I noticed that the people who were spamming HN about Ivermectin didn't care if the article was positive or negative. They just wanted to "get the party started" with a discussion.
It's central to anti-vax discourse to find some small detail and amplify it to something big, then repeat the process with another detail again and again.
It reminds me of the web site "The Motley Fool" that would post an article such as "Should you buy AAPL?" that would always hem and haw and come to no real conclusion. Perhaps the reader felt they were being diligent by considering so much contradictory information.
>It reminds me of the web site "The Motley Fool" that would post an article such as "Should you buy AAPL?" that would always hem and haw and come to no real conclusion. Perhaps the reader felt they were being diligent by considering so much contradictory information.
Yeah I also hate it when articles give me the arguments for and against some issue and let me come to my own conclusions instead of just telling me what I should think. /s
there is such a thing as reviewing the information about a topic, but then there is a "debate" which is a pernicious game people play in high school (e.g. arguing for and against positions that they don't believe in just to have an argument.) When adults have a "debate" usually the goal is to take an absurd position like
or the idea that God is an old man who sits on a throne and created the world in six days and legitimize it by comparing it to a real scientific or theological theory.
That document is incredibly ironic, if you know anything about actual debate. The common move of the experienced debater is to re-define terms to confuse the issue, then boldly advance a claim based on those bizarro-world definitions. That's exactly what is happening here...but, hilariously, being used to disparage debate.
Someone defines "debate" to mean a bunch of things that aren't actually true, then proceeds to make a document where the tenet is that there's something "better" than debate.
> Debate assumes that there is a right answer and that someone has it
This isn't true at all. It's a socratic game to gain a better understanding of the truth.
> Debate calls for investing wholeheartedly in one’s beliefs.
Any good debater can take either side of an issue with equal facility.
> Debate defends one’s own positions as the best solution and excludes other solutions.
Not a requirement of a debate. A good debater, in fact, often expands the playing field to win the debate.
> Debate defends assumptions as truth
No, and in fact, if you do this in a debate and are caught, you lose the debate.
>When adults have a "debate" usually the goal is to take an absurd position
Not so. Most debates are about mundane things like, Should we invest our limited RD budget on X or Y?, or should we send our kids to public or private school? Or is GoT or LotR a better series.
That table you linked is total nonsense trying to redefine fussy terms like debate, dialouge, discussion and artificially place them on a linear scale. T
Debate is a from of dialouge which is in turn a form of discussion.
Does everyone read the article or just take the click bait headline? What if the article emphasizes certain information while downplaying the rest.
If you make your own decision based on false, misleading, or partial information then it's only partially your decision because you've been manipulated.
Yep. Also related and relevant is how the brain works with regard to encoding falsehood; essentially, there's no delete button. Once a statement of possible fact has been discovered, it takes more energy and reinforcement for the brain to remember that it's false as opposed to just assuming it's true.
There's no evidence, at least as far as I am aware, for that proposition outside of fear-inducing lessons. It takes a lot of mental effort to unlearn "all snakes are dangerous" and not nearly as much effort to unlearn "giraffe necks got longer due to inherited individual adaptation."
It's not "doubt" that is harmful, but "doubt" that ties into people's feelings of anxiety. Long after a person is exposed to this kind of propaganda, the false "facts" will be forgotten but the emotional effect of the anxiety will remain.
"Second, scientists should consider what kinds of argument the data and conclusions serve. How might these shape public opinion? What policy decisions might they affect?"
>This has a key role in whether individual decisions are cast as a matter of ‘freedom’ versus ‘solidarity’, and regulations as restriction or protection.
A scientist with this type of filter is foremost an activist.
> Summary: defenestrate the pagans and apostates along with their dangerously corrupting ideas
Huh? From the OP:
> Much of my own work focuses on how industry exploits scientific credentials to bolster false claims that undermine breastfeeding to increase sales of formula milk and, ultimately, damage health. The strategies and patterns recur across industries: they have been documented in tobacco, fossil fuels, pharmaceuticals, food and more. This influence is so powerful that public-health researchers consider it a distinct area of study: ‘commercial determinants of health’.
> Throughout the pandemic, I’ve been saddened at how science has been hijacked. Arguments around herd immunity exemplify this: proponents claimed that acquiring immunity by infection was fine for most people and also that communities were well on their way to achieving herd immunity. The messages downplayed dangers for those with high risks of exposure or severe illness. Technical arguments over infection rates silently cemented the assumption that disabled or immunocompromised people did not merit collective protective action; nor did the workers whose jobs required dangerous public contact....
> The scientists who gum up the doubt machine do so by constantly pointing to the broader context, by acknowledging genuine scientific debate, by being alert to researchers’ political and commercial connections, and by staying educated on how denialism works. If more scientists did the same, these distorting strategies would be stymied.
It seems the problem this article is trying to solve is the one where scientists behave in such a way to allow people to misunderstand or misconstrue their work in order to support false or unscientific conclusions.
This article aside, it isn't. This idea stems from Cartesian methodological doubt which is the death knell for all knowledge. Methodological doubt is irrational. It is not rational to doubt things for no reason. You must have a reason for doubting something just as you must have a reason for believing something. Irrational doubt cannot be overcome through reason precisely because its genesis is not in the intellect, but in the will. It is arbitrarily assigned to something and so you cannot rationally resolve the cause of the doubt one way or another because there is no rational cause to resolve.
Rational doubt is the result of coming to know something credible that contradicts or undermines something you take to be true. This casts doubt on your prior belief. To resolve it, you must verify your prior belief and/or the new information.
> [1.] researchers must learn to identify authors of research, and their relationships with industry and with non-profit groups that have specialized agendas.
So research is not allowed to be respected by scientists if done with underlying business interests?
> [2.] scientists should consider what kinds of argument the data and conclusions serve.
So you should intentionally bias your results if they don't fit the narrative you wanted?
> [3.] scientists can consistently highlight correct information and avoid serving as inadvertent amplifiers of flawed information
This gets to the core of the problem. It assumes scientists know the truth and the 'correct' studies.
In my experience, my friends with unwise and problematic takes on Covid are almost 100% in the camp that scientists are trying to do the very things this article says they should do!
What we need is scientists who have backbone, who have an unwaivering unaltering desire to get to the truth at all costs. Anything less is both not scientific and not someone you should trust. You won't get the clear answers you want from this individual though.
Yes, scientists must absolutely be aware what ties authors have if those authors are arguing in bad faith to push an agenda:
> First, researchers must learn to identify authors of research, and their relationships with industry and with non-profit groups that have specialized agendas. How the tobacco industry paid scientists and physicians to serve as advisers and consultants to undermine the body of evidence pointing to the harms of tobacco is extensively documented. More recent examples abound. For instance, the non-profit International Life Sciences Institute, based in Washington DC and funded by leading companies in the food and chemical industries, promotes doubt about science that links ultraprocessed foods with health concerns, and provides experts to promote personal responsibility rather than regulations on junk food in policies to combat obesity.
Edit:
> What we need is scientists who have backbone, who have an unwaivering unaltering desire to get to the truth at all costs.
This is one part of what this article is demanding. It's arguing against efforts of entrenched interests - often businesses - to obscure the truth or make it harder for the general public to tell truth from untruth.
The second part is about taking action. Informing is one part, but at some point courses of action have to be decided - and for many problems, it's not enough to delegate this to individuals, the decision has to be taken on a collective level. Because we will never have 100% knowledge, a certain amount of uncertainty has to be tolerated when deciding on a course.
What this article also argues against is tactics that specifically target this unavoidable amount of uncertainty with the interest of delaying action.
> but at some point courses of action have to be decided
And doing that is not the scientist's job. So scientists should not be filtering what they say because they want to encourage or discourage some course of action. They should just be telling the truth as best they know it.
> for many problems, it's not enough to delegate this to individuals, the decision has to be taken on a collective level.
First, I think the problems for which a collective decision has to be made are much rarer than many people think. Governments have gotten their fingers into all kinds of pies that they don't actually need to be in, but where government intervention serves a special interest.
Second, there isn't just one collective level. There are many of them. As a general rule, you want people who are going to bear the costs and reap the benefits in a particular area to be involved in collective decisions about that area, but you don't want people involved who aren't. That generally means pushing collective decisions down to the lowest possible collective level. But again, our political system very often doesn't do that.
Third, when it comes to collective policy decisions, scientists have no special expertise; they are just citizens like everyone else. Scientists who believe some kind of action is required because of something they found in their scientific research still are only seeing that one narrow viewpoint of their research; that doesn't give them any special ability to see the big picture or to take other interests or factors into account.
> What this article also argues against is tactics that specifically target this unavoidable amount of uncertainty with the interest of delaying action.
Uncertainty can be used either way: it can be used to try to delay action, or to try to motivate it (we don't know whether X will be a problem, but if it is, it will be huge, so we can't take a chance on not doing something about it). Both can be issues.
> As a general rule, you want people who are going to bear the costs and reap the benefits in a particular area to be involved in collective decisions about that area, but you don't want people involved who aren't.
But this is exactly what the article is arguing for. Often enough industry groups like the tobacco or oil industry were manipulating policy such that they were reaping the benefits while everyone else was bearing the costs.
Those industry groups are already producing biased research. The article argues that more scientists should be ready to expose this bias.
This rule also isn't completely general. Those who bear the costs, those who reap the benefits and those who would be affected by actions might be three different groups.
It sometimes can be desirable to make a rule that is applied very broadly to avoid inequities and arbitrage effects. Finally, in global issues such as climate change and COVID, everyone is bearing the costs, so action can't be restricted locally.
> Uncertainty can be used either way: it can be used to try to delay action, or to try to motivate it (we don't know whether X will be a problem, but if it is, it will be huge, so we can't take a chance on not doing something about it). Both can be issues.
Both can be issues, yes. But in the discussed fields, again climate change, COVID, tobacco use, health effects of highly processed food, etc, scientific consensus is by a wide margin that X is both very likely and will deal enormous damage. So uncertainty in that direction is already very small.
Agreed. The call is honored by time but not execution.
The story is used to teach the wisdom of evaluating a plan on not only how desirable the outcome would be but also how it can be executed. It provides a moral lesson about the fundamental difference between ideas and their feasibility, and how this affects the value of a given plan.
> So research is not allowed to be respected by scientists if done with underlying business interests?
Not quite. It's more in the line of identifying potential bad actors to not grant them oportunities to poison the well, waste resources, and outright sabotage progress.
> So you should intentionally bias your results if they don't fit the narrative you wanted?
Not quite. It's more in the line of exercise critical thinking when analysing said work, and there are doubts or extraordinary claims or editorialized nuances (i.e., claims that glasses are half full to undermine and attack findings supporting the emptying glasses theory).
> This gets to the core of the problem. It assumes scientists know the truth and the 'correct' studies.
The job of a scientist consists of gathering data, analising results, and help explain and model phenomena so that we learn more about a subject and understand it better.
As part of this job, experiments are made and reproduced, and observations are reported in studies.
Non-"correct" studies are those that include claims and data that are not credible, reliable, and are outright unbelievable. With enough work, some of those are recanted, but they still cause problems as supporters of fringe theories, conspiracies, and outright lunacy have been known to continue using them to support their wild claims.
> The job of a scientist consists of gathering data, analising results, and help explain and model phenomena so that we learn more about a subject and understand it better.
As part of this job, experiments are made and reproduced, and observations are reported in studies.
As part of this job in areas where experiments can be done, yes. But in many areas of science, experiments cannot be done. Models can be constructed, but there is no way to validate them with controlled experiments the way you can in, say, particle physics. That means our level of confidence in models in such areas should be reduced; we should not even be saying that such models are "correct", because that level of confidence is simply not justified.
It's interesting how this author is essentially guilty of the very thing she accuses others of. She has simply taken for granted the totality of the Official Position as true almost as a matter of principle, and even though there is divergence of legitimate opinion on the subject.
"First, researchers must learn to identify authors of research, and their relationships with industry and with non-profit groups that have specialized agendas."
Conflicts of interest can be useful to know, but this borders on ad hominem. The whole point here is to engage with the argument being made. As I wrote elsewhere, doubt must have a rational basis. If someone is sowing irrational doubt, then you can counter it by showing why it's irrational and unjustified. You can't stop others from spreading manufactured FUD, but you can respond to the FUD by showing that it is FUD.
"Second, scientists should consider what kinds of argument the data and conclusions serve."
So begin with an official narrative and official political ends and advise scientists to refrain from publishing anything that goes against that narrative or those ends? No, thanks.
Also, the author does not seem concerned about the pervasive low trust in our political institutions today and how enacting certain polities feeds into that distrust, even though that concern falls entirely within the bounds of things that she seems to think are worthy of consideration.
The underlying problem is that everyone is familiar with the primitives of ordinary, day-to-day doubt: honesty, conflicting interests, status. We all practice it every day as part of our evolutionary programming, and some of us even like to watch the odd soap opera to keep scratching that itch.
Almost nobody really spends much time with that other kind of doubt, epistemological skepticism. Theories, hypotheses, observations. Dense articles, years of reading.
So what happens when someone brings up climate change, or covid, or anything else? You can be sure they look at the former. They want to know who said what, and they want to know the interests behind it. Is this or that person a liar? What motivations might they have?
It is disgusting to see this in a major scientific journal. If science is subordinate to policy advocacy, it isn't science.
> Although many scientific champions did provide appropriate context, I watched several respected colleagues step into debates on when, or if, society would reach herd immunity without realizing that the discussion was not simply a scientific debate. Their too-narrow focus unintentionally helped to promote controversy and doubt, and that ultimately impeded an effective public-health response.
So we shouldn't talk about facts because they might interfere with your preferred agenda. Fantastic. "The Science", in bold, bright letters.
The author isn't talking about misinformation here -- she's saying that discussion of a fact is somehow dangerous.
> The same happened around mask use, vaccination and school policies. This helped to shift public opinion on which public-health measures were ‘acceptable’: the fewer the better.
The latter does not follow from the former. And "the same happened" is a huge leap from the previous paragraph, which is about herd immunity...a scientific fact if there ever was one.
Well... when we get to herd immunity isn't a purely scientific number, because it depends on peoples' behavior, and peoples' behavior changes to some degree depending on what public health officials are telling them (or depending on what the media is saying that public health officials are saying).
So you're kind of right in your criticism (what we need from scientists is science, not what they think we need to hear). And yet, there is also an element of validity in what they're saying here too - matters of science are not just matters of science. They change peoples' behavior, in ways that the scientists may not have taken into account.
> matters of science are not just matters of science. They change peoples' behavior, in ways that the scientists may not have taken into account.
And given this, the only defensible position for the scientist to take is to tell the truth as best they know it, including the truth about what we don't know or don't understand, as well as about what we do know and do understand. That way the responsibility for other people's behavior is on the other people--they were told the truth as best the scientists knew it, and if they made a bad judgment based on that truth, it's their responsibility.
Whereas, if a scientist tries to twist or filter the truth because of some belief they have about how it might change other people's behavior, now it's their responsibility if those other people end up doing something harmful, because they didn't just tell the truth as best they knew it, they tried to judge what they wanted other people to do and filtered what they said based on that. And that's not their job.
I agree, but I will go one step further: It is also the responsibility of the science reporters to not filter out the truth about what we don't know and don't understand. That part's important. Don't skip it to make the story sexier or more viral.
In fact, I wonder if more of the responsibility for the recent problems is on the reporters, rather than the scientists.
> I wonder if more of the responsibility for the recent problems is on the reporters, rather than the scientists.
Back when most science information only got to the general public through reporters, I think this might have been a valid point.
However, now many scientists are communicating directly with the public, through blogs, articles, interviews, etc., so I think more of the responsibility for miscommunication falls on them directly. Some scientists are even doing end runs around the scientific process by publishing popular articles on their own research before it has been replicated or even reviewed by other experts in the field.
(Personally, I never even bother reading an article by a science reporter; if I'm interested enough in the topic, I find the actual paper documenting the original research and read that.)
Yes, many scientists are communicating through blogs, etc. However, I suspect that the general public still mostly gets their science information through reporters. The general public is not reading scientists' blogs. They're free to do so, but they don't.
You're correct that "when" herd immunity is achieved is an estimate. But that doesn't make the author right. The point of the article is that you can't talk about it at all -- at least, not with out so-called "broader context" to weaken the discussions -- lest you undermine her preferred public health policy.
I don't particularly care what any particular person thinks about the "herd immunity threshold". I don't really think it's a useful discussion, as a single number (i.e. "herd immunity" has probably been achieved and lost locally multiple times over the course of the pandemic). But the suggestion that anyone who dares make a prediction about it should be scolded for being an apostate is a steaming pile of anti-intellectual bunkus.
And frankly, if someone disagrees with the author's preferred public health dictates, they should be allowed to talk about that too. I missed the memo where we made her judge and jury for scientific discourse.
>Suppose [a person] had a basket full of apples and, being worried that some of the apples were rotten, wanted to take out the rotten ones to prevent the rot spreading. How would he proceed? Would he not begin by tipping the whole lot out of the basket? And would not the next step be to cast his eye over each apple in turn, and pick up and put back in the basket only those he saw to be sound, leaving the others?
-Descartes
Science is done by clearly and logically addressing doubt. Sweeping doubt under the rug and showing prejudice in which evidence is presented is antithetical to the impetus of science (a disimpassioned search for unwavering truth). I'm surprised this is published in nature.
The issue this article is talking about is you can very quickly generate hundreds of bad studies and outright lies that take decades to discredit. And even after all that effort, those studies will STILL be cited not because of the validity, but the narrative.
For example, vaccines an autism. We have so many high quality studies proving with as much certainty as you can in medicine that vaccines do not cause autism. Yet that's a claim that hasn't died off yet (And Mr. Wakefield's fraud study with the initial lie is STILL cited as if there were some sort of conspiracy to cover it up).
So what's the solution? It's easier to quickly lie than it is to experiment and prove. It's easier to falsify data than it is to prove data was falsified.
What other choice is there but to lean on consensus and reputation?
Well, one strategy would be to preemptively rebut common misrepresentations and meaningless critiques, I do agree scientists could benefit from this technique. And if it's just misinformation with no merit, use Hitchen's Razor.
However, established science has been wrong before about things there was a consensus on. We should investigate evidence that casts doubt on consensus if there is some merit, even if it is painstaking. It's one of the less sexy and tedious aspects of science, nevertheless important.
"Well, one strategy would be to preemptively rebut common misrepresentations and meaningless critiques..."
The reply: "What's that got to do with anything I said? I'm saying <a rephrased version of one or more of the misrepresentations>." If they reply with a different misrepresentation, it becomes the Gish Gallop; they will eventually cycle back around to one of your rebutted misrepresentations, but by then everyone will have forgotten your rebuttal.
"And if it's just misinformation with no merit, use Hitchen's Razor."
The response: "See, they're not even responding to our evidence! They're silencing dissent!"
"We should investigate evidence that casts doubt on consensus if there is some merit, even if it is painstaking."
Which is one of the points of this article: while you are reconsidering the evidence for thermodynamics, you are not addressing the problem. They've won. This is why it took thirty years after the original Surgeon General's report to begin to address cigarette smoking. This is why humanity has done essentially nothing about climate change.
Established science has been wrong before, but when facing an immediate problem the current consensus is probably where you want to put your money.
> However, established science has been wrong before about things there was a consensus on.
As time goes on, this is something that only becomes more rare. How many established scientific consensus's proven wrong can you think of in the past 30 years?
That is the nature of science. We aren't going to discover that, all along the world was actually flat. Similarly, we aren't going to discover that global warming isn't real or evolution doesn't exist.
Some areas of science have unbelievable amounts of evidence of support. Yet you often find those facts to be challenged the most when the come in conflict with profits (the fossil fuel industry).
Said another way, don't get nerd snipped by people who are trying to weaponize your professional scepticism for ulterior motives.
This means that most of the time when dealing with adversaries you have to go against your usual scientific instincts, assume your position is correct, and reframe the conversation at a higher level about power, money, etc. Controlling where attention goes in these conversations is critical.
Refusing to engage adversaries at the technical level seems wrong, but is the only way to defend against the fact that science operates by default at a level of doubt that the normal population simply cannot sustain without being driven to apathy (which is the objective of the adversaries).
Part of the issue is recognizing adversaries and bad faith. In much of science, disagreements are still in good faith. But engaging bad-faith actors with the same tactics as good-faith ones, and engaging with the journalling public in the same way that you engage with other good-faith scientists, leads to losing the game that they’re playing.
Heh, yeah. We need to add another class to the ethics courses. "How to interact with parties who would be politically or economically impacted by the results of your research."
How much do we really want scientists writ large trying to optimize for the job of ensuring that the public is properly educated at the appropriate level of doubt?
The adversaries we're trying to defend against will only have something else to point to and say "they have an explicit goal of manipulating public opinion to downplay climate/covid/round-earth skepticism", which isn't really that far off from what you're describing.
Trying to properly gauge how new information is processed among hundreds of millions of people just seems like an expertise that is totally orthogonal to having a deep understanding of a scientific discipline. What you're talking about not only seems wrong, but just doesn't seem like the best way to go about solving the problem.
I actually think forcing someone acting in bad faith (to use the sibling response's nomenclature) to accuse scientists out loud and directly in such a way is the right approach here.
The reason for this is that it forces the bad faith actor to enter the scene, they can't just slink away once the damage has been done and point back at the "doubt." It breaks the 4th wall in a sense, forcing the audience to realize that there is an active party with their own agenda in the scene.
Effectively all a scientist has to say is "The literature is an evolving work that reflects our current understanding. There are many factors that are involved in making public policy, and it seems that you are looking for a way to limit the influence that science can have on that policy to further your own goals that are driven by other factors that seem to be at odds with the public good."
It would be nice if they could also say "Anyone can read the literature for themselves ..." but unfortunately that is not currently the case.
Similar accusations against scientists have been ongoing for decades and I don't think the 4th wall dynamic is playing out at all like you're expecting. Realizing that there are parties with agendas in the scene also implicates scientists. I think the result has actually been that adversaries have seen unprecedented success at discrediting scientific institutions and scientists themselves.
"The field of agnotology (the study of deliberate spreading of confusion) shows how ignorance and doubt can be purposefully manufactured." Tomori suggests that untruth is asymmetric between corporate and government interests.
54 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] threadIt's central to anti-vax discourse to find some small detail and amplify it to something big, then repeat the process with another detail again and again.
It reminds me of the web site "The Motley Fool" that would post an article such as "Should you buy AAPL?" that would always hem and haw and come to no real conclusion. Perhaps the reader felt they were being diligent by considering so much contradictory information.
Yeah I also hate it when articles give me the arguments for and against some issue and let me come to my own conclusions instead of just telling me what I should think. /s
https://depts.washington.edu/fammed/wp-content/uploads/2018/...
there is such a thing as reviewing the information about a topic, but then there is a "debate" which is a pernicious game people play in high school (e.g. arguing for and against positions that they don't believe in just to have an argument.) When adults have a "debate" usually the goal is to take an absurd position like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worlds_in_Collision
or the idea that God is an old man who sits on a throne and created the world in six days and legitimize it by comparing it to a real scientific or theological theory.
Someone defines "debate" to mean a bunch of things that aren't actually true, then proceeds to make a document where the tenet is that there's something "better" than debate.
> Debate assumes that there is a right answer and that someone has it
This isn't true at all. It's a socratic game to gain a better understanding of the truth.
> Debate calls for investing wholeheartedly in one’s beliefs.
Any good debater can take either side of an issue with equal facility.
> Debate defends one’s own positions as the best solution and excludes other solutions.
Not a requirement of a debate. A good debater, in fact, often expands the playing field to win the debate.
> Debate defends assumptions as truth
No, and in fact, if you do this in a debate and are caught, you lose the debate.
Not so. Most debates are about mundane things like, Should we invest our limited RD budget on X or Y?, or should we send our kids to public or private school? Or is GoT or LotR a better series.
That table you linked is total nonsense trying to redefine fussy terms like debate, dialouge, discussion and artificially place them on a linear scale. T Debate is a from of dialouge which is in turn a form of discussion.
If you make your own decision based on false, misleading, or partial information then it's only partially your decision because you've been manipulated.
That's the goal of the merchants of chaos.
Peachy.
A scientist with this type of filter is foremost an activist.
Huh? From the OP:
> Much of my own work focuses on how industry exploits scientific credentials to bolster false claims that undermine breastfeeding to increase sales of formula milk and, ultimately, damage health. The strategies and patterns recur across industries: they have been documented in tobacco, fossil fuels, pharmaceuticals, food and more. This influence is so powerful that public-health researchers consider it a distinct area of study: ‘commercial determinants of health’.
> Throughout the pandemic, I’ve been saddened at how science has been hijacked. Arguments around herd immunity exemplify this: proponents claimed that acquiring immunity by infection was fine for most people and also that communities were well on their way to achieving herd immunity. The messages downplayed dangers for those with high risks of exposure or severe illness. Technical arguments over infection rates silently cemented the assumption that disabled or immunocompromised people did not merit collective protective action; nor did the workers whose jobs required dangerous public contact....
> The scientists who gum up the doubt machine do so by constantly pointing to the broader context, by acknowledging genuine scientific debate, by being alert to researchers’ political and commercial connections, and by staying educated on how denialism works. If more scientists did the same, these distorting strategies would be stymied.
It seems the problem this article is trying to solve is the one where scientists behave in such a way to allow people to misunderstand or misconstrue their work in order to support false or unscientific conclusions.
Rational doubt is the result of coming to know something credible that contradicts or undermines something you take to be true. This casts doubt on your prior belief. To resolve it, you must verify your prior belief and/or the new information.
> [1.] researchers must learn to identify authors of research, and their relationships with industry and with non-profit groups that have specialized agendas.
So research is not allowed to be respected by scientists if done with underlying business interests?
> [2.] scientists should consider what kinds of argument the data and conclusions serve.
So you should intentionally bias your results if they don't fit the narrative you wanted?
> [3.] scientists can consistently highlight correct information and avoid serving as inadvertent amplifiers of flawed information
This gets to the core of the problem. It assumes scientists know the truth and the 'correct' studies.
In my experience, my friends with unwise and problematic takes on Covid are almost 100% in the camp that scientists are trying to do the very things this article says they should do!
What we need is scientists who have backbone, who have an unwaivering unaltering desire to get to the truth at all costs. Anything less is both not scientific and not someone you should trust. You won't get the clear answers you want from this individual though.
> First, researchers must learn to identify authors of research, and their relationships with industry and with non-profit groups that have specialized agendas. How the tobacco industry paid scientists and physicians to serve as advisers and consultants to undermine the body of evidence pointing to the harms of tobacco is extensively documented. More recent examples abound. For instance, the non-profit International Life Sciences Institute, based in Washington DC and funded by leading companies in the food and chemical industries, promotes doubt about science that links ultraprocessed foods with health concerns, and provides experts to promote personal responsibility rather than regulations on junk food in policies to combat obesity.
Edit:
> What we need is scientists who have backbone, who have an unwaivering unaltering desire to get to the truth at all costs.
This is one part of what this article is demanding. It's arguing against efforts of entrenched interests - often businesses - to obscure the truth or make it harder for the general public to tell truth from untruth.
The second part is about taking action. Informing is one part, but at some point courses of action have to be decided - and for many problems, it's not enough to delegate this to individuals, the decision has to be taken on a collective level. Because we will never have 100% knowledge, a certain amount of uncertainty has to be tolerated when deciding on a course.
What this article also argues against is tactics that specifically target this unavoidable amount of uncertainty with the interest of delaying action.
That is the whole point of having a transparent debate and looking at falsifiable evidence/tests.
And doing that is not the scientist's job. So scientists should not be filtering what they say because they want to encourage or discourage some course of action. They should just be telling the truth as best they know it.
> for many problems, it's not enough to delegate this to individuals, the decision has to be taken on a collective level.
First, I think the problems for which a collective decision has to be made are much rarer than many people think. Governments have gotten their fingers into all kinds of pies that they don't actually need to be in, but where government intervention serves a special interest.
Second, there isn't just one collective level. There are many of them. As a general rule, you want people who are going to bear the costs and reap the benefits in a particular area to be involved in collective decisions about that area, but you don't want people involved who aren't. That generally means pushing collective decisions down to the lowest possible collective level. But again, our political system very often doesn't do that.
Third, when it comes to collective policy decisions, scientists have no special expertise; they are just citizens like everyone else. Scientists who believe some kind of action is required because of something they found in their scientific research still are only seeing that one narrow viewpoint of their research; that doesn't give them any special ability to see the big picture or to take other interests or factors into account.
> What this article also argues against is tactics that specifically target this unavoidable amount of uncertainty with the interest of delaying action.
Uncertainty can be used either way: it can be used to try to delay action, or to try to motivate it (we don't know whether X will be a problem, but if it is, it will be huge, so we can't take a chance on not doing something about it). Both can be issues.
But this is exactly what the article is arguing for. Often enough industry groups like the tobacco or oil industry were manipulating policy such that they were reaping the benefits while everyone else was bearing the costs.
Those industry groups are already producing biased research. The article argues that more scientists should be ready to expose this bias.
This rule also isn't completely general. Those who bear the costs, those who reap the benefits and those who would be affected by actions might be three different groups. It sometimes can be desirable to make a rule that is applied very broadly to avoid inequities and arbitrage effects. Finally, in global issues such as climate change and COVID, everyone is bearing the costs, so action can't be restricted locally.
> Uncertainty can be used either way: it can be used to try to delay action, or to try to motivate it (we don't know whether X will be a problem, but if it is, it will be huge, so we can't take a chance on not doing something about it). Both can be issues.
Both can be issues, yes. But in the discussed fields, again climate change, COVID, tobacco use, health effects of highly processed food, etc, scientific consensus is by a wide margin that X is both very likely and will deal enormous damage. So uncertainty in that direction is already very small.
Well, they also need to eat. So you'll have to pay them for it, as directly as possible.
The story is used to teach the wisdom of evaluating a plan on not only how desirable the outcome would be but also how it can be executed. It provides a moral lesson about the fundamental difference between ideas and their feasibility, and how this affects the value of a given plan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belling_the_Cat
Not quite. It's more in the line of identifying potential bad actors to not grant them oportunities to poison the well, waste resources, and outright sabotage progress.
> So you should intentionally bias your results if they don't fit the narrative you wanted?
Not quite. It's more in the line of exercise critical thinking when analysing said work, and there are doubts or extraordinary claims or editorialized nuances (i.e., claims that glasses are half full to undermine and attack findings supporting the emptying glasses theory).
> This gets to the core of the problem. It assumes scientists know the truth and the 'correct' studies.
The job of a scientist consists of gathering data, analising results, and help explain and model phenomena so that we learn more about a subject and understand it better.
As part of this job, experiments are made and reproduced, and observations are reported in studies.
Non-"correct" studies are those that include claims and data that are not credible, reliable, and are outright unbelievable. With enough work, some of those are recanted, but they still cause problems as supporters of fringe theories, conspiracies, and outright lunacy have been known to continue using them to support their wild claims.
As part of this job, experiments are made and reproduced, and observations are reported in studies.
As part of this job in areas where experiments can be done, yes. But in many areas of science, experiments cannot be done. Models can be constructed, but there is no way to validate them with controlled experiments the way you can in, say, particle physics. That means our level of confidence in models in such areas should be reduced; we should not even be saying that such models are "correct", because that level of confidence is simply not justified.
"First, researchers must learn to identify authors of research, and their relationships with industry and with non-profit groups that have specialized agendas."
Conflicts of interest can be useful to know, but this borders on ad hominem. The whole point here is to engage with the argument being made. As I wrote elsewhere, doubt must have a rational basis. If someone is sowing irrational doubt, then you can counter it by showing why it's irrational and unjustified. You can't stop others from spreading manufactured FUD, but you can respond to the FUD by showing that it is FUD.
"Second, scientists should consider what kinds of argument the data and conclusions serve."
So begin with an official narrative and official political ends and advise scientists to refrain from publishing anything that goes against that narrative or those ends? No, thanks.
Also, the author does not seem concerned about the pervasive low trust in our political institutions today and how enacting certain polities feeds into that distrust, even though that concern falls entirely within the bounds of things that she seems to think are worthy of consideration.
Almost nobody really spends much time with that other kind of doubt, epistemological skepticism. Theories, hypotheses, observations. Dense articles, years of reading.
So what happens when someone brings up climate change, or covid, or anything else? You can be sure they look at the former. They want to know who said what, and they want to know the interests behind it. Is this or that person a liar? What motivations might they have?
> Although many scientific champions did provide appropriate context, I watched several respected colleagues step into debates on when, or if, society would reach herd immunity without realizing that the discussion was not simply a scientific debate. Their too-narrow focus unintentionally helped to promote controversy and doubt, and that ultimately impeded an effective public-health response.
So we shouldn't talk about facts because they might interfere with your preferred agenda. Fantastic. "The Science", in bold, bright letters.
The author isn't talking about misinformation here -- she's saying that discussion of a fact is somehow dangerous.
> The same happened around mask use, vaccination and school policies. This helped to shift public opinion on which public-health measures were ‘acceptable’: the fewer the better.
The latter does not follow from the former. And "the same happened" is a huge leap from the previous paragraph, which is about herd immunity...a scientific fact if there ever was one.
So you're kind of right in your criticism (what we need from scientists is science, not what they think we need to hear). And yet, there is also an element of validity in what they're saying here too - matters of science are not just matters of science. They change peoples' behavior, in ways that the scientists may not have taken into account.
And given this, the only defensible position for the scientist to take is to tell the truth as best they know it, including the truth about what we don't know or don't understand, as well as about what we do know and do understand. That way the responsibility for other people's behavior is on the other people--they were told the truth as best the scientists knew it, and if they made a bad judgment based on that truth, it's their responsibility.
Whereas, if a scientist tries to twist or filter the truth because of some belief they have about how it might change other people's behavior, now it's their responsibility if those other people end up doing something harmful, because they didn't just tell the truth as best they knew it, they tried to judge what they wanted other people to do and filtered what they said based on that. And that's not their job.
In fact, I wonder if more of the responsibility for the recent problems is on the reporters, rather than the scientists.
Back when most science information only got to the general public through reporters, I think this might have been a valid point.
However, now many scientists are communicating directly with the public, through blogs, articles, interviews, etc., so I think more of the responsibility for miscommunication falls on them directly. Some scientists are even doing end runs around the scientific process by publishing popular articles on their own research before it has been replicated or even reviewed by other experts in the field.
(Personally, I never even bother reading an article by a science reporter; if I'm interested enough in the topic, I find the actual paper documenting the original research and read that.)
I don't particularly care what any particular person thinks about the "herd immunity threshold". I don't really think it's a useful discussion, as a single number (i.e. "herd immunity" has probably been achieved and lost locally multiple times over the course of the pandemic). But the suggestion that anyone who dares make a prediction about it should be scolded for being an apostate is a steaming pile of anti-intellectual bunkus.
And frankly, if someone disagrees with the author's preferred public health dictates, they should be allowed to talk about that too. I missed the memo where we made her judge and jury for scientific discourse.
I hope they all fail.
Science is done by clearly and logically addressing doubt. Sweeping doubt under the rug and showing prejudice in which evidence is presented is antithetical to the impetus of science (a disimpassioned search for unwavering truth). I'm surprised this is published in nature.
Edit: tried to format the quote, didn't work.
The issue this article is talking about is you can very quickly generate hundreds of bad studies and outright lies that take decades to discredit. And even after all that effort, those studies will STILL be cited not because of the validity, but the narrative.
For example, vaccines an autism. We have so many high quality studies proving with as much certainty as you can in medicine that vaccines do not cause autism. Yet that's a claim that hasn't died off yet (And Mr. Wakefield's fraud study with the initial lie is STILL cited as if there were some sort of conspiracy to cover it up).
So what's the solution? It's easier to quickly lie than it is to experiment and prove. It's easier to falsify data than it is to prove data was falsified.
What other choice is there but to lean on consensus and reputation?
However, established science has been wrong before about things there was a consensus on. We should investigate evidence that casts doubt on consensus if there is some merit, even if it is painstaking. It's one of the less sexy and tedious aspects of science, nevertheless important.
The reply: "What's that got to do with anything I said? I'm saying <a rephrased version of one or more of the misrepresentations>." If they reply with a different misrepresentation, it becomes the Gish Gallop; they will eventually cycle back around to one of your rebutted misrepresentations, but by then everyone will have forgotten your rebuttal.
"And if it's just misinformation with no merit, use Hitchen's Razor."
The response: "See, they're not even responding to our evidence! They're silencing dissent!"
"We should investigate evidence that casts doubt on consensus if there is some merit, even if it is painstaking."
Which is one of the points of this article: while you are reconsidering the evidence for thermodynamics, you are not addressing the problem. They've won. This is why it took thirty years after the original Surgeon General's report to begin to address cigarette smoking. This is why humanity has done essentially nothing about climate change.
Established science has been wrong before, but when facing an immediate problem the current consensus is probably where you want to put your money.
As time goes on, this is something that only becomes more rare. How many established scientific consensus's proven wrong can you think of in the past 30 years?
That is the nature of science. We aren't going to discover that, all along the world was actually flat. Similarly, we aren't going to discover that global warming isn't real or evolution doesn't exist.
Some areas of science have unbelievable amounts of evidence of support. Yet you often find those facts to be challenged the most when the come in conflict with profits (the fossil fuel industry).
This means that most of the time when dealing with adversaries you have to go against your usual scientific instincts, assume your position is correct, and reframe the conversation at a higher level about power, money, etc. Controlling where attention goes in these conversations is critical.
Refusing to engage adversaries at the technical level seems wrong, but is the only way to defend against the fact that science operates by default at a level of doubt that the normal population simply cannot sustain without being driven to apathy (which is the objective of the adversaries).
The adversaries we're trying to defend against will only have something else to point to and say "they have an explicit goal of manipulating public opinion to downplay climate/covid/round-earth skepticism", which isn't really that far off from what you're describing.
Trying to properly gauge how new information is processed among hundreds of millions of people just seems like an expertise that is totally orthogonal to having a deep understanding of a scientific discipline. What you're talking about not only seems wrong, but just doesn't seem like the best way to go about solving the problem.
The reason for this is that it forces the bad faith actor to enter the scene, they can't just slink away once the damage has been done and point back at the "doubt." It breaks the 4th wall in a sense, forcing the audience to realize that there is an active party with their own agenda in the scene.
Effectively all a scientist has to say is "The literature is an evolving work that reflects our current understanding. There are many factors that are involved in making public policy, and it seems that you are looking for a way to limit the influence that science can have on that policy to further your own goals that are driven by other factors that seem to be at odds with the public good."
It would be nice if they could also say "Anyone can read the literature for themselves ..." but unfortunately that is not currently the case.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
"The field of agnotology (the study of deliberate spreading of confusion) shows how ignorance and doubt can be purposefully manufactured." Tomori suggests that untruth is asymmetric between corporate and government interests.