Comment by Natsu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Natsu | Hacker News Reader

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The problem is that this... methodology... works for both true & false claims. Pure credentialism held up Lysenkoism, among other things, for quite some time, after all. I mean, I read this:0

> If there was a clear bias in the authors' background, this would call into question the credibility of the paper.

And I can't help thinking how there would always be a "clear bias" of people who weren't strongly in support of the Party against Lysenkoism, so it just puts people into a stronger bubble, it doesn't defend any truth.

I think that those not capable of defending a position scientifically shouldn't attempt to do so and should leave it to those who can. I think this because I see these failed attempts as a way of weakening the point they're attempting to support.

> To summarize: HN commenters are generally ill-equipped to prove/disprove arguments in a scientific paper.

I disagree strongly with this, we have a lot of good scientists here who are better equipped than the vast majority of sites. Maybe not everything can be written into a single post, sure, but most of the people here have blogs or what have you and it's not uncommon to see someone post a rebuttal on their blog and for that to make the front page of HN.

I think I understand your argument, but I think you misunderstood me. I agree that just looking at credentials isn't the way to go. It does create these echo chambers where only those wearing "my colors" can be correct (when perhaps people need to see and hear those without "their colors"). But my argument was never to resort to pure credentialism. Looking at someones background is an important tool in our toolbox for finding the truth. My argument wasn't that a background check should replace scientific debate.

> I think that those not capable of defending a position scientifically shouldn't attempt to do so and should leave it to those who can.

Exactly! And to the 95+% of people who commented or clicked the opening link who do not have a background in bioengineering, how could they take a critical and informed stance to what the paper claims? The claim of the pandemic being man-made affects them, wheter they can fully understand the scientific discussion or not! I never meant to say that there is no-one on HN that cannot have the scientific discussion. I meant to say that most people simply have other skills than bioengineering in their toolbox, but they do have the ability to judge someones character if they find background information about them.

Maybe I should have put more emphasis on "generally" when I wrote it, but I hope I have clarified my point here and that you see it is very much in line with your thinking.

That's better, I just find that when things get political, it's best to focus on facts. People can have completely opposite views about a particular party's credentials. Here, for example, someone might reject authors that are Chinese because "of course" they'd defend the CCP vs. other people who think just the opposite.

I feel that pure facts helps take away the "heat" of an argument. Things that shouldn't be even remotely political--like wearing masks--have turned into political footballs and adding more "heat" to the issue only hardens people to bad positions that hurt everyone.

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