Debunking science denialism does work—but not perfectly
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Unfortunately, the understanding of what constitutes actual evidence is very thin amongst the crowd that likes to deny.
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Interesting conclusion that make sense but also scary because some will likely use a study like this to support more restrictions on speech.
Basically if there is a chance for debate it is better to debate than to let the other side speak unopposed, but debate isn't as helpful as if they not spread their misinformation in the first place.
Basically if there is a chance for debate it is better to debate than to let the other side speak unopposed, but debate isn't as helpful as if they not spread their misinformation in the first place.
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"...laying bare the rhetorical techniques that are being used to obfuscate the truth."
Good ol' Plato had a lot to say about this 2,400 years ago.
I'd like to help save the word "rhetoric," which has been abused and misused and now often has negative connotations. It's "sophistry" that we should watch out for.
Edit: Not implying that the author misused the word; she didn't.
Good ol' Plato had a lot to say about this 2,400 years ago.
I'd like to help save the word "rhetoric," which has been abused and misused and now often has negative connotations. It's "sophistry" that we should watch out for.
Edit: Not implying that the author misused the word; she didn't.
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So, if misinformation sticks regardless of rebuttal, over a long enough timeline of eventual exposure, we're basically guaranteed to sink into a dark age? :-(
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There are times when I'll engage in an online discussion where some denialist has spouted forth another egregiously inane rant about how humans cannot possibly have any influence on climate with a straightforward query that runs like this:
"So...you think it was gremlins that are responsible for the extraction, combustion and atmospheric release of CO2 from geologically-sequestered fossil fuels totaling about 400+ gigatonnes over the past few millennia, especially the past few hundred years? Leprechauns? The Devil's tooth fairy? Invisible aliens from Venus (or somewhere equally hellish) here to remake our fair planet more to their liking? No, it was just us human beings...intent on surviving and then prospering in the short-term while rather blithely and deliberately ignoring the longer-term implications of our collective actions on the planet's biosphere."
Seems to work pretty well, and is essentially truthful at its most basic level despite the rather obvious irony directed at undermining their particular schtick.
"So...you think it was gremlins that are responsible for the extraction, combustion and atmospheric release of CO2 from geologically-sequestered fossil fuels totaling about 400+ gigatonnes over the past few millennia, especially the past few hundred years? Leprechauns? The Devil's tooth fairy? Invisible aliens from Venus (or somewhere equally hellish) here to remake our fair planet more to their liking? No, it was just us human beings...intent on surviving and then prospering in the short-term while rather blithely and deliberately ignoring the longer-term implications of our collective actions on the planet's biosphere."
Seems to work pretty well, and is essentially truthful at its most basic level despite the rather obvious irony directed at undermining their particular schtick.
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It's not that simple. I'm not going to be convinced vaccines cause autism without evidence vaccines cause autism, which is to say, the denialists and conspiracy theorists can have 500 debates a year for all I care. You're not going to move me off the truth without actual evidence for the argument, and actual evidence is the one thing they don't have.
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I believe there is another issue at hand that we are all missing. Before I state the issue, I would like to say that I believe Vaccines save lives, global warming is real and earth is not flat. In other words, I am not an idiot.
The issue I believe is that most of us do not have the actual knowledge to argue with people who deny truths. I do not understand how exactly vaccines work, or how to scientifically prove that the earth is round, or all the statistics behind global warming. You might say that it is not my job to know, but if you are going to argue, make sure you have a through understanding of the concept, and are prepared to counter the thin arguments presented by the other side. If not, then your lack of knowledge will be visible and will only strengthen their (incorrect) belief. That is the reason I never argue with these people, because I am not Neil Degrass Tyson, or a doctor or a climate scientist.
Just my 2 cents.
The issue I believe is that most of us do not have the actual knowledge to argue with people who deny truths. I do not understand how exactly vaccines work, or how to scientifically prove that the earth is round, or all the statistics behind global warming. You might say that it is not my job to know, but if you are going to argue, make sure you have a through understanding of the concept, and are prepared to counter the thin arguments presented by the other side. If not, then your lack of knowledge will be visible and will only strengthen their (incorrect) belief. That is the reason I never argue with these people, because I am not Neil Degrass Tyson, or a doctor or a climate scientist.
Just my 2 cents.
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The vaccine issue is a weird one because it's not clear what the motivations are for misinformation. For climate change, there's an economic incentive for misinformation. For evolution, there's an ideological incentive for misinformation. In the case of vaccines, what is the motivation for misinformation? It's hard to believe you would knowingly spread misinformation if you didn't believe it. On the contrary, you can argue the opposite side that drug companies have a motivation to argue it's safety and efficacy. Not sure what to do with that...just an observation.
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We need to start treating denialism and associated forms of stupid as a public health 'disease' - a cultural contagion which is resistant to approaches you might expect but can still be treated.
This isn't appealing when you want to scream at people who are just so damn wrong, but shouting and fact-dumping clearly doesn't work.
Hopefully more techniques to fight this nonsense will be developed.
This isn't appealing when you want to scream at people who are just so damn wrong, but shouting and fact-dumping clearly doesn't work.
Hopefully more techniques to fight this nonsense will be developed.
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Seems to jive with the study on news article comments I saw a while back. It stated something like comments spinning an article one way or another it will influence a person's option on a topic if they didn't have a strong opinion on it before.
Also seems to work like how news initial news headlines stick in a person's mind regardless of follow up articles that disprove the initial headlines.
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Here's what bothers me the most about what is described in this piece.
I'm afraid that a significant percentage of our fellow human beings (many of whom are good people with good hearts) are susceptible to this sort of thing (misinformation)...and will always be that way.
What 'this sort of thing' is, in my mind, is willful manipulation by, in my mind, a sadistic portion of the powerful among us, and some of those who wish to be powerful.
I don't know how to prevent this...and in fact, at this time the Internet and all that goes with it appears at times to be more of a tool for the manipulators than it does for the educators.
Sigh.
I worry about the world my daughters will inherit.
I'm afraid that a significant percentage of our fellow human beings (many of whom are good people with good hearts) are susceptible to this sort of thing (misinformation)...and will always be that way.
What 'this sort of thing' is, in my mind, is willful manipulation by, in my mind, a sadistic portion of the powerful among us, and some of those who wish to be powerful.
I don't know how to prevent this...and in fact, at this time the Internet and all that goes with it appears at times to be more of a tool for the manipulators than it does for the educators.
Sigh.
I worry about the world my daughters will inherit.
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Lack of information to know that "vaccines cause autism" is a discredited and thoroughly debunked crock of shit, combined with the inherent desire to protect one's children from harm, add in a hefty dash of tribalism / identifying with the group, half a teaspoon ml of "big pharma is behind this because they just want our money" and there you go. Bake in the echo chamber crucible of your choice (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) until the golden brown crust is all but impervious to logic and reason.
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Sophistry is a rhetorical technique, to be fair, albeit an intellectually dishonest one.
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I feel like they missed maybe the most important part of this experiment. So you have a cohort who were swayed by the misinformation. That cohort is split into two sub cohorts: one that was set straight by the rebuttal and another cohort that held onto the misinformation. What is different about them?
Because if you can identify what is unique about the people who hold onto misinformation despite rebuttal... then you can start to target that.
Because if you can identify what is unique about the people who hold onto misinformation despite rebuttal... then you can start to target that.
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Education on facts is viable—noted. Pointing out flawed arguments: also viable, and noted.
This is all window dressing, man. What about ponies?
This is all window dressing, man. What about ponies?
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How about deliberate pedantry, in which one wears down the opposing side to where they just don’t care to argue anymore? Also a rhetorical technique. I had a global business class where we were told an iron bladder is almost required when negotiating with entities from certain countries.
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Unlikely. Hiring people with logic issues is becoming uncommon due to job applicants being forced to pass increasingly difficult batteries of form and computer driven questions. An individual's chance of getting anywhere with a misunderstanding of basic reality is also closing in on them. The world is becoming prejudiced against people that are uneducated, emotionally unstable, logic challenged, and a list of other employer prejudices.
The world is still harsh, just don't call it natural selection anymore.
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You're assuming there are two discrete groups. I would assume more of a spectrum that drifts between "I'm really sure of this" to "I'm really sure of that".
I mean, maybe you could identify some difference, but the difference could just be "I believed it more before". You probably can't really draw any conclusions from an individuals slight shift in belief before vs after.
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IMO
Lack of proper education is another symptom of corruption/money in politics, and education will inevitably fail again if that is not addressed.
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It seems though the focus of the article is more on limiting the ability of those denialists to influence others to accept their views. In that regard, it would seem to me the approach might need to be adjusted to fit the specific person. Lack of science background will always be a challenge to overcome. Instilling trust and credibility would seem to be important regardless of approach.
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But that wasn't part of the experiment - you'd have to hypothesize what exactly that difference is, and then design an experiment around that. Otherwise you're just p-hacking - if you look hard enough you will find something in common, even if it's "most people in this cohort sleep in a bedroom with east-facing windows".
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As someone who has friends/acquaintances who are very to somewhat anti-vax. (it causes autism vs it doesn't seem that important). I have to say the way it seems to spread is through social networks and friends telling scary stories of children who "developed" autism after getting vaccines. I wish I was better at talking to people about it, but I'm just not sure what to say about that vaccines because it tends to be very personal. Climate change OTOH I can talk about easily because to me that's just facts.
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Very well put. And while it doesn't directly address the *scientific* components of this problem, the short book "Echo Chambers", by Cass Sunstein (written almost 20 years ago) does a great job of articulating the issues around the all-important "echo chamber crucible" mentioned above.
The book can be found at http://assets.press.princeton.edu/sunstein/echo.pdf .
Without understanding how important the self-reinforcing communication and sociological aspects of this are, the best scientific arguments in the world will not stem this dangerous tide. This book is well worth a read for those who would try to fight the rise of anti-scientific rhetoric.
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People who deny this are low hanging fruit in terms of where a rebuttal can be effective.
The deniers are often parents w/ young children who have been threatened w/ government action.
They are motivated to at least listen to try to avoid government sanction.
Science denialism goes much deeper than that.
The flat earth, young earth crowd have a deeply ingrained desire to deny the scientific evidence. And they have little motivation to be open to arguments or to alter their POV.
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People deny because they are afraid of one thing or another, sometimes its a deeply entrenched fear.
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It's mutated from an economic argument. The original argument was that the MMR vaccine in particular could cause autism. Wakefield had patented a standalone measles vaccine that he peddled as a replacement for that component of the MMR, and he received hundreds of thousands of pounds from an English solicitor (Richard Barr) to research how "dangerous" the competition to his patented vaccine was so that Barr could file a class-action lawsuit against the pharmaceutical industry.
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I don't think that's true, or at least, I know of no evidence for it. I also don't think there is such a thing as science denial. Well, maybe there are one or two people who in general reject science as a method and discipline and body of knowledge.
There is however a lot of disbelief about particular scientific propositions.
This is why the concept of denialism in this context is not helpful. Better by far to focus on the particular beliefs.
Like, try to find out exactly what it is that an anti-vax person is disbelieving, and address it.
Don't say, you idiot science denier. Do say, why do you think your child is better off unvaccinated against measles.
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It's not certain people. We all are susceptible to it, depending on the topic.
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I’d suggest an additional motivation, taken from observing my mother when she suddenly turned into an anti-vaxxer. She refused to vaccinate my youngest sister, even though both my other sister and myself were properly vaccinated with no complications. For her it came from groups of gossiping mothers, all with very low need for cognition and even less actual knowledge, competing with each other to see who could claim to have the most “secret” knowledge the others don’t know and was therefore the better parent.
It was watching that which convinced me that parents don’t actually love their children. It’s just a competitive thing where the winner is the one who give the best performance of appearing to care for their children. Points are gained by extreme actions like refusing to vaccinate.
This, incidentally, was about forty years ago. Anti-vax sentiment has been around for a very long time. It certainly didn’t start with Wakefield, although the internet has enabled his BS to become a semi-coherent movement.
A couple of years after my mother made this appalling decision my sister caught, and had near death complications as a result of, goddamn whooping cough. She also contracted measles when she was a bit older although, at least for her, the whooping cough caused the most problems.
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Lack of institutional (or perhaps civic?) trust. With respect to anti-vaxxers, my money would be on a deep distrust of the research of recommendations. In the U.S., industries are often cozy with the non-governmental professional and/or governmental regulatory bodies meant to oversee them.
As a result, people don't believe them. One of the more well known examples of this are U.S. Dietary Guidelines. They were not made with the health of the public health in mind.
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