend a good amount of time thinking to myself (a la "The Princess Bride"),"You keep using that word - I do not think it means what you think it means." Then I confirm my suspicions with a dictionary.

Another word I really hate these days is "radicalize" -- but I digress. Sorry to go so far OT with all this.

[jacob]

@Dragline - Etymology is pertinent to the discussion or confusion as it is.

For example, scientists and laymen also have different and almost opposite operative definitions of the words fact and theory.

http://thinking-critically.com/2010/07/ ... efinition/

Ditto the word "scientific" which to a scientist means "adheres to the scientific method" whereas to a layman it means "concerning a collection of science facts".

However, words change too! Stoic means something different today than it did 2000 years ago. Which is fair. Also consider what the word "retirement" really means these days

There is such a thing as

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_skepticism

From the link (my highlights)

A skeptic is one who prefers beliefs and conclusions that are reliable and valid to ones that are comforting or convenient, and therefore rigorously and openly applies the methods of science and reason to all empirical claims, especially their own. A skeptic provisionally proportions acceptance of any claim to valid logic and a fair and thorough assessment of available evidence, and studies the pitfalls of human reason and the mechanisms of deception so as to avoid being deceived by others or themselves. Skepticism values method over any particular conclusion.

IOW, one can't claim to be a skeptic or be skeptical (scientifically speaking) if one has not rigorously looked into the matter. By that measure an admission of tl;dr disqualifies the skeptic-label. Similarly, in order to be a scientific skeptic the methods of science and reason has to be applied to ALL claims (including one's own). Not many self-proclaimed skeptics meet this critera.

True skeptics(*)---people who painstakingly and methologically go through each and every claim to verify it---are so rare that they become famous. Richard Muller is a well-known example.

(*) As judged by their behaviour rather than they self-labelling. Unfortunately (see chess example above) it takes some skill to distinguish between someone who is proceeding scientifically and someone who is faking it.

This leads us to...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific ... skepticism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoskepticism

.. today genuine skepticism of the benign sort that looks evenly in all directions and encourages the advancement of knowledge seems vanishingly rare. Instead, we find a prevalence of pseudo-skepticism consisting of harsh and invidious skepticism toward one's opponents' points of view and observations, and egregious self-congratulatory confirmatory bias toward one's own stances and findings misrepresented as the earnest and dispassionate pursuit of clinical, scholarly, and scientific truth.

And its proposed solution... (debunk the informal fallacies)

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... kepticism/

[GandK]

Related Nat Geo article.

Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/ ... nbach-text

From the article:

Shtulman’s research indicates that as we become scientifically literate, we repress our naive beliefs but never eliminate them entirely. They lurk in our brains, chirping at us as we try to make sense of the world.

Most of us do that by relying on personal experience and anecdotes, on stories rather than statistics. We might get a prostate-specific antigen test, even though it’s no longer generally recommended, because it caught a close friend’s cancer—and we pay less attention to statistical evidence, painstakingly compiled through multiple studies, showing that the test rarely saves lives but triggers many unnecessary surgeries. Or we hear about a cluster of cancer cases in a town with a hazardous waste dump, and we assume pollution caused the cancers.

This sounds like the difference between extraverted thinking (established science) and introverted thinking (personal scientific experience) to me.

Americans fall into two basic camps, Kahan says. Those with a more “egalitarian” and “communitarian” mind-set are generally suspicious of industry and apt to think it’s up to something dangerous that calls for government regulation; they’re likely to see the risks of climate change. In contrast, people with a “hierarchical” and “individualistic” mind-set respect leaders of industry and don’t like government interfering in their affairs; they’re apt to reject warnings about climate change, because they know what accepting them could lead to—some kind of tax or regulation to limit emissions.

Yeah... not sure I buy this breakdown. He sounds like he's saying people with perceiving and feeling tendencies are more likely to see the risks of climate change than people with judging and thinking preferences.

[jacob]

I think MBTI is failing here because it's rather agnostic (it doesn't capture the dimensions of) in terms of education, literacy, and dogmatism.

Te is only making sense of established science if that person is actually studying science text books. If not, then Te is prone to make naive or incomplete "common sense" conclusions about personal anecdotal observations. It all depends on what Te is looking at AND what Ti is thinking about.

The trouble goes way back, of course. The scientific method leads us to truths that are less than self-evident, often mind-blowing, and sometimes hard to swallow. In the early 17th century, when Galileo claimed that the Earth spins on its axis and orbits the sun, he wasn’t just rejecting church doctrine. He was asking people to believe something that defied common sense—because it sure looks like the sun’s going around the Earth, and you can’t feel the Earth spinning.

Mostly [when not studying the books] Te is making sense of immediate experience as it is "The world is flat because when I walk down the road it's my experience that I don't follow an arc but a line and therefore the simple conclusion is that the Earth is flat as common sense would have it" whereas Ti would consider the logical inconsistency between "When I walk down the road, I follow a line. Yet I also see that ship's masts vanish under the horizon and thus follow an arc so what I perceive as a line on short distances and an arc on long distances can only be consistently explained if Earth is a really big sphere". However, you could also have Te ignore select pieces of uncomfortable evidence or Ti trying to make up contrived explanations to retain the ideology, e.g. "The ships masts are disappearing in the haze"). By themselves, Te/Ti signify no particular orientation.

In short, MBTI is not so useful to distinguish these behaviors. I think you'll be better off with this:
http://www.amazon.com/Open-Closed-Mind- ... B001NE49K4
or for a more politically correct, more general, and modern approach
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4994

[GandK]

@jacob:

I bet you're right.

Thanks. That book is now on my reading list. Human beliefs and belief systems are extremely interesting to me, especially how/when/whether those beliefs actually cause behavior. I read Joseph Campbell's work when I was young and was hooked.

[IlliniDave]

Americans fall into two basic camps, Kahan says. Those with a more “egalitarian” and “communitarian” mind-set are generally suspicious of industry and apt to think it’s up to something dangerous that calls for government regulation; they’re likely to see the risks of climate change. In contrast, people with a “hierarchical” and “individualistic” mind-set respect leaders of industry and don’t like government interfering in their affairs; they’re apt to reject warnings about climate change, because they know what accepting them could lead to—some kind of tax or regulation to limit emissions.

Yeah... not sure I buy this breakdown. He sounds like he's saying people with perceiving and feeling tendencies are more likely to see the risks of climate change than people with judging and thinking preferences.

I don't know that it's as much personality type and a simple two-bucket model as it is a case of who do you mistrust more. Government, industry, and academia, all have vested interests in swaying popular opinion/beliefs because it affects the flow of money. None are above engaging in a little "spin".

[jacob]

This is what I pointed out in the second post of this thread.

Given the science,

* if you frame a solution that calls for government regulation, Repulicans will be biased against the science and Democrats will be biased for it. E.g. climate science and vaccinations.

* if you frame a solution that calls for government deregulation, Democrats will be biased against the science and Republicans will be biased for it. E.g. GMO food.

It's not that Democrats nor Republicans (politicians and laymen) are consistently anti-science or pro-science. It's rather that they're effectively no-science and simply talk their political book and pick whoever they trust rather than look at the science itself.

There seems to be this layman misunderstanding that (see a couple of posts above ... there was a link ... most probably skipped it) ... that

* Facts are statements that make sense to me.
* Science is a collection of facts about nature.
* A theory is just a guess often based on opinion.

Which then leads to the erroneous conclusion that special interest groups can posses different collections of facts that people can then choose to trust according to which makes the most sense to them [and their political ideology].

This is completely misinformed.

* Facts are a collection of repeatable and verifiable evidence. (This means that there's only ONE set of facts. Not multiple sets.)
* Science is a method of organizing and understanding these facts. (This means that the method is NOT in possession of a specific group like e.g. government, industry, or academia.)
* A theory is a self-consistent explanation of ALL these facts. (This means that a theory is a very strong explanation of the observed evidence)

This means that nobody needs to trust industry, government, or academia when it comes to science. You may want to but you do not have to. You can actually go and verify for yourself. Trust is beyond the point. Eliminating this need to trust [the spin(*) of] other groups of people is the ENTIRE purpose of the scientific method. A real skeptic who does not believe the science will ask to verify the evidence. This is possible because it's repeatable. They can then follow the logical argument. This will lead to the same scientific understanding because logical arguments are also repeatable. Richard Muller is an example of this(**)

(*) Note that we also have a lot of documented evidence whose kind of spin receives the majority of the money flow. Latest example:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ti ... -Soon.html

(**) http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/2/cl ... st_richard

----

To stay somewhat on topic, the solution to this particular problem is for scientists to stay away from framing the science in the form of solutions. E.g. doing it like this would be a mistake
1) The house is on fire, so we need fire-regulation in the form of water.
2) The house is on fire, so we need to deregulate the water to fight the fire.
and stick to
3) The house is on fire.

[GandK]

LOL... I had a lengthy ongoing debate with a botanist a few years back about the word "theory" and the havoc it causes in scientific debates (coincidentally, as it related to climate change). It went like this:

Him: "The scientific theory is X."
Me: "Dude.. if you want people to agree with you, don't use the word 'theory'."
Him: "But that's what it's called."
Me: "But the other 98% of the public hears the word 'theory' and assumes you mean 'hypothesis' because that's how they use that word conversationally. So you can't say 'theory' if you want to convince them it's true."
Him: "But it IS a scientific theory!"
Me: "But they're the ones who vote, so they win. You get to pick a different word if you want to convince them."
Him: "That's crazy! A theory is not a hypothesis..."

Repeated ad nauseum.

[jacob]

Yeah, the problem is that all the words (science, scientific, scientist, fact, theory, skeptic, ...) are corrupted or rather mean different things to different people in that way.

However, it's not a simple fix of just changing the words to match the other side. The relation between the words are also different between the "2%" and the "98%". This is a much bigger problem because it's a conceptual problem.

This is why I can't simply say to the "98%" that "It's a scientific FACT" because he'll say "Well, I got my own facts and they don't agree with yours".

I can't ask him to "Please provide these facts (I mean verifiable evidence)" because he'll say "I already provided you with the scientific facts (he means his sensible opinion about a scientific matter)".

If I say "You haven't provided any reasons for your argument (Meaning he hasn't put together a logical chain of evidence)", he'll say "I've provided the facts in a very reasonable and logical manner (meaning he has patiently restated his sensible opinion in a reasonable and polite manner over and over in a simple way that anyone should be able to follow).

This is why these hopeless debates mostly feel like banging your head against the wall (on both sides). Communication is failing on a very fundamental level because when it comes to science average person is on a Wheaton level where they don't even understand what the scientific method is and how it works. Furthermore, it's practically impossible to increase their Wheaton level because of the Dunning-Kruger effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2 ... ger_effect ... Also see the Chess example early in this thread.

If you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent. […] the skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is.

—David Dunning

This is a catch-22 because a Dunning-Kruger afflicted layman (who by DK-corollary is also very confident in their "scientific facts") will refuse to believe that they're incompetent even if it's clear to those who are more competent. (Chess example again) They will therefore never [take steps to] arrive at the right answer on their own and they will resist any guidance towards the right answer from others because they mistake the 'educational effort' for debate.

[jacob]

More research from Dunning:

http://www.livescience.com/18706-people ... cracy.html
http://www.amerika.org/social-reality/t ... er-effect/
http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/eliasisqu ... uman-race/

[steveo73]

You can actually go and verify for yourself.

Agreed. You have to accept though that people have cognitive biases in the way that people assess science. Science is not something that cannot come under scrutiny. My take on for instance your belief structure is that you believe that science is somehow completely valid and unchanging if something is peer reviewed. This is definitively not the case. New studies come out that prove that previous studies were false.

Onto GW as an example. As recently as the 70's (maybe later) we were warned about the coming cooling. I personally don't use this as a reason to criticize GW but it does show how quickly our knowledge can change. There are plenty of examples of this within scientific study.

To stay somewhat on topic, the solution to this particular problem is for scientists to stay away from framing the science in the form of solutions. E.g. doing it like this would be a mistake
1) The house is on fire, so we need fire-regulation in the form of water.
2) The house is on fire, so we need to deregulate the water to fight the fire.
and stick to
3) The house is on fire.

I agree with this however scientists should also try to more clearly articulate the holes in their reasoning. How much better for instance would the science of GW be if the scientist said our models are based on a feedback mechanism of +x%. If we adjust this parameter to y% the results would be completely different. Our basis for choosing x instead of y is reasons 1,2 & 3 however we recognize that this is not something that we can currently prove at this point.

I'd add that once the media and money gets involved it becomes a cluster fuck. Calmly and rationally going through the issues especially when the science is not black and white is extremely difficult. Money and the media make it all a political shit fight. This article for instance has nothing really to do with its heading. Its all about putting one side of the GW debate onto a pedestal and hanging shit on the other.

[jacob]

Peer-review is a form of quality control and accountability to ensure that the argumentation in a publication is not flaky. Incidentally, this is why skeptics or rather pseudoskeptics never manage to get anything published except on blogs and newspaper editorials.

Personally, I have published over a dozen peer-reviewed scientific papers (most were first-authored) several of which changed or enhanced previous peer-reviwed conclusions. You can go find them at your local university library anywhere in the world. I know how science works and progresses. You seem to think that I'm confusing mathematics and science. I think only someone who has never worked in any of those fields could confuse this.

Furthermore, you seem to be unaware that the 1970s global cooling brouhaha was primarily hype generated by the media (Thank you Newsweek!) and that even at that time it was a minority position. Yes, there were papers published suggesting that aerosols in the form of pollution would lead to a new ice age. Yes, I have read some of them. Have you read any of them?

However, AT THE SAME TIME there were MANY MORE people and papers PREDICTING WARMING. This very important point is frequently missed. Why did you miss it? If you're as well-informed about GW theory as you say you are how could you possibly miss this? If you're being calm and unbiased how likely is it that you're remember only the small number of papers that happen to coincide with the conclusion you just failed to make?

Finally, you keep coming up with that simplified x ~ y model with a dial (which you probably learned in that 101 course you took on global warming back in the 90s some two decades ago) as being even remotely representative of how the modern general circulation models are put together. Contrary to what you try to imply, they are SELF-CONSISTENT AND VASTLY MORE INCLUSIVE AND DETAILED than what you believe or suggest here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Circulation_Model

Now, if you ACTUALLY READ AND/OR UNDERSTOOD the scientific papers you talk about instead of relying on blogs and news sources (judging by the links you previously provided), you would see that any and all assumptions that go into these models are actually discussed. Peer-review assures this. It's a blatantly basic thing for a reviewer to request and they do do that!

Second, most of the physics in modern simulations are based on first-principles. That means that the physical behavior and FEEDBACKS ARE CALCULATED DIRECTLY USING THE LAWS OF NATURE rather than relying on a crude parametrization. I can explain how this works to any level of detail you want, since I've actually worked and published doing this kind of work.

It's not a question of parametrizing or fiddling with some x% parameter. What you learned as an undergraduate twenty years ago was only meant to illustrate a principle so that undergraduates may grasp the idea during a one or two semester course. It's not how it's done in real work. The lecturer would have mentioned this too!

Now it may be that the complex results of the full model are presented in the form of a parametrized forcing model in order to efficiently summarize the results. However, you shouldn't naively confuse this for the underlying scientific model. That would be a rookie mistake.

You can be as "calmly and rational" as you want, but almost one year later, you're still arguing from a base of very little and highly biased information.

Lets not continue along this tangent!!!

[henrik]

To stay somewhat on topic, the solution to this particular problem is for scientists to stay away from framing the science in the form of solutions. E.g. doing it like this would be a mistake
1) The house is on fire, so we need fire-regulation in the form of water.
2) The house is on fire, so we need to deregulate the water to fight the fire.
and stick to
3) The house is on fire.

This. The fact that someone is an expert in a field does not necessarily mean that the same person or organisation is competent at policy analysis for that field (or in general).