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IlyaShpitser comments on Publication: the "anti-science" trope is culturally polarizing and makes people distrust scientists - Less Wrong Discussion

13 Post author: ancientcampus 07 February 2014 05:09PM

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Comment author: IlyaShpitser 07 February 2014 05:32:30PM *  17 points [-]

When some folks think "Science", they don't think "formalized careful thinking/writing things down/reproducibility," they think "competitor priesthood."

"Anti-science" seems like sloganeering.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 07 February 2014 08:27:22PM 16 points [-]

I've previously remarked that

One of the biggest ways by which scientists and science-minded people fail to communicate with laypeople, I think, is with the phrase “there’s no scientific evidence for X”.

Suppose that a layperson comes to a scientist and explains excitedly that he just heard of a new way to [raise children/lose weight/cure illnesses] that works great, and everyone should adopt that method at once!

The scientist replies that she has heard of that method too, but so far there’s no scientific evidence for it.

By that, the scientist means something roughly like “Well, there might be something to it, but the successes that you mention could very well just be coincidence, and it’s really really hard to figure out whether that thing actually works, even if we do lots of careful experiments. So although the thing that you mention could be worth looking into, we really don’t know whether it works yet, and most things like that actually turn out not to work when you do the experiments, so for now we should assume that it won’t work.”

What the layperson actually hears is “I’m going to be all stuck up and holier-than-thou and insist that we do this time-consuming and expensive examination so that the thing could first pass my utterly unrealistic burden of proof, all the while the evidence of it working is right before our eyes and we could finally [raise children/lose weight/cure illnesses] right if we just acted on it.”

And then the layperson thinks, if only you came out of your ivory tower, you would realize that in the real world you do things when you see that they work, not when you’ve wasted years addressing the one in a million chance that they might somehow not work after all.

And then both of them end up marching angrily away and thinking that the other person is a complete idiot.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 07 February 2014 10:32:20PM *  4 points [-]

And then both of them end up marching angrily away and thinking that the other person is a complete idiot.

And in this case, the layman is much closer to the truth. While the scientist in question likely isn't an idiot, he is basically a liar.

For the scenario indicated, “there’s no scientific evidence for X” - is almost always false. The "scientist" in question is arguing from authority with a lie. He doesn't have fantastical standards for evidence, he just pretends to himself that such standards are appropriate for things he disagrees with.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 08 February 2014 12:50:12PM *  4 points [-]

If the scientist actually says

“Well, there might be something to it, but the successes that you mention could very well just be coincidence, and it’s really really hard to figure out whether that thing actually works, even if we do lots of careful experiments. So although the thing that you mention could be worth looking into, we really don’t know whether it works yet, and most things like that actually turn out not to work when you do the experiments, so for now we should assume that it won’t work.”

possibly starting with "Maybe, but I have heard too many enthusiastic claims that failed later so I'm skeptical.", then it is no lie and both don't need to depart angrily.

But a condescending "science says no" surely sounds like ivory tower arrogance.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 09 February 2014 03:55:57PM 0 points [-]

If you're actually pushing rationality in general rather than scientific results in particular, you could talk with the person about doing experiments.

Comment author: ChristianKl 07 February 2014 11:02:13PM 3 points [-]

Yes, whenever you hear “there’s no scientific evidence for X” you should keep in mind that there are published meta-reviews in support of homeopathy and telepathy.

Yes, there might be good reasons to assume that a lot of the studies that find that homeopathy and telepathy works are flawed but saying there no evidence often just ignores the research.

If there really no evidence in favor it usually just means that nobody studied the question at all. In that case if I hear from someone who lost weight with method X and nobody did run a study on it, there's nothing wrong with trying method X yourself provided the method doesn't seem dangerous.

Comment author: pianoforte611 07 February 2014 09:48:56PM *  -2 points [-]

Oh yes, I avoid talking about fallacies for that same reason.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 08 February 2014 05:39:51AM 3 points [-]

It doesn't help that the "scientists" in the OP were in fact acting like priests, i.e., using appeals to the authority of an abstract concept and accusing their opponents of heresy rather than presenting arguments.

Comment author: ancientcampus 07 February 2014 06:16:52PM 1 point [-]

True. I think hardly anyone on either side would use the term "anti-science". The terms aren't important, but rather the article is referring to the "us-vs-them" mentality.

Also, I like the term "competitor priesthood."

Comment author: Randy_M 10 February 2014 03:50:19PM 2 points [-]

Google only turns up "About 915,000,000 results" for anti-science.

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