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Comment by apo | Hacker News Reader

>... He Who Shall Not Be Named predictably rejects all of the studies that do not support his position as being “fatally flawed,” or as having been “refuted by experts”—namely, by himself and his close collaborators ...

This speaks to part of the problem - the undue weight that non-scientists place on expert opinion. Trained scientists see appeal to authority arguments for what they are: bullshit.

I see this most frequently in areas for which few controlled studies are available to light the way. Human nutrition and toxicology come to mind. Oddly enough, these are the areas that are most likely to be of interest to non-scientists, setting up a vicious cycle of guru-ism complete with economic incentive to continue spouting nonsense.

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>>the undue weight that non-scientists place on expert opinion

Speaking as a non-scientist, I can recognize an appeal to authority probably just as well as a scientist. But having recognized one, what do I do? I lack the training, knowledge, and time necessary to evaluate the research directly. I can choose to only trust studies that are peer reviewed, or in major journals, or backed by whatever relevant government body there might be, or that my friend who knows about this thinks are right. And maybe that's a good idea, but it's still just appealing to different kinds of authority.

Most of the time laypeople have no realistic alternative to expert opinion.

The alternative is consensus. As part of my research I found that a particular method of estimating disease prevalence in small geographic areas performed better than this other method when tested on real data from schools.

The tendency of the general public would be to look at that study and say the first method is better than the second method (assuming the general public would care at all, which they don't). That's incorrect. I would only conclude that method is actually better if several other people found similar results for similar methods in separate studies.

People tend to place far too much importance on one paper or one study. In theoretical research this can be okay sometimes, but in applied research this is almost always the wrong way to go.

"The alternative is consensus."

That's still an appeal to authority. It's just the authority of a group rather than an individual.

I think he meant consistent experimental results by "consensus" there.

Consensus seems to be the best available alternative, but it still doesn't seem to be very good in many cases. As the article pointed out it is not difficult to manufacture enough bullshit that it looks like a "competing consensus." Prime examples of that being the anti-vaccination movement, climate change deniers, and the pro-smoking studies from cigarette companies.

Counting up and evaluating all the studies is itself a time-consuming task, hence the existence of meta-analyses. But then you get into duelling meta-analyses, and you have to choose which one(s) to trust, and you're back to expert opinion and appeals to authority.

And yet otherwise reasonable people embrace the concept of "scientific consensus" most notably in the man made global warming discussion. This is nothing but an appeal to authority . While it is true that commonly good ideas are accepted by a majority of researchers in the relevant field, it is not 100% guaranteed. It is such a shame that we reach for the "scientific consensus" argument when there is no need due to the overwhelming evidence for man made global warming. It's lazy, sloppy, and encourages group think over rational inquiry.

Except the case for anthropogenically induced global warming is just not nearly so airtight as those constantly talking about the "overwhelming scientific consensus" would have you believe.

https://mises.org/library/skeptics-case

Note; not "climate change" in general, or even just "global warming" but the specific hypothesis that it's all down to co2 emissions by humans, invariably followed up with a proposed solution to the problem consisting of an increase in state power and interference into the markets in order to avert certain catastrophe, that has the neat side effect of allowing the political authorities of the world to impose yet another tax on almost all economic activity on the planet.

And all of the above gets neatly rolled up into a label like "climate change" instead of the greatly expanded problem / solution combination the harder the expanded problem / solution combination is critically evaluated.

Nothing to see here, move along.

It's not "undue". It's a heuristic. It lessens the amount of effort one needs to get to a semblance of truth rather than to do all of the heavy lifting oneself for more precision. As mentioned by another commenter.

As yes, it can be abused of course.

Part of the way through earning a degree in social science I found I had acquired an amazing power. I can take almost any research paper in a social science and poke enough holes in it that anyone who doesn't like the results will no longer accept it.

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