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.
@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 @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
