Pseudonyms to protect authors of controversial articles

Re:Pseudonyms to protect authors of controversial articles by vokep on Monday November 12, 2018 @08:25PM (#18437613)

What harm do such articles being put out do? If the general population can't think for themselves to individually dismiss such articles, and instead needs someone to do it for them for protection from their own gullibility...I don't think I want to be part of that population.

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Re:Pseudonyms to protect authors of controversial articles by fwip on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @12:47AM (#18438912)

Ah, you read every paper that you hear mentioned, to make sure it's accurate?

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Re:Pseudonyms to protect authors of controversial articles by Sacho on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @02:46AM (#18439373)

No, but not reading a paper doesn't mean you have to trust it; you can simply default to a skeptical stance of "I am not sure of the quality of this paper, so I can't really trust its results". Given the amount of crap already put out, I think that's a reasonable stance.

The common faults include:

- paper is good quality, but results are inflated/misunderstood by reporter

- paper examines correlation, misses (seemingly obvious) other explanations. This can get so bad that you get "wet streets cause rain" results.

- paper uses statistics incorrectly or in a misleading manner(example: Data says A is true 8% of the time, false 2% of the time, unknown 90% of the time. Paper concludes that "A is only determined false 2% of the time, which is technically true, but misleading")

- paper uses unexpected definitions - words in common parlance but redefined for its field, definition is localized(legal, cultural), etc. A prime example is rape statistics, where the legal status of rape is different between countries, and many papers examining rape rates also use their own definition.

To go back to the original point - if someone is telling you certain people are inferior because of their genetic makeup, as proven by paper X, this can be wrong on all 4 counts I mentioned - the definition of "inferior" might not match mine, the statistics might be misleading, the correlation may be spurious(especially when generalizing such complex phenomenon!), or the reports might be wildly inflated. Why would you even begin to trust such a paper, before verifying it?

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Re:Pseudonyms to protect authors of controversial articles by nl on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @06:10AM (#18440132)

Because sub-segments of the population isolate themselves, and then selectively use mainstream articles to reinforce their views to the point where they promote and act on violence.

Take for example the incel communities, where they selectively quote parts of research articles to support their views, and use them to reinforce calls to violence which members of that community act on.

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Re:Pseudonyms to protect authors of controversial articles by poptrex on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @06:21AM (#18440172)

I think part of the problem is that we're not making sure everyone understands how to think critically. This is to some extent a failure of the early education system and the society around it.

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Re:Pseudonyms to protect authors of controversial articles by nl on Tuesday November 13, 2018 @04:25PM (#18445048)

I simply don’t think that’s sufficient.

Many of these people are relatively well educated. It’s the reinforcement of bad aspects of their belief system which is bad.

That’s one of the reasons I keep posting here, despite the negative reaction. People need to realise that free speech absolutitivness isn’t universally accepted.

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