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The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

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Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#91

Post by jenius »

philh wrote: post #61

I find it vaguely amusing and ironic that he cites rationalwiki on the gish gallop, given that my impression is they do this themselves a bunch. (Note that running a gish gallop doesn't mean you're wrong , it just means you're intellectually dishonest.) (I try not to pay too much attention to them, and I'm not super interested in refuting their bullshit, so this comment is going to be pretty unsatisfying. Sorry.)

You can't make a comment like this with absolutely zero explanation other than that it was 'your impression'. I understand the whole refuting bullshit is a lot of work thing, but it's equally as irresponsible, if not more, to make a comment like this with no evidence for a claim. At least give us something!

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#93

Post by eplanit »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #47
themartorana wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the time those same students are doing the bulk of the legwork for those findings then attributed to a professor, who is under greater pressure to advance (not confirm) science, who may or may not have even participated heavily in the grunt work of that research. The professor then punishes the work under his/her name, with no credit to the work of the students.

Publishes. I assume that was a typo?

No doubt a typo. Punishment is the consequence of not publishing. :)

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#94

Post by davidw »

astazangasta wrote: post #87

I take issue with Brandolini's maxim: "The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." This assumes that we know, a priori, what is bullshit and what is not. Sometimes bullshitters know they are bullshitting, but most often they do not. What I think is really going on here is that the scientific method is crap for this sort of thing, there is no such thing as "em…

Brandolini's quote is brilliant. Going through evidence and conducting studies and doing research and looking through it with a critical eye is orders of magnitude more difficult than spouting some BS like "vaccines cause autism!!11!!111".

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#95

Post by astazangasta »

davidw wrote: post #94
astazangasta wrote: post #87

I take issue with Brandolini's maxim: "The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." This assumes that we know, a priori, what is bullshit and what is not. Sometimes bullshitters know they are bullshitting, but most often they do not. What I think is really going on here is that the scientific method is crap for this sort of thing, there is no such thing as "em…

Brandolini's quote is brilliant. Going through evidence and conducting studies and doing research and looking through it with a critical eye is orders of magnitude more difficult than spouting some BS like "vaccines cause autism!!11!!111".

I am more concerned about how bullshit operates within the house of science. Creationism is a canard and I wish the OP had not mentioned it.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#96

Post by mike_hearn »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #12
nsns wrote: post #6

Instead of a sisyphean refutation of every attack, wouldn't a better strategy be to research and prove the attacker's conflict of interests (and thus discredit them)?

Arguing against the speaker instead of the argument itself is bullshit too. Having a vested interest doesn't automatically discredit the things one says for their cause.

It is, but where do you draw the line?

In an ideal world where everyone was a rational, disinterested superhuman who devoted themselves to a scientific pursuit of truth, only ever focusing on arguments would be the perfect approach.

Unfortunately there do exist people who deliberately and knowingly bullshit other people in order to get what they want. Such people absolutely win from a policy of "attack the argument, not the person" because their goal is not to further understanding or even win arguments, it's to confuse people into acting a certain way ... often paralysing them into inaction by creating the appearance of an unending debate.

Thus refuting one bullshit argument simply results in two more popping up to replace it. Even if some people remember the first argument that was refuted, this doesn't help, because:

• Lots of other people won't remember the names of who was involved, or won't be aware of the previous arguments at all.

• Of the people who do remember, the fact that a debate was happening at all may be taken as evidence that the people involved must be "experts", and thus the fact that they lost the argument doesn't necessarily reduce their credibility.

• If someone was a good enough bullshitter to require a response in the first place, they will probably be good enough at it a second time to ensure that if they get no response, some people will start to assume they must be correct.

This can rapidly turn into complete defeat by the people who are actually making reasonable points because they simply become exhausted and burn out faced with an unending wall of plausible sounding nonsense, which then eventually replaces reality with itself.

I've seen this problem play out in brutally sharp detail not so long ago. The people involved knew they were bullshitting, but didn't care because in their eyes it was all for the greater good.

The only solution to this is, in fact, to attack the credibility of the people doing it once they have repeatedly made absurd or invalid arguments, because otherwise it's much harder for people to learn to tune them out.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#97

Post by entwife »

haberman wrote: post #92

Science is an organism that needs an immune system. At a systemic level, it needs to be hard to get away with this kind of thing.

The immune system of science is the peer review system and other mechanisms to reduce faulty science. This author points out published papers that made it past that immune system, and it some cases became part of it (e.g. as peer reviewers). What analogous structure in the immune system could repair problems with the system itself?

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#98

Post by cli »

Fede_V wrote: post #90
matheist wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In mathematics, multiple authors are always listed alphabetically by family name; ie there is no "first" or "second" author. In the situation you describe, the paper would probably be singly authored, and the author would write something like "Thanks to my advisor _____ and to my colleagues ____ for many helpful discussions" in an acknowledgments section. If the contributions were more serious, then possibly the auth…

In life sciences, the last author is almost always the person whose grants paid for most of the research. Usually, they also helped supervise the research, but the grant aspect is more important. For example: Mike Synder, a brilliant biologist, 'supervises' 36 postdocs, 13 research assistants, 11 research scientists, 9 visiting scientists, and 8 graduate students ( http://snyderlab.stanford.edu/members3.html - thanks…

What are the differences between postdocs, research assistants, research scientists and visiting scientists?

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#99

Post by haberman »

entwife wrote: post #97
haberman wrote: post #92

Science is an organism that needs an immune system. At a systemic level, it needs to be hard to get away with this kind of thing.

The immune system of science is the peer review system and other mechanisms to reduce faulty science. This author points out published papers that made it past that immune system, and it some cases became part of it (e.g. as peer reviewers). What analogous structure in the immune system could repair problems with the system itself?

Yes, the article describes how certain "viruses" have learned how to beat the current immune system. That just means the immune system needs to evolve to address the new threats.

In nature, immune systems evolve based on natural selection. We need to keep trying new things and see what works. Maybe "peer review" needs to extend not only to individual papers, but to scientists and institutions themselves. Maybe their reputation needs to be evaluated over time so that a scientist who has been "infected" then has a standing presumption against their work until they can overwhelmingly demonstrate they are "healed."

This idea might be good or might be terrible, but I believe that we should be trying things like this to see if any of them stick and cause more good than harm.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#100

Post by eloisant »

nsns wrote: post #6

Instead of a sisyphean refutation of every attack, wouldn't a better strategy be to research and prove the attacker's conflict of interests (and thus discredit them)?

I think the number one reason of science bullshit (and it's written in the article) is not conflict of interests in the sense of "money from evil big corps" but rather the "publish or die" system in the academic world.

Or you could say the scientist interest is to keep his job, which requires a certain volume of publications, and that conflict with publishing only results that are both sincere and worthwhile.

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