
Lessons in Science and Spin - anarbadalov
https://undark.org/article/cornelia-dean-making-sense-of-science/
======
anarbadalov
I love (and agree with) Massimo Pigliucci's quote: “How is the average
intelligent person (Socrates’ ‘wise man’) supposed to be able to distinguish
between science and pseudoscience without becoming an expert in both?” It's
easy to understand the sentiment about people believing that experts are
speaking from positions of vested interest and have something to gain. Sadly,
not sure that will ever change, and denial seems to be on the rise.

------
lj3
> a longtime journalist shares hard-won insights in teasing out substance from
> hype.

A journalist is not somebody I would be trusting to tease out substance from
hype. Their job is to sift the hype out of the substance for ad revenue.

------
VeronicaJJ123
My rule that generally works :

1\. Skin in the game. (Does the person offer his advice for living and does he
negatively affected for mistakes ?)

2\. Incentives : Does the expert have any perverse incentives for those
specific opinions ?

------
rwj
One trick I've used is to look for non-technical errors. Often, people don't
even argue the technical merits. For example, when discussing climate change,
waiting for 100% certainty is a flag they are not serious. No one ever has
100% certainty. On top of which, you buy house insurance despite the
probability of a fire being very small, you care about the risk (P*E).

Moving the goal post, ad hominem attacks, etc...

------
vixen99
Even better: how about examining the arguments used by whoever-they-are to
support a particular thesis or agenda?

~~~
meri_dian
The soundness of a scientific argument may rest on highly technical or deep
bodies of knowledge. For the layperson, evaluating such an argument is not
trivial.

------
tcj_phx
There are some serious problems in the science industry. The biggest of these
is that some otherwise-intelligent people don't realize that they're sometimes
"useful idiots".

For example, while modern medical practitioners are generally good advocates
for a rational approach to health, they don't realize that their profession
sometimes serves the needs of their industry's supply chain. One of the
examples in "An epidemic of unnecessary and unhelpful medical treatments" [1]
was about how cardiologists still use lots of stents, even though they've been
shown to be basically useless for improving the long-term prognosis of the
patients.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13713563](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13713563)

One of the _Science Based Medicine_ writers, Harriet Hall, regularly defends
pseudo-scientific psychiatric practices. This article defends involuntary
treatment:

[https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/involuntary-
treatment-%e2%8...](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/involuntary-
treatment-%e2%80%93-civil-rights-or-civil-wrongs/)

She expressed very similar views in a 2016 Skeptic Magazine article. What Dr.
Hall doesn't realize is that, when commonly-used psychiatric drugs are used as
treatment, the treatment is always a contributing factor for the diagnosis.

I've written here before about how the mental health system tried to turn my
friend into one of their customers-for-life. When I met her, I figured she was
'high as a kite'. I gradually learned that she really was self-medicating with
the street pharmacy. With my influence, over the course of about 6 months, she
came to realize that she didn't like being a "drug addict". Then she ran out
of alcohol, became psychotic, and was taken to the behavioral health
department of the local hospital. (Methadone is known to cause sugar cravings.
My friend began drinking heavily after about a month of methadone treatment.
Insulin resistance is a major problem amongst people who train their bodies to
run on alcohol...)

When I realized that hospital was sending my friend to get "evaluated" for
court-ordered mental health treatment, and presumably misdiagnosed and
mistreated, I felt an overwhelming sense of dread: _" those people_ never get
better..." ("those people" being people who are trapped in the mental health
industry).

So I went to the county court (big-city), and got an order that the hospital
release their patient. I should have called the police to accompany me back
onto the hospital's property... My friend got sucked into the system.

After a year of my friend getting professionally mistreated, I found videos on
my phone proving that she is not "persistently disabled", as the psychiatrists
diagnosed her. I went back to the court. This time the (small-town) judge
'tweaked' the law so she wouldn't have to make the community's mental health
provider look bad. Eventually I went into the appellate courts... I've learned
a lot about 'lawyering' over the past year.

Under the threat of having to explain why they're treating my friend as one
who is "persistently" (permanently) disabled, when my videos clearly prove
that she was fine before the first hospital, the current treatment provider
has realized that their patient doesn't actually require overlapping
tranquilizers. They've also realized she has that genetic mutation that makes
her unable to convert folic acid to folate, so they've added prescription
Vitamin B9 [2] to her reduced regimen of harmful drugs.

[2] [https://www.deplin.com/](https://www.deplin.com/) \- I think it amusing
that the vitamin is marketed as an add-on treatment for "antidepressant
therapy".

With regards to this article, "science and spin"... If conventional science
was fundamentally wrong about something, how would they realize their mistake?
Max Planck is misquoted as having said, 'Science advances one funeral at a
time' [3]...

[3]
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck)

