Debunking the debunkers

[Piggy]

I've never read a single paper on geology. I just accept that Gould is telling the truth when he talks about the subject.

And the reason you do this, if you have any sense, is not because Gould is an authority, but because you know that if he were lying you'd have heard about it because there is a rigorous peer-review process in science, which is what prevents it from being a field which requires appeals to authority.

 

[blutoski]

Wrong. He's respected because he consistently applies legitimate methods and gets credible results. And he's an authority because he consistently applies legitimate methods and gets credible results.

So... he's an authority? Why, then, was my statement "wrong"?

 

[Piggy]

Randi is an expert debunker of absurd claims. Benveniste was not. When Benveniste claimed water had memory (a claim that has nothing to do with immunology) he stepped right outside his scope of expertise and into Randi's.

You can only make this argument after the fact. If Benveniste had had his ducks in a row, he would have been making a valid claim, and not been stepping into Randi's domain.

 

[blutoski]

And the reason you do this, if you have any sense, is not because Gould is an authority, but because you know that if he were lying you'd have heard about it because there is a rigorous peer-review process in science, which is what prevents it from being a field which requires appeals to authority.

Now we're quibbling, see. The peer-review process is done by people who are selected for being authorities in the subject at hand. Gould was considered an authority on his particular field of research.

Are you saying the scientific community did not regard Gould as an authority on the geological evidence for evolution?

Or are you saying, okok, he was an authority, but he wasn't selected for, say, peer-reviews because he was an authority. It was because of his reputation for being knowledgeable about the subject matter.

Which sounds like another way to say: he was selected because he was an authority.

 

[RichardR]

Randi is an expert debunker of absurd claims. Benveniste was not. When Benveniste claimed water had memory (a claim that has nothing to do with immunology) he stepped right outside his scope of expertise and into Randi's.

Bollocks. It was a scientific experiment written up in Nature. And it was discredited because the experiment couldn't be replicated - not because of some "authority" you think Randi has. If you really think the results were rejected because people had more confidence in Randi then you have no understanding of what happened.

No, I didn't see Benveniste's data. I read Randi's report. I consider Randi to be an authority on the subject, so I accepted his conclusions over those of Benveniste.

You, of course, were entitled to use this flawed methodology if you wish. The scientific approach would have been to understand why Benveniste was wrong. This time your flawed understanding of logic by chance led you to the correct conclusion but another time it might not. Benveniste's experiment was rejected because it could not be performed under double-blind conditions. Bad experimental design from a scientist previously in high regard.

Randi made that decision, not me. My understanding is that Randi felt he was using an incorrect protocol at best, fabricating data at worst. ie: the data showed an effect, but the interpretation of an expert such as Randi sheds doubt. Randi's re-test was unsuccessful, but there is still a legacy of postive data to deal with.

What on earth are you talking about? I asked you about why you though what Randi had written was wrong: So did you decide he was wrong because he has no qualifications in chemistry, or because he wrote something that was not true? - Answer the question.

My question still stands, though.

When you wrote that I assumed you were joking. Since, despite the absurd nature of the question, you apparently were not, I'll answer it:

The answer is no. You described your experience with something Randi had written, and for the sake of argument I decided to give you the benefit of assuming you were debating honestly and that what you wrote did, in fact, happen. If I was wrong, and you lied, then I guess it's not worth debating with you anyway.

This is not science, this is an internet debate. Your claim, remember, was: "Appeal to authority" is how science works..." So this silly example proves nothing.

Regardless of his PhD status, he was hired into a job that required physics expertise, and it's not a coincidence that the guy with a masters in physics - specifically electromagnetics - was hired to analyze such patents. Furthermore, in this environment, a guy with a masters in physics would have been part of the elite. The only reason he wasn't offered a professorship was because of personality conflicts with the faculty. A hundred years ago, a masters degree was quite the authority.

I demonstrated you were wrong about Einstein being an authority. He was a third class examiner, remember? His paper was accepted because it was correct, not because he was an authority. He was not that well known, but his paper was accepted because it was good.

Well, you can sleep comfortably tonight, because that's not what I said. I believe my objection was with the suggestion that Einstein was some self-tutored maverick who came from the outside and took the physics establishment for some sort of right-angle-turn. It wasn't like that: he worked 'in his spare time' but not 'in secret'. He had access to feedback and resources from the world's leading minds on the subject: he was one of them.

Well I never said "that Einstein was some self-tutored maverick who came from the outside" either. Of course he studied physics. I implied he wasn't considered to be that much of an authority at the time - and he wasn't.

Defending recognition of authority is an important part of a skeptic's job, because skepticism is aligned with the goals of science, where that is an instrumental part.

Organized Skepticism is asking those outside 'a specialized area' - ie: 99.9999999% of the world - to cultivate this. The article mentioned in the OP suggests this is a bad thing, and I'm trying to point out that it has worked very well for science so far, and that the erosion of regard for expertise undermines the institution of science, and diminishes the public's access to scientific advice.

You said: "Appeal to authority" is how science works..." - it does not, you have failed to make your case and you are wrong.

 

[Piggy]

So... he's an authority? Why, then, was my statement "wrong"?

You said Randi is respected because he's an authority. That is wrong. He's an authority and he's respected for the same reason -- because he does things right and gets valid results.

A does not cause B here. C causes A and B.

 

[blutoski]

You can only make this argument after the fact. If Benveniste had had his ducks in a row, he would have been making a valid claim, and not been stepping into Randi's domain.

No, I can assure you, that as an immunologist, if one of my peers said he had discovered that water has memory, I would immediately know he was not doing immunology.

It sounds like inorganic chemistry to me. Maybe physics.

 

[blutoski]

You said Randi is respected because he's an authority. That is wrong. He's an authority and he's respected for the same reason -- because he does things right and gets valid results.

A does not cause B here. C causes A and B.

That would make them synonymous I guess. Sounds like word-play to me.

 

[Piggy]

I've been doing this for 35 years, and work daily with a CSICOP founder. I'm not sure there's a lot more I could 'understand' about skepticism by holding off.

I see. An appeal to authority. Sorry, but I'm going to judge you by what you're saying here, not by who you work with.

 

[Piggy]

What we do see in science is that somebody like Hawking gets to teach what he knows, instead of some student teaching him: it's acknowledged that he's the authority.

I don't deny that there are authorities (experts) in science. But your claims went way beyond that.

 

[RichardR]

At no point is anybody actually reading the original experiments.

That must go down as one of the more stupid statements ever made on this board. At no point is anybody actually reading the original experiments? How did they know what happened then? Psychic powers?

Of course somebody read, reviewed and replicated the original experimants. Agreed, not the people who wrote a school textbook. So what?

 

[RichardR]

How can you continue to spout this stuff?

There is no appeal to authority in science.

In the military, in the Catholic church, yes, there's an appeal to authority.

But in science, if someone -- anyone -- does it right, then it's right. And if a great mind gets it wrong, then it's wrong.

Amateur astronomers still contribute to our store of data, for instance. And even Hawking has lost his bets.

EXACTLY - thank you. Even Hawkin's math has to add up. If it's wrong, his conclusion is wrong.

 

[Piggy]

I think this problem is related to the general cultural influence of bibllical Protestantism. Disestablishmentarianism, basically. The rejection of an hierarchy and authorities on biblical interpretation. These protestants were encouraged to read the bible and come to their own interpretations.

This has spilled over into everyday society where this attitude has sort of fallen apart into general disregard for authority. This is one of the reasons science has lost its appeal: it is an institution where some people are regarded as authorities

That's bunk. First of all, religion and politics are more authoritarian in America right now than they've been for generations. Science has not "lost its appeal" because of any philosophical rejection of authority figures. It has "lost its appeal" because there has been -- for various reasons -- a resurgence of fundamentalism, and because the claims of science -- such as relativity, evolution, the Big Bang, and quantum mechanics -- have become so removed from most people's daily experience that they're difficult to credit.

The history of Protestant attitudes toward translating and reading the Bible have nothing to do with it.

 

[Piggy]

I didn't say which category you fit into. I had you more as a lay skeptic.

Although, I did earlier say that you showed a sign of pseudoskeptics in that you asserted that "argument from authority" in the case of a scientific expert was a logical fallacy. This is an error I usually assert to pseudoskeptics, as they are often throwing fallacies around in forums or mailing lists.

To be blunt, your categories don't matter to me. Your thinking is both muddled and authoritarian. I can do without it.

 

[RichardR]

This doesn't refute my assertion that authority is vitally important to science. It's fighting with a strawman: that the only factor in science is authority and that data doesn't matter. Or that authority is the determinant of scientific truth. I never said that. I said that science wouldn't work without recognition of authority.

No, that's not what you said, You said: "Appeal to authority" is how science works..."

 

[RichardR]

Sure, but they relied on a definition provided by expert witnesses. These witnesses were selected because they were considered authorities on "what is science?"

Actually, the term is "expert", not "authority". And this was a lawsuit. I thought we were talking about how science works.

 

[blutoski]

Bollocks. It was a scientific experiment written up in Nature. And it was discredited because the experiment couldn't be replicated - not because of some "authority" you think Randi has. If you really think the results were rejected because people had more confidence in Randi then you have no understanding of what happened.

I think the question is: rejected by whom? The results were replicated many times, but not during Randi's exposee. The replicated results are published in journals that are not popular among scientists - they have a reputation for fabrication and poor peer review. Healthfraud is filled with this problem of bucketloads of data in crappy publications.

You, of course, were entitled to use this flawed methodology if you wish. The scientific approach would have been to understand why Benveniste was wrong. This time your flawed understanding of logic by chance led you to the correct conclusion but another time it might not. Benveniste's experiment was rejected because it could not be performed under double-blind conditions. Bad experimental design from a scientist previously in high regard.

The reason I didn't delve too much into it was that there's only so much time in the day, obviously. This weekend aside (my friend is sick, and for once "I'm sitting with a sick friend" is literally true) I tend to do what most people do: do a deep dive on my pet subject, but skim the other skeptical material. I don't think this is 'flawed methodology'. I can't imagine how others could sincerely read into this subject and feel well informed. I think earlier you were referring to the test as an allergy test, whereas that's only one of the applications of this technology. It's also used to identify aldulterated meats or to visualize PCR results.

What on earth are you talking about? I asked you about why you though what Randi had written was wrong: So did you decide he was wrong because he has no qualifications in chemistry, or because he wrote something that was not true? - Answer the question.

I guess I lost track of the original question. Was the question about when I observed that Randi had made an error? That was a physics thing. I think I covered it above.

You said: "Appeal to authority" is how science works..." - it does not, you have failed to make your case and you are wrong.

You can appreciate that the statement was vague. The context was that another poster said that appeal to authority has no place in science. It is actually a very important part of the operations of the profession and institution. There are other factors, obviously: the scientific method is a loosey-goosey model for procedure. But it doesn't explain how to share the data with others, and it doesn't explain how to make decisions without wasting time exploring another field.

 

[Piggy]

Sure, but they relied on a definition provided by expert witnesses. These witnesses were selected because they were considered authorities on "what is science?"

Who did you expect the court to pick -- the judge's dry cleaner?

You ignore here the fact that the court listened to witnesses on both sides, weighed the evidence, and made a decision favoring one side. This was not done because the court had any reverence for one set of witnesses over the other. If you read the opinion, you'll see it has everything to do with the evidence presented.

The court was perfectly free to determine that the expert witnesses arguing that ID was not science were wrong.

I'm not sure what "CMB" is. This does not refute my claim, though. Did these guys write a letter to the editor of the New York Times, and their findings were subsequently accepted by the scientific community?

They were Bell Labs techs who were trying to get static out of their lines, and discovered that the static wasn't in their lines, but was coming from outside (this after scraping off lots of pigeon ◊◊◊◊, which made no difference). They tried reorienting their equipment but discovered that the source of the static was everywhere. When they consulted scientists in the field, it was determined that they'd stumbled on the theorized cosmic microwave background (CMB), the residual radiation from the Big Bang. They found it without even knowing what they were looking for.

 

[blutoski]

Actually, the term is "expert", not "authority". And this was a lawsuit. I thought we were talking about how science works.

That was germaine to the lawsuit, and in fact, we're talking about how science works especially in relation to other endeavours with which it must compete. As per the article in the original post. I keep trying to anchor the conversation back to that, since it's my intended point.

I think "expert" and "authority" are pretty interchangeable at this point. Gould was an expert on evolutionary geology. He was an authority on evolutionary geology.

I'm not here to mince words.

 

[RichardR]

I guess I lost track of the original question. Was the question about when I observed that Randi had made an error? That was a physics thing. I think I covered it above.

You said you had found an error in something Randi had written. Something to do with chemistry. Did you decide he was wrong because he has no qualifications in chemistry, or because he wrote something that was not true?