Debunking the debunkers

[blutoski]

Care to back that up?

Opening sentence in Wikipedia entry:

Humanism is a broad category of active ethical philosophies

I suppose you could try to end-run this by asserting that 'ethics' and 'morals' are not the same, of course. We'll let the lurkers decide if they're such profoundly different concepts that I'm wrong by claiming that Humanism is a moral system. I would also claim that it's an ethical system. I use the words mostly interchangeably.

 

[Piggy]

The reason we cite experts so often is that the experts have the most data. They have the largest body of verified results to refer to, and they're easier to find. It would be odd, therefore, if we didn't cite Randi's work or Hawking's work when discussing debunking and contemporary physics, respectively.

But if anyone cites these experts and merely references a conclusion without explaining its validity and relevance, this is a logical error.

No it isn't. I've provided citations that refute this. There are legitemate applications of appeal to authority. When there's a recognized field with general agreement &c. Or are you saying you don't believe this?

Your citations have not refuted anything.

There are legitimate ways to support an argument by citing legitimate authorities.

But "appeal to authority" -- which can be done many different ways -- is a logical error.

Here's what you originally posted:

Examples of misunderstanding include these beliefs:

* that there is a logical fallacy called "argument from authority"

You are wrong here. There is in fact such a logical fallacy.

Citing an authority is perfectly valid, as long as that person's argument is sound, and you understand it, and it's relevant, and you explain it. (And in that case, you can make identical citations of non-authorites with equal weight.)

Appealing to authority is not valid. This fallacy involves stating that an authority has said it is so, and leaving it at that. Even if you happen to be correct that the authority's claims are valid and relevant, you have still made an error in your argument by making the naked appeal, because your audience has no way of knowing (1) whether you actually have understood your source, and (2) whether the source actually said what you claim, and (3) whether the source's conclusions were valid.

 

[Piggy]

Opening sentence in Wikipedia entry:

Wikipedia is a bulletin board. I see that you wish to grant it some authority here and make an appeal to it, but in doing so, you're committing an error.

 

[Piggy]

Science works like this, too. My wife does not review every paper on every medication she prescribes. There are people who do that for a living. At the end of their review, they publish a summary guideline. This group is an authority on the subject, and my wife is best served by adhering to their guidelines. She is not 'a bad scientist' for recognizing her limitations. There is no way she can duplicate the work of twenty people for two years while at the same time maintaining her regular workload. The recognition and appointment of authorities on these treatment guidelines (as one example) is an example of what I'm describing.

I don't know why you still can't understand that, even tho these people are experts, this is not an appeal to authority. Rather, it is a very practical response to our knowledge of the peer-review mechanism, which is based on data and results and proper procedures.

There is no appeal to authority here.

When a military order is issued, it is followed by subordinates, regardless of what they think about it. That's an authority-based system.

When the Pope declares what is and isn't Catholic, then that's what is and isn't Catholic. People are still free to do what they want, but they are not free to decide for themselves that is and isn't Catholic. That's an authority-based system.

Science is not an authority-based system.

 

[Piggy]

I see it so often that the examples don't even register anymore. However, here's one recent one in a current thread:
Normal Science is a Puzzle

This is 'scientism,' and is linked to the logical fallacy called the 'naturalistic fallacy' - the error of believing that understanding of nature will lead to solving human problems, such as qeustions about values, morals, &c.

Well, if you want to do your part to try to correct people who can't think straight, then by all means do so. But in my unhumble opinion, it would be better if you did it without slapping labels like "pseudoskeptic" and "lay skeptic" on people depending on their conformity with the "Big Five", and without making clearly erroneous statements, such as claiming that appeal to authority is how science works.

In other words, please don't project your own obvious authoritarian leanings on the entire world.

 

[blutoski]

Is that some kind of joke?

No. "I don't know" is something I think some people are afraid to say, and error compounds when they are so desperate to complete the circle (either because they don't want to admit to others that they have limited knowledge, or because they have psychological reasons for avoiding uncertainty) that they grasp at desperate explanations.

Agnosticism isn't "I don't know" - it's "It's impossible to ever know."

Science works like this. A lot of tests come up "inconclusive." I worked for a few years with a woman who is a forensic detective. She says 90% of her cases are unsolved, and may be unsolveable. This is a scientific reality.

To continue with a previous discussion that's germaine - I was reading my Nickell to get revved up for haunting investigations, and one thing that I found in his discussions is that he has three results: "supernatural explanation", "natural explanation," and "I don't know." He has placed most of his findings in the "I don't know," category, although he's pretty sure there's a natural explanation. Just insufficient evidence to be totally certain. He likes to talk about the stairs example a lot, because it's a clear-cut "Natural explanation."

 

[Piggy]

I was reading my Nickell to get revved up for haunting investigations, and one thing that I found in his discussions is that he has three results: "supernatural explanation", "natural explanation," and "I don't know." He has placed most of his findings in the "I don't know," category, although he's pretty sure there's a natural explanation. Just insufficient evidence to be totally certain. He likes to talk about the stairs example a lot, because it's a clear-cut "Natural explanation."

In order to approach it this way, you have to first credit the potential for "supernatural explanations". Since there is no valid evidence, and no valid theories, for these, it seems silly to me to do so.

If something happens in a house and you don't know why, the default position is "unknown natural explanation", not "could be supernatural". We might as well add "undetectable dog" to the list and say that unexplained events might be caused by it.

 

[Beth]

blutoski,

Just a note to let you know that some people reading this understand what you are saying and agree with you. I dropped membership in CSICOP more than 10 years ago for precisely the reasons you've been expounding upon.

Further, you are absolutely right about how science works in regard to the authority thing. I work making a small contribution to the science of developing composite materials. Specifically, I am involved in computing the engineering basis values of such materials. This means that when the rocket scientists are figuring out to build rockets, they will be relying upon the work I am doing now to make safe reliable vehicles. It takes the combined effort of several dozen people, all of whom have engineering and/or science degrees, to plan conduct and evaluate the material tests that lead to developing those basis values which later scientists and engineers will be relying on.

Now, I'm proud to work for a highly rated and well respected institute that can be depended on to do a good job. I'm impressed with my co-workers - they are intelligent, well educated, and competent. I can say that scientists who rely on our results are justified in doing so. The point is that they are are relying on our results based on our Institute's reputation. No engineer or scientist is going to conduct their own tests of every possible material and then decide which to use - it simply isn't feasible. Further, they aren't going to review the test data because in most cases it is considered proprietary and isn't released to the public.

 

[blutoski]

I don't know why you still can't understand that, even tho these people are experts, this is not an appeal to authority. Rather, it is a very practical response to our knowledge of the peer-review mechanism, which is based on data and results and proper procedures.

There is no appeal to authority here.

Of course there is. The people doing the citations are not reading their notes the way that the peer-reviewers do (they demand the notebooks from the lab, and sometimes even visit the lab). Even reading a paper is insufficient, since it's a distillation of the actual experiment. There is always trust that the peer-reviewers are doing their job. The peer-reviewers are anonymous, so the publication's banner is essentially an authority that garners trust.

Are the peer-reviewers doing a deeper dive? Sure. But they're not representative of the thousands of people who will use/cite the paper. The rest of us just identify the publication as an authority. Or a body like the APA subcommittees on treatment guidelines.

When a military order is issued, it is followed by subordinates, regardless of what they think about it. That's an authority-based system.

Science is not an authority-based system.

Now you're equivocating, right? I'm pretty sure you know that by 'authority' I mean 'scientific authority'. Not 'legal authority'. ie: I'm not arguing that science is a police department ("the authorities.")

And it just gets botched when you try to confuse it like that, because the same rules may apply: a military commander has earned his position by demonstrating competence, for example. One could argue that there are no authorities in the military, because after all, they were given their position based on performance. Therefore, the military is based on performance and has 'nothing to do with' authority. This doesn't make sense in the military, and the same argument fails with science, too. Scientists earn their position as scientific authorities by demonstrating scientific competence.

 

[blutoski]

Just a note to let you know that some people reading this understand what you are saying and agree with you. I dropped membership in CSICOP more than 10 years ago for precisely the reasons you've been expounding upon.

The societies I'm thinking of are the old Seattle one, which lasted about four months after the atheist takeover. The old executive have tried to start another one, and we'll see how it goes, but there's a lot of mistrust floating around now.

We do exit surveys of people who leave our (much smaller) society, and we found that maybe two people were causing most of the membership churn. People would join in good faith, go to a meeting, and be shouted at because they're jews. Fine, out they go. We don't notice these individuals very much because they're only at one or two meetings, but over time, keeping them would make our membership about twenty times larger. Comments like: "Guy with white hair and hearing aids said that I was worse than a child molester because I'm a Christian - I don't need to be insulted like this."

This is the same guy that is the reason my wife resigned (she's Southern Baptist).

Our new strategy is to put a stake in the ground regarding this type of behavior, and we've signed up about eighty new members in the past six months with only two departures (no explanation, unfortunately). This compares to an 80% annual turnover.

However, this is off topic, but I always feel it's worth visiting. I have found, though, that this topic degenerates on the JREF forum, so I don't bring it up anymore unless provoked.

 

[blutoski]

Well, if you want to do your part to try to correct people who can't think straight, then by all means do so. But in my unhumble opinion, it would be better if you did it without slapping labels like "pseudoskeptic" and "lay skeptic" on people depending on their conformity with the "Big Five", and without making clearly erroneous statements, such as claiming that appeal to authority is how science works.

In other words, please don't project your own obvious authoritarian leanings on the entire world.

Ah, but you say that like it's a bad thing. I appreciate that people don't like to be categorized, but I'm trying to get things done, and just like in science: classification is often instrumental to solving a problem. So, my 'problem' is that the world is not getting more skeptical. I'm trying to analyze the efforts of skeptics, and I found it useful to recognize that there are different types.

Skepticism can be very successful, I feel, but there are very few people turning their attention to skepticism itself. It has been very ad hoc. The Brights campaign was a first attempt at something like generating a campaign, and it was a failure because the people involved were - and this is somewhat on topic for the thread - completely outside their scope of expertise. They failed to recognize that the field in question was marketing and public relations, and they consequently failed to engage the appropriate authorities on the subject. Just figured they'd "think for themselves," I guess.

 

[blutoski]

Further, you are absolutely right about how science works in regard to the authority thing.

I think part of it is that I've been exposed to different occupations, including management consulting in the private sector where authority is meritocratic, and it's the same in science. The fact that people earn their authority through merit does not mean they're not authorities. The other parallel is that both endeavours have a respect for scope of responsibility or domain of competence (depending on how you want to word it). The only major distinction is that in commerce, information is more likely to be hoarded/concealed.

But for all practical purposes, most papers will only make proper sense to a few people, maybe a dozen. The rest of us just look to those specific people for their opinion on the paper. Most scientists will grasp the gist of an article, but it takes an experienced eye to spot flaws. That's where identification of authorities or experts for peer-review is the backbone of the system.

 

[Piggy]

The point is that they are are relying on our results based on our Institute's reputation.

Why do you have that reputation? Because of your authority?

If particular results from your institute are discredited, will they still be accepted?

 

[Piggy]

Now you're equivocating, right? I'm pretty sure you know that by 'authority' I mean 'scientific authority'. Not 'legal authority'. ie: I'm not arguing that science is a police department ("the authorities.")

No, I am not equivocating. I provided 2 very different examples of authority-based systems to illustrate that science doesn't work the way they do.

 

[Piggy]

Ah, but you say that like it's a bad thing. I appreciate that people don't like to be categorized, but I'm trying to get things done, and just like in science: classification is often instrumental to solving a problem. So, my 'problem' is that the world is not getting more skeptical. I'm trying to analyze the efforts of skeptics, and I found it useful to recognize that there are different types.

Skepticism can be very successful, I feel, but there are very few people turning their attention to skepticism itself. It has been very ad hoc. The Brights campaign was a first attempt at something like generating a campaign, and it was a failure because the people involved were - and this is somewhat on topic for the thread - completely outside their scope of expertise. They failed to recognize that the field in question was marketing and public relations, and they consequently failed to engage the appropriate authorities on the subject. Just figured they'd "think for themselves," I guess.

It's funny that you bring up the marketing failures of the Brights, but don't seem to appreciate that an authoritarian approach to skepticism is also doomed to fail, for other (but similar) reasons.

Also, your "lay skeptic" label is fatally flawed, because skepticism does not require any special ordination or advanced degrees.

You're right, some skeptics are jerks. But I don't see you offering any realistic solutions to that.

 

[blutoski]

It's funny that you bring up the marketing failures of the Brights, but don't seem to appreciate that an authoritarian approach to skepticism is also doomed to fail, for other (but similar) reasons.

So, this brings the conversation back to the topic of the original poster. You're saying that you agree with the article's author, then?

Also, your "lay skeptic" label is fatally flawed, because skepticism does not require any special ordination or advanced degrees.

It's my own system, so I'll use the terminology as I choose. However, I will defend it, because there are some things that skeptics should probably know: logical fallacies, how science works, that sort of thing. Communities are entitled to define themselves, and I think these two criteria are part of what defines a skeptic. I understand that others disagree. I have long since chosen to spend more time advancing skepticism, and less time arguing about metaphysics. I've spent decades on this, and haven't heard a new argument in years.

You're right, some skeptics are jerks. But I don't see you offering any realistic solutions to that.

I've discussed three strategies in this thread:

• educate them, so they stop making errors in front of non-skeptics that they can pounce on. eg: scientism, naturalistic fallacy, claiming that "appeal to authority" is a logical fallacy
• identify those who are misbehaving and show them the door. They can proceed as self-appointed skeptics, but not under the banner of an organization. This creates plausible deniability.
• spend some time examining the reality of the participants, their motives, their methods, identify objectives, maybe see if there's a place for everybody. See if the methods actually achieve them by testing results. If not, change the approach to find what works. ie: the scientific method.

 

[blutoski]

No, I am not equivocating. I provided 2 very different examples of authority-based systems to illustrate that science doesn't work the way they do.

And I showed that they were actually similar, and that your counterexample was poor, because all authority is 'earned' from past performance. Therefore, according to your earlier arguments, these weren't 'authority-based' systems after all, because the authorities have a history of perfomance that - in principle - 'speaks for itself'.

But the reality is that the hierarchy in these organizations - science included - are not provided with the luxury of infinite time to review the reputation of every individual. The institution succeeds by assigning this task to a few people who are accountable, and everybody else accepts their results until further notice.

 

[blutoski]

It's funny that you bring up the marketing failures of the Brights, but don't seem to appreciate that an authoritarian approach to skepticism is also doomed to fail, for other (but similar) reasons.

Because of what I was saying earlier: people don't want to be told that they have limitations. We all want to believe that we can outsmart the most qualified professional by hitting Google for an hour. It's a nice fantasy, and its exactly this hubris that marketers feed into when they pitch alternative medicine. The defense produced by skeptical organizations such as Quackwatch or the National Council Against Health Fraud is that governments should be more proactive in enforcing the findings of their panels, not that people should expand their practice of reading coporate propaganda.

The general concern I have is that there is a subcommunity of iconoclasts within skepticism who are undermining the "advancement of science" part of the skeptical agenda. They have been suborned by decades of antiscience slogans such as "Ignore the experts - decide for yourself".

Deference to authority - the recognition that one has limits - is not *popular*.

But science is not about what's popular.



My challenge as somebody who wants to reverse this trend is to convince people that recognizing authorities is thinking for yourself.

 

[Beth]

We do exit surveys of people who leave our (much smaller) society, and we found that maybe two people were causing most of the membership churn. People would join in good faith, go to a meeting, and be shouted at because they're jews. Fine, out they go. We don't notice these individuals very much because they're only at one or two meetings, but over time, keeping them would make our membership about twenty times larger. Comments like: "Guy with white hair and hearing aids said that I was worse than a child molester because I'm a Christian - I don't need to be insulted like this."

This is the same guy that is the reason my wife resigned (she's Southern Baptist).

Our new strategy is to put a stake in the ground regarding this type of behavior, and we've signed up about eighty new members in the past six months with only two departures (no explanation, unfortunately). This compares to an 80% annual turnover.

However, this is off topic, but I always feel it's worth visiting. I have found, though, that this topic degenerates on the JREF forum, so I don't bring it up anymore unless provoked.

Wow. That is so cool that you would actually collect data and make policy decisions based on the data. You are a true scientist sir!

 

[Piggy]

So, this brings the conversation back to the topic of the original poster. You're saying that you agree with the article's author, then?

About what? The authoritarian approach I'm criticizing is yours. And I don't think it's mainstream.