I ever tell you I used to share a flat with the lead physicist on the team that invented Bluetooth? Did her post-doc at Manchester University.

No, you must've had some interesting conversations!

Yes, but not as many as you might think. I was pretty callow at the time, intellectually speaking, and didn't have the interest in physics I have now. most of our shared interest was motorbikes and music.

We did have some interesting chats about history, though. She and most of her friends were members of the Viking Society at University, hence the name of the technology.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bluetooth-Connect-Without-Cables/dp/0130898406

The_Piper wrote::lol: My cell phone automatically connected to me via bluetooth. Then my larynx started singing the songs on my playlist. I'm a bluetooth speaker!

I think you'll find that's Bill Gates' playlist.

Got a new post incoming, comprehensively addressing the "dO yOuR rEsEaRcH!!!111!1!1!1!" bollocks of antivaxxers. Should be fun

Hoping this will make a bit of a difference. It's a potted manual for how to find shit out about science, specifically geared toward the antivaxx fuckwits, but also attempting to be sensitive to those for whom 'do your research has real and critical history.

dO yOuR rEsEaRcH!!!

Feel free to share elsewhere.

hackenslash wrote:Hoping this will make a bit of a difference. It's a potted manual for how to find shit out about science, specifically geared toward the antivaxx fuckwits, but also attempting to be sensitive to those for whom 'do your research has real and critical history.

dO yOuR rEsEaRcH!!!

Feel free to share elsewhere.

I watched a Youtube video by IAmTheDogsNads that says you're wrong, so there you go. I did my research.

I know you touched on bias in a historical context and addressed this with respect to the quality of journals, but it's another serious issue with respect to 'doing your own research' and that is the ability to identify a valid, legitimately authoritative source. The vast majority of those who have 'done their own research' may as well have heard their shiny belief from Dave down the pub. This is the pernicious effect of social media wherein the fact that many links to many people with many followers say X thing becomes the litmus test for truth. It's a very dangerous and dumb state of affairs.

Dave's a pretty trustworthy guy, tbh. Good head on his shoulders. Bought me a round last week.

Indeed. To be honest, most of the motivation for the piece is that I think sceptics are too often dismissive of the statement, and that can be problematic. While most of those likely to read it are sufficiently equipped to be able to assess sources competently, that's not often imparted in their interactions. It's more of a nod to the notion that we should be careful about how we approach somebody erecting the canard about doing your own research, largely driven by an interaction I saw on Twatter wherein a brilliant and dedicated ally was accused of racial insensitivity simply because she reacted in a somewhat exasperated manner to the suggestion and the recipient of her reaction happened to be African American.

That's why so much of it was that preamble (setting aside my famous penchant for long-winded preambles, of course).

Greg the Grouper wrote:Dave's a pretty trustworthy guy, tbh. Good head on his shoulders. Bought me a round last week.

He brought me around, but with no satisfactory explanation of why he'd knocked me out in the first place.

hackenslash wrote:

Greg the Grouper wrote:Dave's a pretty trustworthy guy, tbh. Good head on his shoulders. Bought me a round last week.

He brought me around, but with no satisfactory explanation of why he'd knocked me out in the first place.

Sounds like the worst case. I've never known him to act this way.

Greg the Grouper wrote:Dave's a pretty trustworthy guy, tbh. Good head on his shoulders. Bought me a round last week.

Sounds like a nice bloke - must be right!

hackenslash wrote:Indeed. To be honest, most of the motivation for the piece is that I think sceptics are too often dismissive of the statement, and that can be problematic.

I agree, and would link to many past interactions if I had the time, energy, and gosh-darn gumption to... but I don't, so you'll just have to believe me (or do your own research! )... wherein I actively rejected the idea of 'doing your own research', most often being directed at a theist of some stripe, because it was manifestly apparent that they wouldn't know how to even begin doing their own research, so all they'd do is NephilimFree it by soliciting a cherry-picked suite of sources that best corroborates their own point of view. That actually emulates doing research in every single possible way except that it fails in every single way too! But of course, if they don't know what doing research means in the first place, then they also understandably don't know - and can't be expected to know - that the actions they just engaged in are insufficient and flawed.

I think it's a problem of assumptions - and one I'm guilty of too - which posits that one's interlocutor possesses the same suite of competencies as you. There are many, many competencies I don't have - I'm like a stereotypical caveman when it comes to putting things together by hand - I can't even gift-wrap a box, so fiddling around with mechanical or electrical parts would play out more like a farce than any practical venture. But I did learn academic competency - it's not something I was granted by my genetic heritage, it's something I was obliged to learn in order not to flunk out. It's a kind of training in exactly the same way that any learned skill is. This intrinsically entails identifying the biases of any source, measuring the value of conclusions with respect to the central claims or hypotheses, reading the ancillaries and citations where unfamiliar to cross-check and to build a wider picture of the specifics discussed, assessing the value and validity of any component study, trial, or experiment (you can do so many bafflingly silly things with statistics), and then integrating the outcome of all of these into how much trust you lend the thesis, how much you're going to let it impact you and your own ideas, feeling obliged to acknowledge that you cannot find a flaw and thus have been wholly (or partly, or not at all where flaws are present) persuaded. I don't think it's realistic really to expect everyone to do this.

But yet, doesn't it remain a necessity to demand high standards in this respect? Aren't some aspects of life just too important, too dangerous, or too complicated to consider one person's ignorance equivalent to another person's knowledge?

Aren't some aspects of life just too important, too dangerous, or too complicated to consider one person's ignorance equivalent to another person's knowledge?

Nothing has confirmed this more than Covid.

Spearthrower wrote:I agree, and would link to many past interactions if I had the time, energy, and gosh-darn gumption to... but I don't, so you'll just have to believe me (or do your own research! )...

Dude, I was there.

wherein I actively rejected the idea of 'doing your own research', most often being directed at a theist of some stripe, because it was manifestly apparent that they wouldn't know how to even begin doing their own research, so all they'd do is NephilimFree it by soliciting a cherry-picked suite of sources that best corroborates their own point of view. That actually emulates doing research in every single possible way except that it fails in every single way too! But of course, if they don't know what doing research means in the first place, then they also understandably don't know - and can't be expected to know - that the actions they just engaged in are insufficient and flawed.

Exactly right, and it's been memed to death. This meme, coupled with the aforementioned interactions, is why I felt like it had to be addressed in some manner.

I think it's a problem of assumptions - and one I'm guilty of too - which posits that one's interlocutor possesses the same suite of competencies as you. There are many, many competencies I don't have - I'm like a stereotypical caveman when it comes to putting things together by hand - I can't even gift-wrap a box, so fiddling around with mechanical or electrical parts would play out more like a farce than any practical venture. But I did learn academic competency - it's not something I was granted by my genetic heritage, it's something I was obliged to learn in order not to flunk out.

This is an interesting point, and one that was raised by my SO in discussion of this piece. It's always really easy to carry our assumptions and our assessments of our own competencies into our assessments in the competence of others. How many times have we discussed the folly of imposing our moral standards on historical mindsets?

Of course, it's not always entirely wrong to do this, and especially in the context that you, I and others hereabouts have done it, but it's problematic to do it too broadly. Today's moral and ethical standards are a perfectly valid counter to anybody defending biblical standards as desirable, but to actually impose them on people who lived in a time before progress was made. Progressiveness is a thing for a reason.

Except the whole kidnapping little girls as sex slaves after committing acts of genocide on their families thing, which empathy alone should have told us was an issue...

It's a kind of training in exactly the same way that any learned skill is.

This is the nature of expertise. This is a topic I've talked about across several posts in one way or another. Expertise is a function of understanding the variables, which is the core reason that we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes, because our mistakes almost always arise because we failed to understand all the variables, and we learn about variables we hadn't accounted for or were unaware of prior to making the mistake. Even where we were aware of the variable, we learn when we make a mistake, because you learn things in carrying a cat by its tail, etc.

When you make mistakes, you elevate the variables you were aware of from tertiary or secondary memory to primary memory. You don't forget your fuck-ups next time around.

This intrinsically entails identifying the biases of any source,

This is the big one, of course. In this context, understanding the bias is huge. And, though the phrase is massively over- and mistakenly-used by the conspiracy theorists, it genuinely applies in more situations than we might grant, the key here is to "follow the money". What the conspiracy-nuts don't get is just how major journals earn their money. If they understood the profit in such things as institutional subscriptions and the importance to that of delivering only the highest standards in research, even they would get it. As I was doing cursory research for this piece, one of the things that swam into my viewspace was this natty little document, the list of subscription charges for the various journals run by Nature.

2021 Institutional Subscription print Pricing (pdf)

Any followthemoneytard, on viewing that, and on understanding the enormous number of institutions that would gleefully pay the sub (not least other journals, oft-overlooked), should see that being correct is extremely lucrative, and publishing shoddy research is very much operating against their best interests.

measuring the value of conclusions with respect to the central claims or hypotheses, reading the ancillaries and citations where unfamiliar to cross-check and to build a wider picture of the specifics discussed, assessing the value and validity of any component study, trial, or experiment (you can do so many bafflingly silly things with statistics), and then integrating the outcome of all of these into how much trust you lend the thesis, how much you're going to let it impact you and your own ideas, feeling obliged to acknowledge that you cannot find a flaw and thus have been wholly (or partly, or not at all where flaws are present) persuaded. I don't think it's realistic really to expect everyone to do this.

Indeed. Worth noting that I have an enormous piece nearing completion about statistics, inferences, Bayesian analysis and associated concepts. Being about as far from a mathematician as its possible to get without being a creationist, it's been a long time in the works, and a huge undertaking for maybe 4-5,000 words.

But yet, doesn't it remain a necessity to demand high standards in this respect? Aren't some aspects of life just too important, too dangerous, or too complicated to consider one person's ignorance equivalent to another person's knowledge?

Not entirely inaptly, I logged into Talkrat today for the first time in some years, surprised to find it still chugging along. The reason for raising it was that I saw my signature there, composed on a whim, which I'd entirely forgotten about:

There is no more parochial view, no greater hubris, than that which asserts that the universe was created precisely to have one in it and simultaneously decries the honest enquirer who says 'I don't know' as arrogant.

Macdoc wrote:Nothing has confirmed this more than Covid.

Indeed.

In a recent piece in which I argued that vaccine passports (in isolation, I should add) were not the best idea in the box, I said this:

This weekend saw a moot of loons in Trafalgar Square, coming together in a sort of loose conglomerate of wacky witlessness. In a wonderful mirror of the Brexit referendum, an uncritical conclave of abject stupidity came together and sounded its barbaric yawp as a disparate one. And what did they want you to hear?

That the whole of healthcare and medical science, having moved hell and high water to protect us and keep us safe for the last year and a half, should be rounded up and subject to a Nuremberg-style trial. Of course, they don't mean anything as well-organised and sanctioned by the world community as Nuremberg so much as they mean some sort of drumhead, with the upturned drum being played by the musically inept Laurence Fox rather more competently than he plays guitar or sings, no doubt. I'm going to be one of the few who stands out and suggests people getting their scientific information from the least talented Fox, the deeply dubious Right Said Fred and others of such remarkable intellectual stature isn't something we should be surprised about. I'm fairly sure the regular long-time readers of this and related corners of the interweb are reaching for James O'Brien's tin about now. We've been warning against the sort of thinking that leads to this for decades. It is, in fact, why this place even exists.

Edit: I should add the piece for context, since it might be construed that I think vaccine passports are, in and of themselves, a bad idea. I don't.

Passport to Pimlico

Spearthrower wrote:I know you touched on bias in a historical context and addressed this with respect to the quality of journals, but it's another serious issue with respect to 'doing your own research' and that is the ability to identify a valid, legitimately authoritative source. The vast majority of those who have 'done their own research' may as well have heard their shiny belief from Dave down the pub. This is the pernicious effect of social media wherein the fact that many links to many people with many followers say X thing becomes the litmus test for truth. It's a very dangerous and dumb state of affairs.

Came back to this following your feedback and my SO's to address a couple of things. Changed a couple of paragraphs to accommodate.

For my part, I actively encourage people to do their own research, but it's hugely important to understand what real research looks like. I'm not saying, of course, you have to go out and get a degree in some area of science; I have no such degree, nor any qualification of note. I am in every sense a layman, and I make no pretence at having any sort of formal scientific education, credential or authority. This blog is and has always been an attempt to bring what I've learned in several decades of just being interested in science, reading about it, and discussing it with those with real expertise. The authority and confidence with which I assert the following to be true (to a first approximation, of course; I get things wrong routinely, as I've always been at pains to express) is a function of having said silly things and being shot down by experts. This has given me some experience in researching science, and I feel sharing it may be of value.

One glaring problem with people doing their own research is this; understanding the relative merits of scientific research and scientific sources is far from being a trivial undertaking. It requires not huge intelligence but an enormous amount of care. I'm pretty much a total dunce (I didn't even finish school or attain any academic qualifications beyond Grade 3 trumpet), but I've learned the hard and painful way to apply simple principles - not always obvious - to assessing research. If I can do it, you can too. It's a skill; something to be learned, and it's mostly the skill of working out the trustworthiness of a source.

Should cover it, I think.

To a large degree it has to do with trust in medical community ( unwarranted at times ), trust in the science community ( check the sources but not as snake oil as the medical)

We get on airliners even tho we are not entirely certain of why they fly.

To risk loss of job and privileges to stand on insane Covid disinformation says complete lack of common sense and maybe let Darwin play if not so damaging to others.

We elect govs to hire people knowlegeable in their field...some of the cabinet choices lately are dubious and political with little basis in expertise.

Even my partner with 30 years in a really specialized area of autoimmune treatment cannot keep up .....expecting JohnQ to is ludicrous, so even telling people to "do their own research" is in my view misguided advice.

Some areas due diligence is simply inadequate or impossible except for monitoring sources.

Relevant to leadership and quick decision making in Covid.

I certainly don't have an answer. People "doing their own research" leads to this shite.