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from the character-assassination-for-dummies dept.
Argumentum ad hominem, a well-known fallacy that involves attacking the character or motive of the person making the argument rather than arguing their claims on their merits, is frequently encountered, and despite being fallacious, it is disturbingly effective. A new study in PLOS One (open, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0192025) sheds some further light on just how effective the various types of ad hominem attacks are in the context of scientific claims. An article from Psypost reports on the findings:
Ad hominem arguments — attacking a person to disprove his or her claims — is considered a logical fallacy. But a new study published in PLOS One suggests that some ad hominem attacks can effectively erode people's trust in scientific claims.
The research found that attacking the motives of scientists undermines the belief in a scientific claim just as much as attacking the science itself.
[...] "One key finding is that if members of the general public are aware of a conflict of interest connected to a scientific finding, then this will seriously undermine their faith in that finding," Barnes told PsyPost. "What the study does is allow us to quantitatively compare the amount of attitude change based on knowledge of conflict of interest to the amount of attitude change based on knowledge of outright research fraud and misconduct (such as faking the data)."
"What we see is that knowledge of conflict of interest is just as powerful as knowledge of research fraud."
Further commentary on the study by Orac at Respectful Insolence.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 17 2018, @01:50AM (3 children)
Which is worse? Attacking the credibility of a speaker with relevant concerns (which seems like to be the outcome of any criticism which involves considering those concerns) or ignoring those relevant concerns? There might be some middle ground here, but I don't have the nuance at present to see it.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday February 19 2018, @01:27AM (2 children)
Those are not the only choices. The prerogative of science is that when the result is unclear, you find more data. You don’t decide whether or not to trust the opinion of the people that provided the incomplete data.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 19 2018, @01:44AM (1 child)
Such as data from parties that don't share the biases of the original group? That's the obvious way to get around conflicts of interest. Find groups with different interests to reproduce the results. But that takes years.
This sort of independent data generation doesn't help the internet reader. They can't take a few minutes to generate their own data, independently confirming the research. Thus, consideration of heuristics like conflict of interest are a useful way to separate the wheat from the chaff.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday February 19 2018, @02:27AM
I would never suggest that anybody trust anything on the internet at face value. But as a passive reader, yes, considering conflicts of interest is a pragmatic means of assessing bias. And while bias is not the same as invalid, most of the time the distinction is not important.
When it is important, however, one cannot simply believe the author who is most likely to be correct. And if nobody seems to have the credibility to be correct, that doesn’t mean they aren’t.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?