Believing in experts

[Dill]

(07-03-2023, 01:14 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: I consider myself a social scientist because I do policy analysis and assessments which involves political science, sociology, psychology, economics, etc. It is an interdisciplinary field primarily in the realm of social sciences and poli sci specifically. Anyway, my rule of thumb is consensus. What is the majority of the literature saying? And when I say literature, I am talking about peer reviewed, replicable (preferably replicated), research. One article does not convince me. I will look for meta-analyses on a subject. If there isn't one, I will look at several articles on the topic. I will look at the statistical results in the article. Do they draw the same conclusions I would have? There are times where articles will draw conclusions that I would say "eh, the statistical power of that is low, I wouldn't say that for sure." I look at their methods to see if there is anything amiss in how they did their research. Can they actually draw causal conclusions? If the majority of research in the field says the same or similar things then that is what I will go with until there is something that disproves their research.

I care less about who is saying something than I do about what is behind their statement. Now, people who are well respected in their fields receive a degree of deference. Sure. Makes sense. But they can say stupid shit just as much as the first-year grad student can. The problem is that most people aren't literate in these things. They don't understand what to look for in a methods section that can give away bad design. They don't know what p-hacking looks like or even what statistical power is. This is why experts, and "experts," are relied on so heavily. People aren't able to understand this information or they are too lazy to really dig into it.

Well said, though I would say lack of science/statistical* literacy has long been with us, 

but it is a special problem now as some politicians have learned to focus on that illiteracy to 

discredit science-based policy, as that is now associated more with one party than the other.

They target the four corners of "deceit": government, academia, SCIENCE, and media.

Who is left to "trust" then? They have some suggestions that don't involve no fancy "scientific consensus." 


*e.g., I consider myself statistically CAREFUL, but not statistically literate. 

[Leon]

(07-03-2023, 04:23 PM)GMDino Wrote: Sounds So Familiar....

do you ever offer anything here except for being proved wrong bt steelersfan on a daily base.

maybe stick to pictures. your better at that at least

[GMDino]

(07-03-2023, 04:26 PM)Leon Wrote: do you ever offer anything here except for being proved wrong bt steelersfan on a daily base.

maybe stick to pictures. your better at that at least

Don't stick up for him too much...he said he's never heard of you. 

More to the point your rhetoric is always the same and with no support from sources short of "google it" which kinda was the point of the original post.

In fact, did you rea the first post?  Start there.

[HarleyDog]

(07-03-2023, 04:15 PM)GMDino Wrote: Sure you don't want to copy and paste something "with a link in it"?  You've done it before.

Not sure why you were rude to him, but I will give you what you want:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/if-you-say-science-is-right-youre-wrong/

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/20-of-the-greatest-blunders-in-science-in-the-last-20-years

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/5-times-that-science-got-it-wrong

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/science-top-10-erroneous-results-mistakes

I didn't read them, but I posted per your request because I'm a nice guy.

[Leon]

(07-03-2023, 04:29 PM)GMDino Wrote: Don't stick up for him too much...he said he's never heard of you. 

More to the point your rhetoric is always the same and with no support from sources short of "google it" which kinda was the point of the original post.

In fact, did you rea the first post?  Start there.

?

[Dill]

(07-03-2023, 04:12 PM)HarleyDog Wrote: Military, nurses, government workers, and so on. Did it save lives? I don't know. But it did take several though. As for cost benefits? Your crazed and confused if you think drug companies and politicians didn't make friggen big bucks at the peoples' expense. 

I was thinking more along the lines of how many lives were saved with the vaccine vs how many might have been lost without it.

If a lot of lives were saved, millions maybe, that would be a "benefit" well worth the "peoples' expense," in my view. 

Whether and how much of a difference the vaccine made should be the prime factor in evaluating vaccine policy, shouldn't it? 

People at the Commonwealth Fund think the vaccine prevented 120 million infections and saved about 3.2 million lives.
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2022/two-years-covid-vaccines-prevented-millions-deaths-hospitalizations#:~:text=on%20our%20methods.-,Findings,million%20more%20COVID%2D19%20infections.

Yet you don't seem very interested in that factor.

[GMDino]

(07-03-2023, 04:31 PM)Leon Wrote: ?

I know you can at least read.

Go read the first post then respond.

[Leon]

(07-03-2023, 04:37 PM)GMDino Wrote: I know you can at least read.

Go read the first post then respond.

first post of what. and what do you want me to respond to specific 

[GMDino]

(07-03-2023, 04:38 PM)Leon Wrote: first post of what. and what do you want me to respond to specific 

This...thread...

Here I'll make it so simple anyone can do it.

Click here  (that's one them thar imbedded links)

Then come back and respond about what you read and the sources.  Then we can talk about if they were reliable or just opinions on the internets. 

[GMDino]

(07-03-2023, 04:31 PM)HarleyDog Wrote: Not sure why you were rude to him, but I will give you what you want:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/if-you-say-science-is-right-youre-wrong/

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/20-of-the-greatest-blunders-in-science-in-the-last-20-years

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/5-times-that-science-got-it-wrong

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/science-top-10-erroneous-results-mistakes

I didn't read them, but I posted per your request because I'm a nice guy.

How do you these are the links Leon is referencing?  That's why I asked him to post them.

Secondly, I acknowledged this in my original post.  That's why I suggested he actually read it before responding.

Lastly I was not rude but merely pointed out this is not the first time Leon has claimed something and they wouldn't show the source material but rather said to google it.

Thanks anyway.

[Leon]

(07-03-2023, 04:48 PM)GMDino Wrote: This...thread...

Here I'll make it so simple anyone can do it.

Click here  (that's one them thar imbedded links)

Then come back and respond about what you read and the sources.  Then we can talk about if they were reliable or just opinions on the internets. 

you didnt give any sources. just 100 % all your own opinions. just a long post about what YOU think. how is that any differnt then other folks having there opinions? the one thing you said that i agree with is how science has been wrong many times. that was my point. just cause science says it dont automatic make it so.

[GMDino]

(07-03-2023, 04:58 PM)Leon Wrote: you didnt give any sources. just 100 % all your own opinions. just a long post about what YOU think. how is that any differnt then other folks having there opinions? the one thing you said that i agree with is how science has been wrong many times. that was my point. just cause science says it dont automatic make it so.

So you will never believe science because it has been proven wrong sometimes?  Then you didn't comprehend a single thing I wrote.

I'd like to say I'm surprised.

Do you go to the doctor?  Does your wife, who had cancer, go to a doctor?  What about for your animals?  Do you use a vet?  Where are your seeds from? How did you irrigate your land?

All of that is science Leon.   All of it.  And you trust it even though "science has been proven wrong" before.

[HarleyDog]

(07-03-2023, 04:31 PM)Dill Wrote: I was thinking more along the lines of how many lives were saved with the vaccine vs how many might have been lost without it.

If a lot of lives were saved, millions maybe, that would be a "benefit" well worth the "peoples' expense," in my view. 

I disagree. And you can argue both sides of this evenly. Being forced to take the vaccine is not worth the people's expense. For those who died being forced to take the vaccine, let's just call that what it is: Murder. And please don't argue that they still had a choice because they didn't. There would be no benefits if they quit their jobs and refused and would risk their own health to save their family.

Quote:Whether and how much of a difference the vaccine made should be the prime factor in evaluating vaccine policy, shouldn't it? 

But they didn't and still don't know. So no!

Quote:People at the Commonwealth Fund think the vaccine prevented 120 million infections and saved about 3.2 million lives.

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2022/two-years-covid-vaccines-prevented-millions-deaths-hospitalizations#:~:text=on%20our%20methods.-,Findings,million%20more%20COVID%2D19%20infections.

I'm not buying this and here's why:

Quote:To evaluate the impact of the vaccination program in the United States, we expanded our age-stratified, agent-based model of COVID-19 to include waning of naturally acquired or vaccine-elicited immunity, as well as booster vaccination. For the timelines of this study, the characteristics of five variants were included in the model, each with cumulative prevalence of at least 3 percent in the U.S., including Iota, Alpha, Gamma, Delta, and Omicron, in addition to the original Wuhan-I SARS-CoV-2 strain.

Each variant is a direct cause of the previous one. People had to keep getting shots because they were shit and ineffective. Did they figure in if the vaccine was really even needed? As much as you laugh at Hydroxychloraquine and other cheap methods, those were not figured into this study. You will say it because it didn't work. I'll say it never got the chance it deserved because Trump believed in it, so lets mislead all the people and make it bad so Trump looks bad. Special Report: Doctors embrace drug touted by Trump for COVID-19, without hard evidence it works | Reuters

Quote:Yet you don't seem very interested in that factor.

I can't tell if that last bit was a shot or not? So I won't comment.

[Leon]

(07-03-2023, 05:11 PM)GMDino Wrote: So you will never believe science because it has been proven wrong sometimes?  Then you didn't comprehend a single thing I wrote.

I'd like to say I'm surprised.

Do you go to the doctor?  Does your wife, who had cancer, go to a doctor?  What about for your animals?  Do you use a vet?  Where are your seeds from? How did you irrigate your land?

All of that is science Leon.   All of it.  And you trust it even though "science has been proven wrong" before.

mary went to the doctor cause she had cancer. doctors treat cancer. notice i said treat. cause some of there stuff works some dont. some actualy makes her sicker. but yes its the best way right now and we have to rely on it and hope for the best. 

your pointing to things that science gets right or at least mostly right. but you also admit science has gotten lots wrong. so its not crazy to say to say science isnt the truth on everything. look at all the pills science has put out that kills people and then gets sued or recalled. 

i just read something not to long ago where  scientists was saying how the peer review stuff has major flaws. ill see if i can find it again to show you. thats supposed to be a good tool right. but if even that has issues and problems then how can we know how serious to take it or trust it. see where im coming from. theres real reasons to be skeptical when folks say well science says its a fact or you should believe reviewed findings, 

[StoneTheCrow]

[*michaelsean*]

(07-03-2023, 09:55 AM)Dill Wrote: Mike, what if we deploy a different, more limited definition of "science"? 

I.e., what if we call "science" only the kind of thing that appeared in 16th-17th century Europe, and began to displace faith, common sense, and tradition/custom as the basis of reliable knowledge with an experimental method based on empirical testing and critical collation of results so that new research could build upon old and established? The kind of thing that eventually gave us moon rockets, electric lighting, a cure for polio, and a network of telecommunications allowing us to face time with friends in South America or Japan?

If we do that then, say, bloodletting just looks like a pre-scientific practice swept away by science, something that was never "science," however "expert" its practitioners may have been viewed. And applying honey to wounds, even if effective, would not be "science" in the above-defined sense, but more like folk knowledge.

From 1965-69, doctors could only cure about 5% of children who developed acute lymphatic leukemia. Before that they could cure none.

Between 1970 to 1975, that number jumped to 15%. 1975-80, that number jumped to 85%.  

To the layperson, it's likely that a lot of this process would appear "guesswork." It involved dead ends, failures, and outright mistakes--all compiled in a way that future researchers could learn from them, while children died. If one totes up all the errors, one could say, with Leon, that in this process there were more wrong treatments than right. It's just that now, after that long and careful process, what they've got is mostly right. 

If someone in your family developed leukemia now, you'd want to go with "the best science" at this time, right? 

But how might this process play out in a pandemic from a new disease about which little is known? I'd want "experts" with knowledge of past pandemics driving pandemic policy. They would begin by worrying about what they don't know--e.g. how and how rapidly is the disease communicated?  They might want to mandate masks and social distancing, just to be sure. They might rush vaccines into development faster than normal to save lives. 

If it turned out the masks were not effective, that would not make the experts "liars" from a research perspective. If the vaccine were only 50% effective and had some serious drawbacks for .01% of the population, that would not mean that the vaccine "doesn't make a difference" or imposes undue risk if it saves exponentially more lives than it risks.  

It would be very sad if unscrupulous politicians played on a segment of the public's ignorance of scientific process to undermine confidence in science institutions and expertise, in the aftermath framing cautious policy as "lies" and government control. "They changed the distancing policy again so they don't know what they are doing! They're just guessing and forcing their guesses on us!" 

In my opinion honey would be good science. Effective and repeatable. It may not have arisen through what we now know as the scientific method, but it was proven time and again. That was the best science.

Failed science isn’t bad science, it’s a process. It is part of the journey. In your leukemia example I do want the best science available because it is provable and repeatable. I don’t have an issue with the term “best science available “ when it actually is. Educated guesses aren’t science, and aren’t the best science available because it’s not science. Tell us this is an educated guess based on past experience. Or call it experimental as they do with clinical trials. The best science available is whatever is provable and repeatable. Anything beyond that may be part of the scientific process, but no more. A lot of people should probably take down their pretentious “I believe in science” yard signs.

[Belsnickel]

(07-03-2023, 04:20 PM)Leon Wrote: or that they have seen the truth about you.

you and dill an ludicus and pally and gino just keep proving what i said about you all. you guys want to pretend your smarter than every one else. use a ton of words everytime which is always a red flag. and talk down to folks. but whos really smart in here.

I don't pretend I am smarter than everyone else. I just know I am more knowledgeable about some things than other people. One of those things just happens to be government.

(07-03-2023, 04:20 PM)Leon Wrote: look at folks like harley and sunsetbengals and luvnit and steelersfan. they tell it like it is and call stuff out when it needs to be called out. they dont just accept things cause left wing folks with tons of words say its so. they challengs things not just go along like sheep being told what to say. 

I find this hilarious given the amount of debunked propaganda Luvnit spouts.

(07-03-2023, 04:20 PM)Leon Wrote: just look. pally and ludicus trying to always defend tarteging little children, gross. gino is always getting proved wrong. dill always trying to make history into meeting his left wing views. and you always trying to act like an expert in everything which gets really old real fast.

Not an expert in everything, just when it comes to government stuff I am probably one of, if not the most knowledgeable one on here. I'm ignorant in a lot of things, but I will freely admit to it. When it comes to energy stuff, for instance, I will defer to folks like Stewy. I know enough to say that the role of POTUS in the fluctuations of the price of gasoline is much smaller than people believe it to be, but beyond that I don't know a ton about those issues. Folks like me who work on policy go to people like Stewy (or at least we should) to ask for their input on things.

One thing I will point out is that if you only think those you typically agree with are the ones challenging things and those you disagree with never do, you might not be as much of a free thinker as you believe yourself to be. Especially when a lot of what you and some of them say are parroted talking points. Just sayin'.

(07-03-2023, 04:20 PM)Leon Wrote: you guys just want to believe things and defend things cause its how you been programmed. you talk about how science has problems but then say you stlill been believe if a majority say it. you dont see the craziness in that do you. 

I haven't been "programmed." The scientific method is rooted in asking a question and then seeking to disprove an answer. When you test things you are trying to break it. Then, you put the information out there and get others to repeat it, hoping for the same results. When that replication occurs, this strengthens the evidence for the answer. My first post in this thread was all about evaluating the evidence, thinking critically about the results, and requiring multiple sources to show the same results before I would accept something. That is as far from blindly accepting something as you can get. However, instead of recognizing that, you saw it was coming from me, pulled out some points to attack, and used them out of context to try to say that I was just following along on things.

The irony in this is so thick I really don't know what to do with it.

[Belsnickel]

(07-03-2023, 05:42 PM)michaelsean Wrote: In my opinion honey would be good science. Effective and repeatable. It may not have arisen through what we now know as the scientific method, but it was proven time and again. That was the best science.

Failed science isn’t bad science, it’s a process. It is part of the journey. In your leukemia example I do want the best science available because it is provable and repeatable. I don’t have an issue with the term “best science available “ when it actually is. Educated guesses aren’t science, and aren’t the best science available because it’s not science. Tell us this is an educated guess based on past experience. Or call it experimental as they do with clinical trials. The best science available is whatever is provable and repeatable. Anything beyond that may be part of the scientific process, but no more. A lot of people should probably take down their pretentious “I believe in science” yard signs.

The honey example was 100% the scientific method, just not in the formal way. Some time, some hominid had to have accidentally got honey on a wound and discovered that it behaved differently than before. Then, they tried it again. They observed that there was a difference, to they hypothesized that honey had these properties. Then, they sought to replicate the results. Eventually, this knowledge was passed on.

What we call the scientific method and how we deploy it in research is just a formalized way of doing what our ancestors have been doing since the beginning. We just write it down, now.

[Leon]

(07-03-2023, 05:46 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: I don't pretend I am smarter than everyone else. I just know I am more knowledgeable about some things than other people. One of those things just happens to be government.


I find this hilarious given the amount of debunked propaganda Luvnit spouts.


Not an expert in everything, just when it comes to government stuff I am probably one of, if not the most knowledgeable one on here. I'm ignorant in a lot of things, but I will freely admit to it. When it comes to energy stuff, for instance, I will defer to folks like Stewy. I know enough to say that the role of POTUS in the fluctuations of the price of gasoline is much smaller than people believe it to be, but beyond that I don't know a ton about those issues. Folks like me who work on policy go to people like Stewy (or at least we should) to ask for their input on things.

One thing I will point out is that if you only think those you typically agree with are the ones challenging things and those you disagree with never do, you might not be as much of a free thinker as you believe yourself to be. Especially when a lot of what you and some of them say are parroted talking points. Just sayin'.


I haven't been "programmed." The scientific method is rooted in asking a question and then seeking to disprove an answer. When you test things you are trying to break it. Then, you put the information out there and get others to repeat it, hoping for the same results. When that replication occurs, this strengthens the evidence for the answer. My first post in this thread was all about evaluating the evidence, thinking critically about the results, and requiring multiple sources to show the same results before I would accept something. That is as far from blindly accepting something as you can get. However, instead of recognizing that, you saw it was coming from me, pulled out some points to attack, and used them out of context to try to say that I was just following along on things.

The irony in this is so thick I really don't know what to do with it.

if your such a free thinker and aint programmed how come i never see you challenge pally or ludicus or dill on the things they say? thats weird how that never happens, like me. ive challenged folks on here on religion and trump even though i agree with them on most other stuff. why dont you do the same with the folks i mentioned. i cant find any post of yours challenging them even though they are wrong about a lot of things. you have no problem disagreeing with me on every time i say something

[Belsnickel]

(07-03-2023, 05:56 PM)Leon Wrote: if your such a free thinker and aint programmed how come i never see you challenge pally or ludicus or dill on the things they say? thats weird how that never happens, like me. ive challenged folks on here on religion and trump even though i agree with them on most other stuff. why dont you do the same with the folks i mentioned. i cant find any post of yours challenging them even though they are wrong about a lot of things. you have no problem disagreeing with me on every time i say something

If you can't find those posts than you aren't looking very hard. Now, pally I don't interact with much at all, same for the other one. Dill and I, though, have had many disagreements over the years.

To be frank, I don't interact with most posters on here except for a few, unless they directly interact with me. It's because I don't typically find it worth my energy unless I am really bored and just causing trouble.