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posted by martyb on Thursday November 14 2019, @12:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-don't-want-knowledge-I-want-certainty dept.

Jeremy P. Shapiro, a professor of psychology at Case Western Reserve University, has an article on The Conversation about one of the main cognitive errors at the root of science denial: dichotomous thinking, where entire spectra of possibilities are turned into dichotomies, and the division is usually highly skewed. Either something is perfect or it is a complete failure, either we have perfect knowledge of something or we know nothing.

Currently, there are three important issues on which there is scientific consensus but controversy among laypeople: climate change, biological evolution and childhood vaccination. On all three issues, prominent members of the Trump administration, including the president, have lined up against the conclusions of research.

This widespread rejection of scientific findings presents a perplexing puzzle to those of us who value an evidence-based approach to knowledge and policy.

Yet many science deniers do cite empirical evidence. The problem is that they do so in invalid, misleading ways. Psychological research illuminates these ways.

[...] In my view, science deniers misapply the concept of “proof.”

Proof exists in mathematics and logic but not in science. Research builds knowledge in progressive increments. As empirical evidence accumulates, there are more and more accurate approximations of ultimate truth but no final end point to the process. Deniers exploit the distinction between proof and compelling evidence by categorizing empirically well-supported ideas as “unproven.” Such statements are technically correct but extremely misleading, because there are no proven ideas in science, and evidence-based ideas are the best guides for action we have.

I have observed deniers use a three-step strategy to mislead the scientifically unsophisticated. First, they cite areas of uncertainty or controversy, no matter how minor, within the body of research that invalidates their desired course of action. Second, they categorize the overall scientific status of that body of research as uncertain and controversial. Finally, deniers advocate proceeding as if the research did not exist.

Dr. David "Orac" Gorski has further commentary on the article. Basically, science denialism works by exploiting the very human need for absolute certainty, which science can never truly provide.


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  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @01:04AM (13 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @01:04AM (#920103)

    Trying to explain subtleties and people screaming back at me how my beliefs are offensive, how it is evil just to have such thoughts, and how I was endorsing genocide because of it.

    I get it, vaccination is overall good, but not all vaccines are created equal, the mere suggestion that some vaccines may have side effects depending on per-case basis and may be worth reevaluating sends some people into a mad frenzy foaming at the mouth.

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @01:35AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @01:35AM (#920130)

    Or you can go jack off to some more Jenny McCarthy pictures... might make you feel better, doesn't make her nutjob ramblings true.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @02:13AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @02:13AM (#920158)

      The best thing the likes of you can do for any cause you believe in, is to be silent and not soil its reputation with your crazy.

  • (Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Thursday November 14 2019, @05:50AM (10 children)

    by stormwyrm (717) on Thursday November 14 2019, @05:50AM (#920219) Journal
    And you have this belief that the current recommended vaccination schedule is worth re-evaluating because you have extensive qualifications in vaccine science and/or epidemiology, and have many articles about this research of your showing the merits of your proposed re-evaluation in the peer-reviewed scientific literature? Sorry, the vaccine schedule is the way it is because actual experts in vaccine science and epidemiology have studied the problem extensively and concluded that it is just about the optimal schedule based on the current scientific research. If you have done actual research and studies that show that the panel of experts that the CDC (or equivalent body in your jurisdiction) are wrong and there is a better way, then by, all means, write papers in the scientific journals arguing this, giving all the evidence you can get. But my bet is you're just one of those many laypeople who suffer from an excess of Dunning-Kruger and imagine that a few minutes on Google will let them know more about the vaccine problem than panels of experts who have spent their entire careers studying it.
    --
    Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @06:43AM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @06:43AM (#920231)

      Stop retyping tired old rhetoric and use the freed time and your favorite search engine to learn of those cases when the experts' being wrong resulted in shit too deep to conveniently forget.
      This is to prime the info pump: https://247wallst.com/investing/2010/12/10/the-ten-worst-drug-recalls-in-the-history-of-the-fda/ [247wallst.com]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @07:17AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @07:17AM (#920239)
        Yeah. Science has been wrong before. So that means I can reject any scientific findings I don't like!
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @09:16PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @09:16PM (#920505)

          Or barring that, stop playing cheerleader. This is not a game.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @07:23AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @07:23AM (#920242)
        That's exactly the attitude that Prof. Shapiro describes. Just because there are some cases where the system of pharmaceutical companies and the government bodies that regulate them have had cases of corruption and have made mistakes then they're totally evil and wrong and we shouldn't listen to them. The truth of course is somewhere in the middle, but since you're one of those people who have the dichotomous thinking that Prof. Shapiro described, it's just black to you.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @09:56PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @09:56PM (#920518)

          Do please reread your post and try explaining how it is not a stinking example of precisely the divisive mindset you so like to ascribe to others.
          Yes naturally the truth is somewhere in the middle, but as long as any mention of inconvenient facts causes instant personal attacks, one can not help but conclude that the parties so invested in suppressing said facts would not recognize truth if it bit them in the buttock. In case one is not studied in biology and medicine enough to assess the facts for oneself, it is understandable if one gets overcautious observing what looks rather like a coordinated coverup campaign.
          Being that vaccine-caused problems are usually of low probability and most of even that is easily avoided with some basic caution, mounting infowars instead of educating the populace is plain counterproductive as far as public health (not to be confused with corporate profits) is concerned.

    • (Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @07:43AM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @07:43AM (#920245)

      Conveniently the National Academy of Sciences that tends to aggregate the best at brightest on paper to put forth their views. And they wrote the defacto bible on vaccine research. Even better it's freely available (like all NAS work) here [nationalacademies.org]. "Read Publication Online for Free" on the right really means what it says - as opposed to leading to a login wall as we might expect. As you peruse the paper search for the phrase, "The evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between". You'll find it occurs with an extreme regularity. There are correlations between vaccines and all sorts of awful things. The evidence is strong enough to make it impossible to reject these correlations as spurious, but not strong enough to state a clear causal relationship. So it's the more sophisticated version of

      ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      It's possible, if not likely, that a single individual choosing to not vaccinate could end up with a lower probability of negative outcomes than one who is vaccinated. However, if a remotely meaningful number of people did this there is 0 doubt that everybody would become far less safe than today. So I'd certainly encourage everybody to get vaccinated, but at the same time I think we should emphasize that it is a social sacrifice instead of pretending that the holy science indicates that vaccines are perfectly safe. They are not and "the science" does not suggest they are. However, they are safe enough to justify the benefit that they provide.

      But one ongoing concern is the deterioration of corporate and political behavior. Vaccines are both big money and big control. This means we need to remain vigilant of regulatory capture and the increasingly aggressive effort to commercialize drugs that may not really be providing much, if any, benefit. And similarly, trust in government is also critical. People seem to act like things such as the Tuskegee Experiments [wikipedia.org] which only ended in 1972 could never happen again. There's no doubt the people who were killed by the government in those experiments also thought such a thing could never happen. It sounds absurd, but it's also very real. An increasingly dysfunctional and corrupt government alongside the perception of corporations that'd sell their own mothers for a buck don't inspire much confidence in such a sensitive field.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @08:05AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @08:05AM (#920254)

        I love how our original poster appeals to authority and then is likely the one that marked the above as "flamebait" when it turns out the science isn't as clear has presumably thought. Oh the nature of discussion today.

        • (Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Friday November 15 2019, @02:13AM (1 child)

          by stormwyrm (717) on Friday November 15 2019, @02:13AM (#920585) Journal
          Appeals to authority are not necessarily fallacious. I have appealed to the authority of experts on vaccines and epidemiology when we are discussing vaccines and how to manage them. That is a perfectly valid appeal to authority. Or are you perhaps one of those people who takes out their bad teeth with a string and a door instead of relying upon the expertise of a dentist? The science on vaccines is still as clear as it has ever been, and the above poster has done nothing but parrot conspiracy theories instead of actual evidence. In fact, you and they are doing exactly what Prof. Shapiro has described. Cite areas of controversy in the science, no matter how minor. Check. Try to categorise the state of the state of the science as uncertain and controversial. Check. Advocate proceeding as if the research doesn't exist. Check.
          --
          Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
          • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @07:09AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @07:09AM (#920627)

            Reporting what the most authoritative figures on Earth say about vaccines is hardly "parroting conspiracy theories"?

            Researchers do not say vaccines are perfectly safe. There's lots of nasty correlations that we cannot comfortably reject or accept. The reason you take vaccines is not because they are inherently safe but because they are safe enough to justify taking.

            And I think this is where all the conflict arises. People who are not aware of the data think that "science" claims that vaccines are perfectly safe. They are not. People who find they are not think it's some huge revelation. It is not.

            If people were simply honest and emphasized what and why we take vaccines, I think there'd be a lot less misinformation, distrust, and ranting at each other.

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday November 14 2019, @08:55AM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 14 2019, @08:55AM (#920264) Journal

        Vaccines are both big money and big control

        Some of them, yes, inherently so - flu vaccine.
        Others - not so much (unless defective on purpose). Those kind of vaccines for diseases with slow enough mutation rate to get immunity for your entire life if your system killed the pathogen.

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford