I think one of the things that fundamentally bothers me when conspiracy theorists get into scientific topics is the basic laziness of it.
There are a lot of things about the universe that are hard to understand or that nobody understands, but to a remarkable extent it's basically an open book. It takes a lot of effort though. It works in complicated and subtle ways that the human brain isn't trivially suited to comprehend. Trying to understand all that is a huge adventure.
These people imagine that all of the big questions of existence have easy peasy answers but that they only seem hard because someone is deliberately hiding the answers from them, like some annoying nerd who won't let them copy their homework. We got the answers all handed to us on a silver platter but they're locked up in a government warehouse somewhere next to the Ark of the Covenant.
@mattmcirvin this is part of why I think it is so critical that we teach the scientific method as a specific, step by step, strongly disciplined tool of investigation and carefully guard terminology to prevent it from being watered down through careless usage.
It helps build a protective shield on one hand and on the other even helps directly disprove some of those who would dip their toes in those subjects.
Poor Dr Fauci. I think he could have played his cards better.
But he was in a position where speaking with authority was expected, and his audience very much needed certainties
If he'd said things like "Presently we recommend that you wash your hands often, but we're waiting for more data and we'll give you an update ASAP"
He didn't foresee the extreme bad faith and water-murkying power of the RW noise machine. Well, he's a scientist. Different mindset from T Carlson
@quatrezoneilles no, I don't extend that excuse to him.
Dr. Fauci wasn't just an expert but someone who had taken a job as a public facing public official. Communicating with and engaging with the public was part of the job.
And he blew it.
He didn't foresee bad faith and water-murkying? How? If he was THAT out of touch with the public then he was unfit for holding a position where understanding the public was so critical.
So I don't know if he could have played his cards better. If he couldn't foresee water-murkying then he was unfit to play the game.
@mattmcirvin
@volkris @quatrezoneilles The thing that was difficult to foresee, I think, was that his own boss would be intentionally sabotaging his message out of simple jealousy of the attention he was getting. That takes a special kind of pathology.
@mattmcirvin even if SOMEHOW Dr. Fauci was such a poor judge of humans that he wouldn't foresee that (which I find very hard to believe) he kept on the job long after that sort of thing would have become blindingly apparent.
So Fauci somehow misjudged the situation. Fine. He could have admitted his mistake and resigned, leaving it to someone else with more ability to deal with the situation.
I just don't give him a pass for any of that.
He could have remained an expert working behind the scenes to support the work while leaving the public engagement to folks with that skillset.
He is at fault for remaining and mishandling the situation so badly.
@mattmcirvin @volkris @quatrezoneilles How was Trump sabotaging his message? Fauci praised Trump's efforts to fund vaccine development. What do you have in mind here?
@ech @mattmcirvin @volkris
Well I concluded that Fauci was not naive at all after all. But there are still possible explanations for his behavior that have not been aired
What if he chose to speak with authority instead of admitting ignorance due to lack of data, thinking: the RW noise machine will go "this guy is on top of the health care pyramid but he doesn't know sh-diddly-squat"?
Damned if you do...
FACT: Trump was pro-vaccine until he watched Carlson.
@ech @mattmcirvin @volkris
And this was the last year of Trump's term, when by experience he knew the Senate would approve just about any clown he nominated for just about any post.
Fauci could have resigned, but what if he wanted to make sure he wouldn't have been replaced by someone like Ronnie Jackson? That was a definite possibility at the time... just look at the current Surgeon General in Florida.
@quatrezoneilles if you check the Senate records you'd see that the Senate failed to approve many nominees that Trump sent over.
Those stories were always just sensationalism.
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/executive_calendar/2020/Final_2020.pdf
@volkris A naive falsificationist picture of science contributes, I think--the idea that an entire edifice of theory can be shot down by one contrary fact, like a mathematical conjecture with a counterexample.
It leads to the "anomaly hunting" mode of investigation where one combs the universe of evidence for anything at all that seems like it doesn't fit. The anomalies don't have to fit into any coherent picture of their own. They're just there, as the tantalizing clues that everything you know is wrong.
The opening assumption that they're most likely just errors of some sort, and at best could be preliminary hints toward some kind of hypothesis, is framed as the defense mechanism of a dogmatic establishment. Conspiracists faced with a complicated subject can usually come up with alleged anomalies more rapidly than others can analyze them in detail, and they also tend to bring up the same debunked ones over and over.
I think that popular accounts of the history of science can actually foster this impression that naive falsificationism is how it works. I've actually gotten strong pushback from people when I say this isn't how it works.
@mattmcirvin I would take exception to some of that, but more to my point, the scientific method's requirement of rigorous experimental design pushes back on blind combing of the universe.
This is part of my proposal: if "science" is maintained as the specific process, but the critic skips steps, then we'd avoid them being able to claim the mantle of science or scientific disproof.
But that's only if we refuse the dilution of terminology that otherwise allows them to claim the authority of science.
@mattmcirvin @volkris The anomaly hunting you describe is a problem, but it might be hard to draw the line.
For instance, have we come so far that claims like "the vaccines are safe and effective long term" should be regarded as the null hypothesis.
When someone now looks back and see that the world still experiences excess mortality, and that countries' monthly excess mortality *positively* correlate with their vaccination rates since nearly two years, where lies the burden of proof? Should someone doubting vaccine efficacy prove that this isn't some anomaly that can be otherwise explained?
@edvin scientifically (which is what I'm talking about) I wouldn't say any claim should be taken as any sort of hypothesis merely because we've come so far.
No, this is exactly the sort of thing I'm emphasizing here. That strikes me as unhealthy pseudoscience.
Scientifically I want to see a theory before a hypothesis that might test the theory. I would only credit something as the null hypothesis in the context of a specifically stated theory.
Rhetorically or politically, fine, call it whatever you'd like, but I'd be clear that it's not scientific.
The line "my non-scientific null hypothesis" doesn't carry quite the same authority, but that's exactly my point, if we're clear about what is and isn't scientific then we stop people from claiming scientific authority for pseudoscience.
@mattmcirvin
@volkris @mattmcirvin
It can start at an easy level.
Teach people the advantage of playing the odds. There was a bloodclot risk associated with the COVID vaccine, and sure, I looked it up before I got vaccinated the first time. The odds were very much in favor of vaccination
Likewise, you may have an explanation that goes against mainstream opinion from the science community., and there's a nonzero chance that you might be right. But odds are very slim, aren't they?