Re:The problem with “doing your own research”
by faeriechangling on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @08:22PM
(#31334370)
This article goes into the issues of doing your own research but borderline handwaves the various issues with "trusting the experts". Unless you understand the research you're essentially trusting nothing more than the majority or the opinions of the establishment in an utterly blind way. You have no means to discern between an "expert" that is a total idiot and an "expert" that is a genius of great insight, you're basically just relying on social proof instead of scientific understanding.
This leads to MANY perverse situations. In cases where the truth is inconvenient to monied interests, monied interests can buy their way to a consensus by simply paying for a ton of scientists out of pocket to manufacture a consensus. Where this is insufficient, the same parties can use the media to promote certain scientific evidence over others. This article is filled with the presumption that somehow "trusting the experts" protects you from induction problems like searching only for evidence which only agrees with your opinion, but on the contrary it's actually pretty easy to find a meta-analysis which uses a neutral search strategy to get a relatively unbiased take on an issue, but if you get your scientific knowledge from the media and public bodies you're virtually always going to be getting more spin than is seen in a meta-analysis with a neutral search strategy.
Generally I think the entire article doesn't really appreciate the difficulties of having a neutral point of view simply by "trusting the experts". Early on with COVID the "Experts" were spouting the idea that masks didn't work, which I believe was premature to say, but they have the perverse incentive to bend the truth because they needed to secure the mask supply for medical professionals since they were more sure that masks did work for medical professionals so they hyped up the ineffectiveness of masks. This was a classic case of misalignment of incentives between the medical establishment, looking to clamp down on the pandemic, and individuals, looking to prevent THEMSELVES from getting disease. Yet it's sort of assumed by the article you just need to "trust the experts" as if they're going to give you advice that's true instead of advice that is useful for the purposes of protecting public health. I wisely ignored the experts, and trusted the evidence, and for that I was rewarded with additional protection against disease because I understood the experts didn't give a fuck about me as an individual.
This leads to MANY perverse situations. In cases where the truth is inconvenient to monied interests, monied interests can buy their way to a consensus by simply paying for a ton of scientists out of pocket to manufacture a consensus. Where this is insufficient, the same parties can use the media to promote certain scientific evidence over others. This article is filled with the presumption that somehow "trusting the experts" protects you from induction problems like searching only for evidence which only agrees with your opinion, but on the contrary it's actually pretty easy to find a meta-analysis which uses a neutral search strategy to get a relatively unbiased take on an issue, but if you get your scientific knowledge from the media and public bodies you're virtually always going to be getting more spin than is seen in a meta-analysis with a neutral search strategy.
Generally I think the entire article doesn't really appreciate the difficulties of having a neutral point of view simply by "trusting the experts". Early on with COVID the "Experts" were spouting the idea that masks didn't work, which I believe was premature to say, but they have the perverse incentive to bend the truth because they needed to secure the mask supply for medical professionals since they were more sure that masks did work for medical professionals so they hyped up the ineffectiveness of masks. This was a classic case of misalignment of incentives between the medical establishment, looking to clamp down on the pandemic, and individuals, looking to prevent THEMSELVES from getting disease. Yet it's sort of assumed by the article you just need to "trust the experts" as if they're going to give you advice that's true instead of advice that is useful for the purposes of protecting public health. I wisely ignored the experts, and trusted the evidence, and for that I was rewarded with additional protection against disease because I understood the experts didn't give a fuck about me as an individual.