The article then goes on to describe the author’s experience debating Wakefield on television. Yep, he made a big mistake.
I agree with those sentiments. There is no reason why a scientist should be debating the science of vaccines or vaccine policy with Elon Musk, Joe Rogan (whom I like most of the time), or RFK, Jr. RFK, Jr is a crank by every definition. I am sure that RFK, Jr has convinced more than woman to not get a HPV vaccine which means there are going to be women who get cervical cancer that would not have if they had received the vaccine. Do we give RFK, Jr a megaphone to convince more women to not get this vaccine based on crank science?
There was also an epidemic of measles on the island of Samoa in recent history that killed almost 100 children and injured hundreds more. This was due to low vaccination rates. This is the world the cranks (the real ones) want to create. I say don’t give them a stage.
Context, context, context. See my reply to Faizal (which has since been moved to the argument clinic, along with my original exposition, so once again the discussion here has become incoherent, because connected posts aren’t kept together). @Dan_Eastwood
Yes, the article that Mercer cited was referring only to obvious cranks, but I wasn’t just talking about the article itself, but about Mercer’s intent in bringing it up. Mercer and I have a debate about “debates” that goes back about 13-14 years, so whereas you were just looking at the tip of the iceberg, I was looking at the 5/6 that is hidden underwater. If you aren’t interested in the broader debate about “debates” then don’t pay any attention to my post. I was addressing mainly Mercer.
Recently, because they’re now largely seropositive. They weren’t when the vaccines came out. Do you not understand this?
IOW, not recently. Are you really that unaware that pandemics evolve?
There’s no panic involved in pointing out that children were a major vector of infection at the peak of the pandemic, infecting those at far greater risk. Are you really unaware of this temporal evolution of the situation?
And justifiably so. Your pretension that this would have been a tenable position during the peak of the pandemic is classic, obvious crankery.
I’ve never seen anything of the sort, so I dispute your use of “any.” I don’t think you’ve ever attended a scientific conference.
Typically, at real scientific conferences, real scientists present real data, not mere “claims,” and in the vast majority of cases, they do not overinterpret them. At the end of talks, attendees are invited to ask questions of the presenter. It’s not a debate.
Again, this doesn’t happen as making and defending claims. It’s about presenting new evidence, something you avoid. So, no, I’ve attended and presented in many, many, scientific conferences, and I’ve never, ever encountered making and defending mere claims, as you put it.
They aren’t forbidden, they simply don’t happen, because these presentations are about presenting evidence, not presenting claims. Arguments about interpretation in these contexts are often very constructive in that people reach agreement on the next steps to test hypotheses.
Funny you would write that in the context of Andrew Wakefield, a qualified and published physician/scientist, who was caught fabricating data to support his anti-vaccine pseudoscience.
That’s the problem with your relentless credentialism, you see. Science is about testing hypotheses and producing new evidence, not interminable arguing over claims that can never be resolved, as religious scholars do. Your equivocation of them is just silly.
Your concession that “arguments about interpretation” do occur at conferences is all that I have ever been trying to say. I’m using the term “debate” to mean “argument about interpretation [of data, results, etc.]”. And I never said or suggested that debate could not be constructive.
You are using a very narrow meaning of “debate” – the notion of two people with inflexible opposite positions standing on a stage, with each trying to deny every point the other makes. But there is no reason why debaters, even in a formal stage debate, need to be doctrinaire. They might start out in apparent disagreement, but in the course of making their case (from evidence), discover that they have more in common than they thought, and might end up in a large measure of agreement. And all the more is this the case in the context of an academic scientific context, where an initial disagreement that might seem gauntlet-throwing might, with back and forth between two open-minded professionals, produce near-agreement or agreement.
I’ve been at many academic conferences where scholars, in question periods after presentations, argue over the interpretation of evidence – literary evidence, historical evidence, etc., and the term “debate” is perfectly appropriate for the sort of point-counterpoint dialogue that often ensues. No, it’s not a debate in the staged sense, but it’s debate in a perfectly normal English sense of that word. Your continued attempt to misrepresent my point – my point being that it is healthy when experts (scientists or others) who disagree confront each other and exchange arguments for their respective interpretations of evidence – does not appear to have any good motive.
No, you aren’t; you’re now making it so broad as to be useless. Look at your OP, the context here. Eddie, you are constantly trying to avoid scientific evidence and the scientific method so that you can pretend that ID is science.
I didn’t claim you did. I have pointed out your complete lack of understanding of the scientific process. Nowhere is your ignorance more evident than in your claims that people “read papers” at scientific meetings or that they host debates.
No. That is the context of the OP, though.
I’ve never witnessed any gauntlet-throwing except in the context of priority, which escapes you since you need to pretend that all interpretation is retrospective, because ID does zero prospective hypothesis testing.
I haven’t, and we’re talking about my field, not yours.
Here’s a typical Q-and-A:
“Nice talk. Did you do control X?”
“No, but that’s a great suggestion.”
Note that this can be a brutal question delivered politely, when control X has the potential to invalidate the whole point of the talk.
What I described above cannot be accurately described as debate.
Your gross misrepresentations of science and scientists are the issue here. Again, someone’s giving a talk (instead of a poster) at a meeting because she has produced new, interesting data, so there’s no basis for your silly pretension that people are debating retrospective interpretations of a static pile of data.
You repeatedly and deliberately invoke this misrepresentation to support the IDcreationist pseudoscientific scam, which steadfastly avoids formulating hypotheses and tests thereof.
We debate grant application scores at NIH study sections. We debate whom to hire as new faculty at department meetings. Those are real debates. No one is standing behind a podium in either case. What you refuse to acknowledge is that when we do science, we have the obligation to test our hypotheses, so at meetings we are almost always presenting the results of debates we have already had with ourselves. That being said, there have been obvious failures to do so, the ENCODE fiasco being a familiar one to people here.
That’s the essence of the scientific method, and the failure to engage in it, emphasized by your misrepresentations, is the best marker for identifying pseudoscience.
Yep, exactly. You just described about 50% of the questions in oral and poster presentations when combined with “Did you try condition X?” or “Did you see so-and-so’s paper that described something similar?”. So-and-so’s paper is usually the paper written by the person asking the question. The other 50% of questions are scientists using a vague question as an excuse to talk about their own research for 5 minutes of the Q&A session.