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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: 2) by Arik on Thursday November 14 2019, @06:04AM (4 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Thursday November 14 2019, @06:04AM (#920222) Journal
    "Scientific truth is simply what the majority of experts - scientists working in the field - believe in."

    I can't tell if you're really that profoundly misinformed, or if you're just parodying people who are.
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @09:15AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @09:15AM (#920269)

    This is interesting. He is 100% correct on topics that rely on anything other than first principles, and that's very near 100% of science today.

    As an example it's too easy to pick on the social sciences so let's pick on something real. Everybody knows at least "of" relativity as well as quantum mechanics. And each of these fields match observation with 100% accuracy. That's something that cannot be said for nearly any other field, where these issues become exponentially more relevant. But the funny thing is is that relativity and quantum mechanics make fundamentally different assumptions which are mutually incompatible. So one, or both, theories are incorrect in their present state. It's the same reason that e.g. Newtonian mechanics was known to be incorrect or incomplete long before Einstein had even entered into the picture. Our observation of Mercury was off. It's orbital trajectory was about 1/100th of a degree per century different than what Newtonian mechanics would predict. In "real" science, even such small differences are critical.

    And so what is held to be true is something we know to be, at the minimum, incomplete and very possibly simply incorrect.

    And that is for the epitome of good science. When you look at things such as social science or indeed even climate science we start entering into the realm of correlation is not causation, except when we we need it to be for a field to exist. Climate science for instance is based, to some degree on principles. For instance it's trivial to prove that e.g. carbon dioxide can trap heart in Earth's atmosphere. It tends to be nonresponsive to high frequency energy (such as the ultraviolent energy emitted by the sun), yet it tends to react with and reflect some chunk of low frequency energy (such as infrared which is reemitted by the Earth after absorbing said ultraviolet energy). But how this exact mechanism functions at scale is something where you end up adding many unproven assumptions and then further relying on models that are based entirely on correlations. And on top of this there are also of course vast numbers of 'known unknowns' in that we know this system is doing 'something' but don't have any great way of compensating for it.

    All of this ends up creating a science where what is taken is fact is largely a matter of consensus, not fact. For instance Richard Lindzen [wikipedia.org] is one of the premier scientists in atmospheric mechanics. He worked on numerous IPCC papers and was a lead author on their "Climate Processes and Feedbacks" section, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Meteorological Society, consultant for NASA's Global Modeling and Simulation Group, insert appeal to authority, insert appeal to authority, etc. Nonetheless he believes the current models we are using are fundamentally flawed and has provided somewhat extensive evidence and logic for such, including the publication of multiple books on the topic. However it's not really possible to prove him correct, nor current models incorrect, since we just don't have enough data and climatology isn't a field where you run meaningful experiments. So what's determined to be true or false ends up being prevailing opinion often mixed with social pressures and propaganda. E.g. look at his Wiki page itself. In spite of his credentials and achievements, vast space is consumed in Lindzen's Wiki page is spent trying to discredit him or to make him appear a fool by taking comments out of context and spinning things in a rather disingenuous fashion. To emphasize this disagreement isn't some mild nuance, I'll close with a couple of quotes from him:

    In brief, we have the new paradigm where simulation and programs have replaced theory and observation, where government largely determines the nature of scientific activity, and where the primary role of professional societies is the lobbying of the government for special advantage.

    What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world - that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.

    • (Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday November 14 2019, @02:25PM (2 children)

      by Arik (4543) on Thursday November 14 2019, @02:25PM (#920337) Journal
      Much of what you say seems correct, however;

      "This is interesting. He is 100% correct on topics that rely on anything other than first principles, and that's very near 100% of science today."

      No, he's 100% wrong. Flat wrong. Not even in the right ballpark wrong. Voting is not a part of the scientific method. Consensus is not part of the scientific method. That's how questions of church dogma are settled - by vote of the Bishops - it's not a procedure that has any basis or place in science whatsoever.

      Furthermore, he's even more wrong because he's created this concept of "scientific truth" which also doesn't fit. Sure, truth has some meaning in science, as in it's absolutely essential to be true/honest in your reporting, but that's not what he's talking about. What he appears to have done is to paste the religious concept of truth into a supposedly scientific context where it has no place, and then pasted a religious procedure into science in order to provide something science simply doesn't provide, doesn't aim to provide.

      The Church claims to provide ultimate truth, and it determines the truth by polling Bishops. Science does not claim to provide ultimate truth, and voting plays no role in it. Science does not provide the truth. Science provides us a way to detect errors. Quite different things.

      People have a hunger that leads to religion. Just a few centuries ago, science was commonly posted as opposite religion, as competing with it. So as science exposed flaws, untruths in traditional religion, traditional religion weakened, many abandoned it. But they didn't lose that hunger, and many wound up making a new religion from the trappings of science. We can call it "scientism." It's conceptually similar to a cargo cult. It's a religion, not science, quite radically incompatible with science actually. It treats those with sciency job titles as priests, and bishops; it expects truth to be set by bull or council, and it is eager to excommunicate the heterodox. Despite the 'sciency' window dressing this really has nothing to do with science, it's just the same old religious instinct dressed up in a new lab coat. Science is fundamentally heterodox.

      Posing science as opposed to religion was a mistake in the first place. You can see in context of the times why it went that way. Religions were very old and stuffy and full of dogma that was demonstrably wrong. Science is good at demonstrating that wrongness. As scientific thinking became more common, skepticism of the old religious bull grew.

      But science isn't religion, and cannot replace religion. When you turn science into a religion, you wind up with a religion, but no science.

      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @06:05PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @06:05PM (#920448)

        Of course I completely and 100% agree with you.

        I am using terms in the colloquial sense, as I assume the person speaking to you was as well. Obviously there is no such thing as a scientific truth. Even a law is simply a physical observation which may not actually hold in all circumstances. But we have entered into a world where a whole lot of people with no scientific background or understanding whatsoever are suddenly becoming quite involved in scientific issues. And so, even if I may disagree with their usage of language, I've found when faced with an avalanche of ignorance it's often much better to simply hop on and slide alongside it hoping to convince some folks on the way down, rather than to stand it front of it and hope to turn it aside by force of will alone.

        In particular notions such as a "scientific consensus" is something that runs contrary to every single value we might find in science. But of course that's quite challenging to explain and generally not going to be well received by somebody with a limited scientific background. And so I find it's more effective to take the path of less resistance and accept such notions while emphasizing their inherent weakness.

        • (Score: 1) by Arik on Thursday November 14 2019, @06:30PM

          by Arik (4543) on Thursday November 14 2019, @06:30PM (#920459) Journal
          I suppose, on the tactical question, it depends on the audience.

          Figuring that, it's nearly a tautology that you have to be right for certain audiences.

          Still not a fan of it. I really think you get better results long term by telling the truth, even to people that aren't ready to handle it. Sure, make it just as simple as possible, but no simpler.

          To me, what you're saying seems suspiciously like you're making it simpler than possible.

          Anyway, good post, good contribution, well thought out. You should really get a nick.
          --
          If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?