Recently the head of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse, said,
Policy debate these days involves trying to rubbish the science, and that is dangerous. Global warming denialists, those who oppose genetically modified crops and vaccinations, or the teaching of evolution: their trick is treat scientific argument as if it’s a political argument, and cherry-pick data.
Alan I. Leshner, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of Science, recently said,
There is no shortage of topics where policy-makers or other members of the public seem to persistently misunderstand, misrepresent, or disregard the underlying science: climate change, genetically modified foods, vaccines, or evolution, among others.
I would list the need for nuclear power, a relatively safe form of energy, as a 5th.
I am interested in hearing from people—do you accept/reject scientific consensus on each of these issues, and what is your reasoning? Bonus points if you can describe scientific consensus accurately. Thanks ahead of time to anyone who explains their reasoning.
It’s also dangerous to blindly accept whatever is told you by an authority figre. That’s one reasoin appeal to authority is a fallacy.
It used to be the scientific consensus that stomach ulcers were caused by anxiety or fome othe nervous condtition. One doctor who said this was untrue was ridiculted for decades. Then he was proven right beyond question.
I accept consensus with a jaundiced eye. The greater the impact on the world, the more cautious I am. As for nuclear power, I lived 38 years in the shadow of Oak Ridge, TN. I’m familar with the dangers and benefits. I say, “Go for it, but do it right.”
The consensus on stomach ulcers is actually the only example that comes to mind in recent decades about consensus thinking being overturned, rather than built upon. My take on dark matter and dark energy, for example, is that they expand rather than overturn our understanding of mass/energy.
There are ideas that are accepted that don’t qualify as consensus because they have never been tested, or inadequately tested. All of the examples that come to mind are in medicine.
Which of the consensus ideas listed by Nurse, Leshner, and a jillion others do you see requiring a jaundiced eye? Evolution? And why?
I’m the most, but not totally, jaundiced about climate change. Which is really of little consequence personally as I believe people should do most the things said to be necessary to minimize climate change, not to minimize climage change but to keep our environment as close to “natural” as reasonably possible. We already eat genetically modified food, but do need to take care that modifications are not harmful, which seems somewhat easier than predicting climate change.
Cllimate change is a funny term in that our climate changes constantly. I learned that in the Random House “All About” books I read as a kid. Trying to control the climate is human folly. Trying to keep the Earth free from pollutants and minimizing human impact makes perfect common ssense.
“It used to be the scientific consensus that stomach ulcers were caused by anxiety or fome othe nervous condtition.”
Except that it was not a scientific consensus. There was no science behind the assumption.
Steve
Uh huh, oh yeah, the great Steve speaks and obfuscates.. A scientific consensus is a consensus on a scientific subject amongst scientists, in this case doctors. BTW – What’s the science behind all the salt is bad for you stuff, or is there any?
The more rigorous meaning of scientific consensus today is not just what scientists believe, but what they have looked at continue to believe, after having challenged.
In the mid-90s, most people in biodiversity were producing very high estimates for biodiversity loss this century, but I didn’t see those estimates in major reports until more than a decade later. People from other fields had questions about their analysis. So it’s not just majority agrees.
Re: “BTW – What’s the science behind all the salt is bad for you stuff, or is there any?”
Here’s a review article on sodium-sensitive hypertension (Highwire is my friend: http://highwire.stanford.edu): http://hyper.ahajournals.org/content/41/5/1000.abstract?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&andorexacttitle=and&andorexacttitleabs=and&fulltext=sodium+hypertension&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT
Here’s a CDC fact sheet on sodium: http://www.cdc.gov/salt/pdfs/Sodium_Fact_Sheet.pdf
Bottom line: Yes, there is actual peer reviewed research on this one. Though I gather that some people are more liable to getting hypertension from sodium than others.
““It used to be the scientific consensus that stomach ulcers were caused by anxiety or fome othe nervous condtition.”
“Except that it was not a scientific consensus. There was no science behind the assumption.” (Steve)
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That’s VERY TRUE, BUT it’s merely one example of many.
“Science” is NEVER settled.
As the great Stuart Firestein Chair of Columbia University’s Department of Biological Sciences and author of Ignorance: How It Drives Science, correctly asserts that “Science begins where the facts end,” noting that much of what was accepted a century ago is discredited today, just as much of what is accepted today will be, no doubt, discredited in the future.
“…scientific consensus today is not just what scientists believe, but what they have looked at continue to believe, after having challenged” (KS)…..the challenges NEVER END Karen, as there are NO time limits on such challenges.
I read somewhere that over 95% of Americans don’t know how to do quadratic equations! That number would include numerous “scientists.”
I don’t have a single close friend who doesn’t know how to do quadratic equations, so I choose not to believe that. I find that factoid to be preposterous. I DO believe (because I’ve seen it first-hand) that there are many so-called “scientists” and “educators” who’ve abandoned science, which is merely “the support for free and unfettered inquiry into ANY & ALL topics”….and that bothers me a LOT.
The great Robert Ingersoll was presciently correct when he stated, “It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.” We have too much of the latter today!
I can say first-hand that I went to a great school…an Ivy lined institution in New Hampshire and even there, they tried their best to “educate” the common sense out of me…..of course, they failed.
Of the issues you mention, I’m the least sure I accept scientific consensus on genetically modified organisms.
The reason isn’t that I have any particular reason to be skeptical of scientific consensus on GMOs. Rather, it’s that, in the case of evolution, nuclear power, climate change, and vaccines, I think I know enough about each issue to have at least some reasonable idea of what scientific consensus actually is. In the case of GMOs, I haven’t bothered to look into it that far, and so, though I think that scientific consensus is that we don’t need to worry that much about them (and the fact that you’ve checked and say that is in fact scientific consensus increases my confidence on this point), I wouldn’t exactly bet a large sum of money on my vague memory of what I think I read somewhere.
Lynn, I hear that you would accept consensus on GMOs if you knew what it was.
I’m not sure if I’m missing a nuance or 3, but believe that at the current state is that there is no more reason to worry about transgenic crops than those produced by other methods (hitting seeds with a lot of radioactivity, and seeing what you have, is main the alternative method). This technique allows scientists to affordably tackle the major problems in agriculture, such as feeding people on less land, often degraded land, with less pesticides.
“Lynn, I hear that you would accept consensus on GMOs if you knew what it was.”
Pretty much. Here’s my problem. I have apparently scientifically literate friends on both sides of this debate. By “apparently scientifically literate,” I mean not people who actually have expertise in genetics (if that were the case, I’d figure that there was no scientific consensus yet, that I was dealing with a genuinely undecided issue). But I mean the kind of people who, whether they’re humanities types or STEM types in some totally unrelated field, have the sense to accept evolution, who know when a newspaper article comes out announcing cold fusion that they’re not dealing with something that’s an actually vetted scientific finding, who don’t tell me to imitate Steve Jobs and reject the surgery/chemotherapy/radiation that the doctors are offering for some fad nutritional cancer treatment, etc. Who can roughly explain how peer review works if asked. People whose opinion I don’t normally dismiss.
Up until now, I’ve just ignored the GMO worry, because: a) no one has clearly explained to me what harm GMOs actually do (my anti-GMO friends have been more active promoting petitions among people who share their views than convincing people who don’t), and b) when I scan the latest research findings from Stanford, I never see research findings that raise alarm bells about GMOs. True, Stanford is only one university (even if a very good one), so the fact that Stanford researchers aren’t reporting a problem doesn’t mean it isn’t there. But I do use it as a proxy for how serious an environmental problem can be; Stanford does report research often enough on environmental issues. So I’ve always figured that, if there were issues with GMOs, they were sufficiently far enough down on my potential list of environmental concerns that I’d best spend my time elsewhere.
Regular old coal plants seem likely to me to be a way more serious environmental issue than GMOs.
Now, though, I have to vote in November on a proposition asking companies to supply information about food that comes from GMOs. So I can’t just say I’ll ignore this because it isn’t likely to be serious; I have to decide whether I should care about it at all.
I could go with the Friends Committee on Legislation’s recommendation on that proposition. I often do listen to FCL’s recommendations. I probably give them more weight than you do. They share my (and probably your) values, and have accumulated legislative knowledge that I don’t have, on matters like criminal justice issues. But I don’t necessarily trust their scientific knowledge; GMOs aren’t their area of expertise. So in this case I’ll read their recommendation and their reasons for it, and also check the IGS site at Berkeley for other organizational recommendations, but I don’t think I’ll just go with a recommendation.
Probably one thing I need to do is follow your tip in the other thread and look up just what the American Association for the Advancement of Science has reported about the state of research on GMOS. Probably I should also check the anti-GMO web sites to find out just what they are alleging the risk is, so that I can compare that with what I get from scientific sources.
My problem with GMOs isn’t the science, which I know less about than I should, but the behavior of the corporations peddling them. Why do they oppose informing the consumer about the presence of GMOs in food products? If GMOs are Good for You, or neutral, how can it hurt? And how can we have a free market if merchandisers are not required to tell the consumer everything s/he wants to know about the product? Okay, maybe the info will turn out to be useless. So what! Whatever happened to “the customer is always right”?
I’m doing a quick, mult-purpose drop-in, having three minutes to rub together between digesting lunch and being sucked back into the work swamp.
Lynn: I’ve had you in my thoughts since you first posted about your cancer. I’m very glad to see your latest update.
My position on scientific consensus is one that I believe is the only valid stance for any scientist worthy of the label: This is what we know today, this explanation seems to best fit what we know, and tomorrow may bring further confirmation or complete rejection, or anything in between.
This does not sit well with politicians who want to set policies that they desire (whether for the common good or for the bank accounts of their actual constituents). A consensus is not a final word. It neither confirms nor denies the open questions, other than to factor them into the expected ramifications of the consensus (as in: If we are that wrong, this is what will happen).
I support a local (defined as needed to include regional and national) perspective. If I grew up next to Love Canal, that local factory damn well better comply to the letter with every environmental impact and waste control regulation. If it involves genetics, how the (ahem) can anyone truly predict what may transpire in 10, 50 or 100 years? I want to see scientific confidence on all three timeframes, or I will reject (for example) GMO out of hand. Why take the risks for short-term profits? Don’t we have enough bad examples of that already?
And one more comment I just can’t resist making: Some day soon they’ll announce experimentation on genetically modified orgasms. That will be my cue to head for the hills and not look back. ;)
Franklin, I hear two things, ignoring the danger mentioned in your last paragraph. I hear that you accept climate consensus, and that you reject it on anything to do with genetics. Or perhaps GMOs.
Why would adding genes to crops by method A be worse or better than mutating them by method B, or natural mutations? What makes transgenic techniques somehow different from other methods, or different from natural transfers?
And do you accept consensus on the other topics?
Karen, I am perhaps being uncooperative to your main question. I’ll try to reiterate to a better connection to it.
I accept any scientific consensus, full stop. What I try not to do — and I must admit it can be difficult — is translate that to a firm conclusion. The methodology is clear, and if the full panoply of data verification, experimental proof, experimental replication, falsifiability and peer review has not been met, they either need to explain why or (as a personal reaction) shut their traps until they’ve fulfilled the requirements.
DAD has a valid point about appeal to authority. Scientific methodology answers that challenge directly, or it cannot be considered valid, certainly not as a primary decision point for policy.
I do not trust industry. Their goal is profit (right on the heels of public good), and if they can rush to market and make that profit, future legal expenses have already been factored into the cost of doing business. That used to be a cynical, even paranoid view, but the last 20 years or so have provided ample proof that it is both normal and to be expected. Genetic modification is an important tool in many areas. The vast majority of those areas are not in the business of feeding me. If the drug “testing” scandals are any indication at all, we are all well advised to avoid GMO foodstuffs, because it simply is not worth the risk to us. Science does offer some surety — never 100%, of course — and so far the literature for GMO has not even come close. Where are the long-term experiments? What clinical trials with willing volunteers have taken place? Mostly I see assumptions and reassurances, not data.
Because I was watching the movie recently, I give you Michael Crichton’s take on this from “Jurassic Park”: Nature is the most powerful force in our lives. Humans are simply unable to control it beyond the moment (in historical and global terms), and none of us knows how Nature will react to our attempts to circumvent, accelerate or deny its power. Nature finds a way. It is often not the way we want, and can be a way that if we are lucky will only hurt us, not kill us.
Franklin, I hear that you assume that GMOs are only available as a technology because companies want to make a profit. I don’t hear any sense that the research might have been done in part to address very large problems in ag? And that when people high up in AAAS and Royal Academy of Sciences say that they are concerned about public attitudes toward GMOs, it’s because they are somehow invested in protecting companies, rather than seeing transgenic crops as a vital technology to address major problems?
BTW, I have never read that scientists consider the current method of testing drugs to be successful; it is generally acknowledged to have real problems. There have been some attempts to reform it, eg, do not accept test results unless study was registered ahead of time, and require all registered tests to produce results. I don’t know how well that, or other methods, are working.
Karen, the part you don’t mention in the GMO tangent is whether or not there has been scientific debate, let alone methodology that could support a consensus, that offers a cost-benefit analysis between addressing the (yes!) very real problems in global agriculture and the damange solutions could do to environment and human health.
It is true, when politics and policy raise their ugly heads (biased? Me? Pshaw… ;) ), that discussions of cost-benefit get heavily weighted. It’s not just corporate greed, it’s also public ignorance and democracy by [dis]approbation. The entire dynamic is a SNAFU. Needful, if painful, decisions and actions are so rare any more that people who realize such need too often remain silent in the face of political and PR juggernauts.
I will explicitly state that I’m using anecdotal arguments. I don’t mind in this case, because as a rational person (subject to the opinions of others, I’m sure) who is neither a scientist by profession nor capable of keeping up with the information overload, I still must make practical decisions that serve my self-interest and my ethical duties to family and community.
I offer a simple example of simple science that had zero impact on the local rational thinking. During my lifetime, I’ve heard or read stories about to-the-locals catastrophic mudslides in hillside housing developments, mostly in California. Nearly every story mentions that the denuding of native plant life — which essentially prevented mudslides in every location that had one — was the direct cause. Did that stop further development? No. Did it prompt developers, let alone local municipal governments, to require an effective replacement of the plant life to prevent mudslides? No. We still hear and see the stories to this day.
Empirical evidence of cause and effect, intellectually accessible to the vast majority of people, can have little or no impact. It should be no wonder that the appeal-to-authority fallacy challenge is successfully leveled at science that is so solid it can be easily taught to middle school children with a pile of dirt, a water hose and a bit of physical labor.
And what conditions are met for us to say that there is consensus?
I accept the current scientific consensus. I also accept that better science will also overturn some of those which are current. There is a nice study in the recent NEJM looking at balloon pumps that challenges consensus opinion. In this particular case, it turns out consensus opinion was based on little or no science. (Was a difficult study.)
Steve
With respect to scientific consensus, here are some general epistemological questions I would offer:
What is scientific consensus?
On what basis do you know or think you know what you think it to be?
What term would you use to characterize the results you arrived at from asking and answering those questions of yourself and the subject(s) you questioned?
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
H. M., the very questions I asked you!!!
My good Karen,
No, they are not, not even close. They precede the assumptions you proceeded from.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
Lynn and Franklin,
National Academy of Sciences has said a lot, eg, http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10258
Nina Fedoroff is a highly respected, recent past president of AAAS. People don’t become president of AAAS otherwise.
When AAAS and Royal Academy and etc list these 4 (and occasionally nuclear power), they do so because there IS scientific consensus and there is public opposition to scientific consensus which has important implications for society. I have been reading this list for years. People don’t seem to understand that while they are busy being moral, people die. For me, this is an emotional issue; I apologize. This is what comes up for me: Greenpeace discouraging Africans from accepting American food aid because it was transgenic, and the leaders of two countries, Mugabe and ?, rejecting it, and telling their people it would make them sick. Of course they starved, and assumed that the food would have given them AIDS. The behavior of many is more detached, but the result is the same.
Lynn, studies have shown that most people agree with scientific consensus when it overlaps with their worldview. culturalcognition.net did not find a difference, or a big difference, between the left and the right on that. They looked at climate change, nuclear power, vaccines, and gun control, as I recall. When worldview and scientific consensus do not agree, people are open to saying that scientists are still discussing the matter, or that scientists are truly awful immoral people. Thus many on the left accept scientific consensus on climate change and evolution, and reject it on transgenic crops and nuclear power. Many on the right do the opposite. And to hear all of them talk, both on the right and the left, it’s a question of morality trumping facts. That word morality keeps appearing in the conversations.
Re FCL, they, like other non-scientific groups, go with the morality of those on the committee, pretty much the worldview they start with. It’s important to start with what’s true, what’s important, and then move to what’s mine to do. Too many are people of morality, and so do it in the opposite order.
Franklin, I began reading reports about GMOs in Science and Nature 15? years ago. What was astounding to me was that every single report that found problems with GMOs turned out to be wrong almost immediately, or perhaps a year later. I lose respect for fields of science where every report turns out to be worthless. By the time something gets to NAS, if the report says more than, geez, we sure don’t know a and b and c and d, there has been a lot of discussion.
BTW, when the environmental groups started taking positions against transgenic crops, they essentially lost all their biologists. My favorite, Rene Dubos, left NRDC. Stewart Brand talks about this in a recent book.
Lynn, I will spend more time on the document you linked — and I immediately agree that it fulfills even my cynical requirements concerning such things — but my inner curmudgeon latched onto the following on page 52:
“The committee finds, however, that specific types of transgenic and conventional crops can pose unique environmental hazards. Also, the committee finds that there are good arguments for regulating all transgenic crops. To be effective, such a regulatory system must have an efficient and accurate method for rapidly evaluating all transgenic plants to separate those that require additional regulatory oversight from those that do not.”
In the hands of a government committee, this can quickly become the source of a total failure to pay even lip service to the solid science behind the report. The expected conversation would go like this…
Gov’t stooge: So, we have to write all these regulations.
Corp. exec.: All we want to know is if this will put a damper on potential profits.
GS: Of course it will, if you actually comply with the regulations.
CE: Standard loopholes, I presume?
GS: Sure. Come by my private club on Tuesday and we’ll figure out what they should look like. At worst, you’ll have good estimates to add to your cost-of-production budget for fines and legal fees.
In my limited foray to the depths of government regulation, it is my sincere opinion that the only consequence of regulatory violation that could be at all effective is putting the violator out of business. Under the prevailing regulatory universe, that can only ever happen if a felony is involved. With complete respect and sympathy for your emotional bias for which you never need to apologize (in my view, at the least), what the means is someone will first have to die from a GMO for anything to be truly regulated. Skimming the document reassures me that a fatal result is vanishingly small, but that still leaves room for non-fatal damages for which I personally have no tolerance.
Brief anecdote: the inner-city intersection 200 feet from my house was, for a long time, unregulated by a traffic light or stop signs. I participated in a dizzying merry-go-round with the city to at least install stop signs, but no action was taken until a fatal accident happened there. Shrug.
Thanks, Karen. I’ll check that link out.
“Re FCL, they, like other non-scientific groups, go with the morality of those on the committee, pretty much the worldview they start with.”
I just looked at their recommendations and explanations today. On some of the propositions (e.g. death penalty), I already knew what they’d recommend and that I’d agree with them. On some (the GMO one), I’m not going to go with their recommendation because I’m not convinced they have the relevant knowledge (or for another reason want to look at a particular proposition more carefully). But on some, they saved me a lot of time. In particular, I learned from their analysis that Proposition 30 and 38 are competing propositions (and they gave a good explanation of the differences and why they prefer 30), and they let me know that Proposition 33 is a slightly modified version of Proposition 17, which I already voted on in 2010 (and remember how I voted, so I can vote the way I did last time and save myself the trouble of making up my mind all over again). This stuff is the kind of thing I trust them to do for me, and, adding it to what I’d already been able to make up my mind about from the ballot pamphlet and League of Women Voters site, I’m now down to being undecided on only three of the 11 propositions. That makes for a manageable number to do a closer study on.
I do agree that non-scientific groups are going to judge the science based on their prior worldview, and that I want to be careful of that.
On a loosely related note, while looking to see what the World Health Organization has to say on the topic, I came across this link on the possibility of using transgenic plants as edible vaccine vectors, to promote vaccination in countries that find current vaccines expensive to supply:
http://www.who.int/genomics/professionals/applications/usa/en/index.html
BTW, re morality, I mean it when I say I hear large numbers of people describe their beliefs as morally derived. I hear those on the left talking about being moral, not like greedy Big Biz. On the right, I hear people who are people of integrity and so refuse to accede to the idea that climate change is happening or/and anthropogenic or/and serious. (The exact or/ands differ among people, and for a particular person, over time.) We all know that creationists are fighting for civilization. I hear from both the right and the left much more detailed arguments on morality. I hear from both, except on evolution, the assumption that immoral people, such as Big Biz or environmental organizations, not scientists, are driving the discussions.
Scientific consensus must be qualified by context.
An alternate explanation for a prevailing theory (that being the “settled” science to-date) will result in the considered (or mocking) opinions of those whose theory has been challenged.
An issue or topic that has yet to pass the rigors of methodological discipline will have two or more (usually competing) explanations. The consensus choice of one of them will look like the result of a vote, though consensus has no logical connection to voting.
At the risk of invoking DAD’s ire over appeal to authority, the sane attitude is to restrict contributions to consensus to those scientists with the actual credentials for the specialty in question. The fallacy line is crossed only when the “authority” demands respect for the opinions of those who have little or no academic credentials for the specialty. There are circumstances to distrust bona fide authority, and most often that is because they are deliberatly lying or misinforming the rest of us for personal, “moral” or political reasons. That is not proof of the fallacy. It is proof of human corruption.
Ah, but what distinguishes the moral reactions of your tribe, the references to authorities who say that GMOs are somehow special and thus warrant caution?
What I hear you say is that if there were legitimate lack of consensus on dangers, it might not be communicated. Yes, sometimes it takes a while—the ulcer guy spent time at conferences sharing his ideas which led to others testing his ideas which led to reports being published—it wasn’t all done immediately. But it did happen. What I hear you say is that the system can be corrupted. That is a VERY important argument among those who disagree with consensus science on climate change.
I hear you say that you don’t know who to trust, but if Big Biz is somehow involved, you don’t trust them. In South Africa, and in a number of countries, it’s not so much Big Biz as the government in the form of the universities working with farmers to alter crops so that yield on degraded land will improve. One advantage of transgenic technology is that countries like South Africa see it as an affordable technology to increase the amount of food that farmers can grow, so that they can feed themselves (and sometimes others).
The importance of the corruption argument cannot be denied. Using it as a blanket argument is, for me, the other side of the appeal-to-authority fallacy challenge. Do you (general) always assume that there is corruption behind what you are being told? That’s what I see behind the entire “tribe” argument, and I don’t see any other label to validly apply to it but paranoia.
Mitigating corruption is the perennial human endeavor. There a “conservation of corruption” aspect to it, where “eliminating” it in one place usually means it just appears somewhere else.
So, my counter-challenge is this: If we are faced with large-scope policy decisions, and corruption is the first and last motivation for distrust, we must face the very likely possibility that no policy decisions will ever be made. This is the most glaring weakness of democracy-based societies. In the meantime, well-meaning and sincere people like you (and, if you permit, me) will grind our teeth on the sidelines and hope to provide some minimal healing to the casualties.
A mocking definition of crisis management: Wait until the crisis happens, then manage it. We don’t laud people with vision, we ridicule them when their visions make us uncomfortable.
Science has another strike against it. Science never makes guarantees — well, to be more precise, scientists will make ego-stroking declarations, not caring when they turn out to be false. Heroes don’t take their best shot with the available data in the hopes that people will not be endangered, they wait for the danger to happen before performing heroic acts.
When it comes to business, the core principle of scientific exploration — trial and error — translates to don’t use your trial to reduce my profits, because if you turn out to be in error my bank account will suffer, and oh by the way if you turn out to be right I’ll still have less money and you won’t be able to negatively prove that you prevented a damn thing. :(
The following is a bit over-the-top in the pejorative sense, but it sums things up very well from my POV.
“People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it’s true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.”
– Wizard’s First Rule, Terry Goodkind
“People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything.”
Not only that; smart people are stupid, and use their superior intelligence to more thoroughly convince themselves of what they wanted to believe all along :-).
There’s a lot of truth in that, but don’t think that I’m trying to justify my salt use. I rarely add salt to my food and generally avoid salty foods. ;)
I’m not actually entirely convinced that people with normal blood pressure and no risk factors have to worry that much about their salt intake. My understanding is that it’s actually a subset of the population that gets their blood pressure really driven up by salt, rather than everyone across the board. I do avoid salting food indiscriminately, though.
I reduced my blood pressure after vowing to stop using the local interstate for my work commute. No salt reduction needed! ;)
“Not only that; smart people are stupid, and use their superior intelligence to more thoroughly convince themselves of what they wanted to believe all along :-).” LGS)
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That goes a ways toward explaining the lack of common sense among many of the smartest people. There’s a vanity that fortifies the inane notion that “Anything I feeeeel so strongly about, can’t possibly be wrong.”
Mensa, the organization for the top 2% of IQs, has generated an axiom they call Elstob’s Law: High Intelligence does not preclude stupidity.
“When it comes to business, the core principle of scientific exploration — trial and error — translates to don’t use your trial to reduce my profits, because if you turn out to be in error my bank account will suffer, and oh by the way if you turn out to be right I’ll still have less money and you won’t be able to negatively prove that you prevented a damn thing. :(“ (FE)
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The craziest idea anyone can hold is that government is antithetical in ANY way to the business interests that finance and control it.
Corporatism works, plain and simple….it may not work optimally, nor even all that well, BUT it works!
I not only KNOW that what Clarence Darrow said about government (that it is “The tool by which the strong (rich) despoil the weak (poor),” but I whole-heartedly support that government remain precisely THAT!
After all, who benefits from the “profits” of industry more than the common working man?
The answer is, quite simply, no one.
Very nearly 90% of Exxon-Mobil’s profits go into salaries, and they’re no different than most Corporate entities. We’ve met the enemy working people….and INDEED he is US.
Government hiring doesn’t create actual “jobs,” it merely generates costs which, in turn, generates greater unemployment down the road.
I have a formula that precisely determines the cost of each government (city, state and federal) and how many “real jobs” such “employment” costs and it is almost universally rejected by everyone I know with a background in economics, which is pretty close to proving that my mathematical calculation is correct. After all, I’m not on any government or Corporate payroll (in THAT regard), in fact, I AM an independent commodities speculator…and a government worker to boot!
IF ANY government ANYWHERE could produce product and engage in the actual self-sustaining commerce necessary to build an economy, wouldn’t SOME government, SOMEWHERE have done that?
IF there were ever such a place it SHOULD’VE been Venezuela – oil rich, with millions of people ready and willing to work for such state-run enterprises and yet….here’s poor Venezuela with over 27% of its people living below the poverty rate, with a 26% inflation rate and a Central Bank with a lending rate of nearly 30%!
So, in the end, you know why the government-run economy hasn’t been successful? Because it CAN’T work!
The most dangerous self-delusion one can hold is that today’s developed world governments represent “the people” and NOT the Corporations that finance them.
They DO NOT represent “the people,” and for the most part, THANK god” they don’t! Every pure democracy has been short-lived because of the bestial nature of the mob, the inherent cruelty and blind self-interest of the vaunted “common man.”
Here’s another reason to be wary of scientific consensus.
“Misconduct Widespread in Retracted Science Papers, Study Finds
Last year the journal Nature reported an alarming increase in the number of retractions of scientific papers — a tenfold rise in the previous decade, to more than 300 a year across the scientific literature.
Other studies have suggested that most of these retractions resulted from honest errors. But a deeper analysis of retractions, being published this week, challenges that comforting assumption.
¶ In the new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, two scientists and a medical communications consultant analyzed 2,047 retracted papers in the biomedical and life sciences. They found that misconduct was the reason for three-quarters of the retractions for which they could determine the cause. “
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/science/study-finds-fraud-is-widespread-in-retracted-scientific-papers.html?ref=science&_r=0
The reason I brought up the salt question is that there seems to be a very strong scientific consensus that salt needs to be strictly limited. NYC Mayor Bloomberg are trying to set extremely strict controls. But, a recent study found ” Below 3 grams (3000 milligrams) of sodium per day is linked to a higher incidence of congestive heart failure.”
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008443.html
But the Mayo Clinic says this, which seems to be the scientific consensus to the point of enacting laws: ” The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend limiting sodium to less than 2,300 mg a day — or 1,500 mg if you’re age 51 or older, or if you are black, or if you have high blood pressure, diabetes or chronic kidney disease.
Keep in mind that these are upper limits, and less is usually best, especially if you’re sensitive to the effects of sodium. If you aren’t sure how much sodium your diet should include, talk to your doctor. ”
Plus, Scientific American also says the salt limits are questionable. “For decades, policy makers have tried and failed to get Americans to eat less salt. In April 2010 the Institute of Medicine urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate the amount of salt that food manufacturers put into products; New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has already convinced 16 companies to do so voluntarily. But if the U.S. does conquer salt, what will we gain? Bland french fries, for sure. But a healthy nation? Not necessarily.
This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure. In May European researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the less sodium that study subjects excreted in their urine—an excellent measure of prior consumption—the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease. These findings call into question the common wisdom that excess salt is bad for you, but the evidence linking salt to heart disease has always been tenuous.”
Of course, this is a sign the scientific consensus is changing. But for how long has it been wrong and how many lives have been damaged because of it?
Not much because not many people paid attention to it. When it comes to consensus on dietary issues, which I think has actually been pretty rare, it is usually pretty weak , not because it is a consensus opinion, but because the science is usually weak. They are difficult, costly studies. Few are well done.
Steve
Re salt, I actually suffer salt deficiency every once in a while, because I get a lot of exercise, and don’t normally add salt to my food. Neither here nor there. Re Steve’s comment, absolutely correct; medicine is shifting out of its earlier incarnation (low fat diets are good because high fat diets are bad) to actually checking whether low fat diets are beneficial (I think the results are that high fat diets are bad for everybody, and low fat diets harm some and help some, when compared to normal diets). The medical sciences and life sciences have been more prone to just saying things without checking (this is not scientific consensus, can’t get there without the science). They are more likely than the physical sciences to have only a few eyeballs checking various results.
Certain fields of science seem to have more fraud, and more incompetence. Psychology and life sciences, especially, because fewer people are involved in each experiment. Climate deniers seem to find journals that do “peer review” on cherry picked information. All of the “we can do it with only renewables by 2050″ are garbage, and I wonder who the peers are that approve this stuff.
“Psychology and life sciences, especially, because fewer people are involved in each experiment.”
One difficulty with psychology, in particular, is that, because the easiest way to get subjects is to require students in an introductory psychology class to take part in a certain number of experiments, some results may be skewed toward “things that are true of college undergraduates.” So, even assuming the experiments are non-fraudulent and competently done, they may be skewed from the general population in certain ways.
It’s also sometimes the case that someone whose prior research has a good reputation (often legitimately) will get a pass on a more questionable study. Case in point: Daryl Bem, who has made genuinely useful and important contributions to social psychology, but whose research on extrasensory perception I don’t at this point trust. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I suspect that the otherwise reputable Journal of Personality and Social Psychology may have gone easy on peer reviewing his evidence because of his prestige.
The whole point of scientific consensus (which makes it different from, for instance, religious consensus) is that it is provisional. It is consensed on by scientists only until it isn’t.
It is provisional, but in recent decades it is rarely overturned. It is extremely unlikely that natural selection, the relative safety and need for transgenic crops and nuclear power and vaccines, and the current consensus on climate change, for example, will be overturned. The current use of the term scientific consensus, as I understand it, is for ideas that have survived large numbers of challenges, and where confirmation comes from multiple lines of evidence, and where scientists have lost interest in challenging the idea as a result. Most of those who argue against consensus science, using the idea that it is provisional, do not offer competing scientific ideas, and do not indicate weaknesses in the current understanding.
“Most of those who argue against consensus science, using the idea that it is provisional, do not offer competing scientific ideas, and do not indicate weaknesses in the current understanding.” (KS)
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It is no more necessary for the person who sees the flaws of much “scientific consensus” to provide alternatives, as it is for the media critic to write a better sitcom, for instance.
The problem with most of those who claim to adhere to “scientific consensus” is that (1) they generally haven’t read nor do they much understand the science behind the consensus they claim to believe in and (2) tend to accept the views of high priests (so-called “Scientists”) on faith. REAL scientists don’t work for governments or Corporate entities…today those are pretty much one in the same.
Bought and paid for “research” is expected (demanded) to deliver the DESIRED results of those paying….and today, they unfailingly DO!
“It is extremely unlikely that natural selection….will be overturned. “ (KS)
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Natural Selection has been so “refined” as to have been transformed…..same difference.
I always fear that some backwards people here think I’m against Corporatism….far from it. It’s the ONLY existing viable alternative to complete economic freedom that our human nature’s make so unwieldy, and the utterly unworkable “command-economy of “socialism.”
TODAY every developed nation’s government is controlled by the Corporate entities that finance them and we’re all (pretty much) better off because of it.
Exxon-Mobil, BP-Amoco and other energy giants DO routinely use government policy institutes, Universities, etc., to push a “scarcity agenda,” that allows for HUGE profits….but these Energy Giants produce tens of millions of jobs worldwide, and THAT’S what this “price-gouging” finances.
Independent or “free inquiry” is a thing of the past. Those who pay for research today expect/DEMAND the results they want….results that will support what benefits them. Governments (financed by big Corporate entities) do the bidding of those Corporate entities. Right now, one of those major interests is the idea of an “energy shortage.” It’s good for business and good for the governments those businesses finance.
A former roommate of my from College runs a major environmental group. I initially thought the guy a sap…WHY waste time spitting into the wind, like that? You’re NOT going to “save the world” by taking on the Corporate entities that are the framework of the modern world.
Turns out, after talking to him extensively, I found that such groups are largely financed by the Energy Industry. As he said, “You couldn’t have Exxon-Mobil, or Chevron lobbying to limit drilling and thereby artificially raising its own prices…and profits, so that’s where WE come in. We lobby on behalf of the earth and all appearance of impropriety goes out the window.” In short, such groups function as de facto lobbyists ON BEHALF of BIG Energy!
I admit that I initially found this tack repulsive, imagine duping the dopes to get them to, in effect, sign onto higher prices for THEMSELVES! BUT, after looking at how much good (in terms of jobs and providing the energy we all need) Big Energy does and how much we all depend upon them…I can see where my old roomie is actually providing an essential service – not “duping the dopes,” he’s merely getting people to do the right thing long term, even though it’ll cost’em in the short-term.
But I HOPE intelligent people aren’t fooled by the charges of AGW, it’s a tactic, a strategy to push forth a “scarcity agenda,” creating artificial energy (oil) shortages to raise prices and profits…and thereby create MORE good jobs worldwide.
STILL, I feel about the same way I do about AGW as I do about Christianity -IF it makes you feel better to believe in it, then by all means, have at it. Ultimately it raises prices AND profits and creates more jobs….and that’s generally a very good thing.