Scientists, of course, are completely immune to these effects, being a superior breed that isn't swayed by the material they read or the social milieu they immerse themselves in.
I think you misread the article it doesn’t make any distinction between scientists and everyone else. This was however an effect scientists studied and the article and linked paper in Nature explain more.
You seem to have fallen into the trap the article is about by letting your biases get ahead of you rather than actually engaging at a deeper level.
The dichotomy you suggest doesn't actual exist and the article doesn't suggest it either. What it actually suggests is:
> “The four most dangerous words are ‘do your own research’,” said Shah. “It seems counterintuitive because I’m an educator and we encourage students to do this. The problem is people don’t know how to do this.”
Then further about equipping people with tools to help:
> Shah said that it’s the responsibility of tech companies like Google to offer tools to help people parse fact from fiction. “We should be equipping them with the right tools. Those tools could come and should come from tech companies and search service providers.” Adding that it’s not up to them or governments to police content. “It’s not only technically infeasible but morally and socially wrong to suppress everything.”
> “First we need to have that awareness of ‘Just because you’re doing your research, that doesn’t mean that’s enough.' The more awareness people have, the more chance we have of having people think twice about the information they’re reading," said Shah.
So the issue isn't strictly people doing their own research but that they're terrible at it and mislead themselves. And the explicit suggestion is to improve education about how to find trustworthy information and tooling to do it not to just trust experts.
Your "second-order thinking" didn't go beyond the article or paper but misconstrued it. In a sense you invented your own fake news.
The only solution they offer here is to rely on the authority of the source. But every entrenched political party extreme, dictator, or military propagandist has popular media reinforcing the views that are beneficial to their group.
The worst part about these discussions is that there is no distinction made between the most unsubstantiated off-the-wall ideas and, for example, serious accusations against governments about real events (especially recent ones).
Appeal-to-authority is ultimately deadly for millions of people because it is a primary aspect of military propaganda. The way that works is that warfare is mass killing for strategic ends, and humans won't engage in that consciously. So propaganda is needed to dehumanize the enemy and provide a supposed moral basis to continue the killing efforts.
The primary distributor for this propaganda is your most sacred and trusted media source.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 20.2 ms ] threadIf people shouldn't do their own research, then the suggestion is they simply listen to expert advice. Which experts would that be? Scientists.
The dichotomy you suggest doesn't actual exist and the article doesn't suggest it either. What it actually suggests is:
> “The four most dangerous words are ‘do your own research’,” said Shah. “It seems counterintuitive because I’m an educator and we encourage students to do this. The problem is people don’t know how to do this.”
Then further about equipping people with tools to help:
> Shah said that it’s the responsibility of tech companies like Google to offer tools to help people parse fact from fiction. “We should be equipping them with the right tools. Those tools could come and should come from tech companies and search service providers.” Adding that it’s not up to them or governments to police content. “It’s not only technically infeasible but morally and socially wrong to suppress everything.”
> “First we need to have that awareness of ‘Just because you’re doing your research, that doesn’t mean that’s enough.' The more awareness people have, the more chance we have of having people think twice about the information they’re reading," said Shah.
So the issue isn't strictly people doing their own research but that they're terrible at it and mislead themselves. And the explicit suggestion is to improve education about how to find trustworthy information and tooling to do it not to just trust experts.
Your "second-order thinking" didn't go beyond the article or paper but misconstrued it. In a sense you invented your own fake news.
The worst part about these discussions is that there is no distinction made between the most unsubstantiated off-the-wall ideas and, for example, serious accusations against governments about real events (especially recent ones).
Appeal-to-authority is ultimately deadly for millions of people because it is a primary aspect of military propaganda. The way that works is that warfare is mass killing for strategic ends, and humans won't engage in that consciously. So propaganda is needed to dehumanize the enemy and provide a supposed moral basis to continue the killing efforts.
The primary distributor for this propaganda is your most sacred and trusted media source.