Comment Re:I am very sceptical... (Score 1) 1093
Fair enough that's where we disagree. I think if you don't have the time or ability to investigate and decide for yourself you shouldn't be acting in that sphere for fear of doing more harm that good.
That's completely unavoidable. For example, politicians must decide
- whether power lines or cell phones cause cancer and how to regulate it,
- whether vaccinations cause autism and if we should ban vaccinations
- whether the H1N1 vaccination should be immediately distributed,
- whether humans contribute to global warming and if we should regulate our contributions.
These policy makers can't be expected to be experts in all of these fields. I don't actually expect Senator Lisa Murkowski to understand enough immunology to look at the lab notebooks of the scientists and know whether or not the H1N1 vaccination they created will kill you outright. What I do expect her to know, is who's opinion she should trust. When the scientists at the CDC tell her its perfectly safe and will actually prevent infection, she's just gonna have to believe that and make policy choices based on that information.
As for paragraph 2 if you have read a 100 scientists opinions refuting Joe Blogger and you agree with their analysis isn't this educating yourself?
No, it's not. How can I even know if I agree with their analysis? For example, if these scientists are telling me that adding GFP to tomatoes that I eat won't cause cancer, I'm not going to take the time (years!) to learn about details of molecular biology in order to evaluate the biochemical pathways they used to back their claims. I'm just going to trust that they know what they're saying. Even if Joe Blogger tells me they will cause cancer because genetic engineer is bad, I'm also going to just have to trust that when the scientists tell me his claim is bogus, that they actually listened to what he had to say.
The thing that scares me is the don't believe him or even take the time to look at his stuff because he's not part of the club mentality.
Yes! If the scientists won't even listen to the claims, then they're not doing their job. We definitely agree here. That's the scientists responsibility to listen to them. But, I sure as hell don't want Senator Lisa Murkowski giving this other guy equal credence if the scientists have already refuted the claims. The politician and the layperson should not simply assume that there are two sides to this story and consider both claims. Neither is actually equipped to evaluate the claims; they simply aren't experts and haven't invested the time.
In my reading of the original article, the author decided to go the route of giving both the scientists and the blogger equal credibility. He took the time to investigate the claims a little deeper (as deep as his understanding would go) and then found that in the end scientists were likely right. His conclusion was simply that he wasted his time and should have stuck with believing the expert. He's not arguing the other guy is automatically wrong just because he's not an expert, but he is arguing he, a layperson, should have stuck with believing the experts; the system worked.
The broader conclusion, from my perspective, is that this is generally going to be the case. Even if I invest 10 years of my life educating myself such that I completely understand the intricacies of some scientific field of study, I'm pretty sure I'll likely agree with the general consensus in that field as it currently stands. This is why I don't actually need to educate myself about everything; I can evaluate claims simply by considering the source. In the case of a general consensus amongst scientists, I trust that the scientific process was followed when evaluating those claims.