[HN Gopher] The phrase "no evidence" is a red flag for bad scien...
___________________________________________________________________
The phrase "no evidence" is a red flag for bad science
communication (2021)
Author : NavinF
Score : 264 points
Date : 2024-01-08 09:14 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.astralcodexten.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.astralcodexten.com)
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I'm always suspicious when politicians use the phrase "no
| evidence" or "there's no intention to". They're essentially
| meaningless as the "no evidence" could easily be due to no-one
| investigating the issue although it's slightly better if the
| amount of investigation has been clarified.
| bnralt wrote:
| Likewise, when it comes to politics I've found "evidence based"
| to be a red flag. Most of the people using it mean seem to have
| come to a particular position first, then cherry picked
| whatever evidence they could find to back up that position.
| Ironically enough, it usually signifies someone who's
| ideologically devoted to a particular position.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Same with "common sense."
| ajross wrote:
| > Most of the [politicians saying "evidence based"] seem to
| have come to a particular position first, then cherry picked
| whatever evidence they could find to back up that position.
|
| How is that different than anyone else, for example yahoos
| arguing on the internet? The idea behind "evidence based" is
| a recognition that public policy has almost always been
| opinion-driven, and that we should cite evidence in support
| of our policies before adopting them.
|
| Does that mean the evidence is correct? No. (Though even
| cherry-picked evidence is better than no evidence!). Does it
| mean you agree with the policy? Certainly not in all cases.
|
| But the idea is sound. I think what you're upset about is not
| the "evidence based", it's that there's a partisan lean to
| the use of the term and that your tribe, whichever it is, is
| still doing the opinion thing and doesn't like citing
| studies.
| jwond wrote:
| This brings to mind a pending bill in California where they
| are trying to amend the state constitution to allow the state
| to discriminate based on race, sex, etc. as long as it is
| "research-based" or "research-informed". In practice, I
| imagine it would enable the state to cherry-pick or even
| solicit research that would allow them to discriminate in the
| way that they want.
|
| https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.x.
| ..
| hnfong wrote:
| It can be more sinister.
|
| (Disclaimer I'm not a scientist) Apparently in scientific
| circles, people can shoot down new claims by saying it
| doesn't have enough evidence, while the "default/fallback
| position" (held by the "establishment") is backed by even
| less evidence.
|
| I'm not saying it's a common thing, but if you're looking for
| "evidence based" red flags, this might also be something to
| look out for too.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Apparently in scientific circles, people can shoot down
| new claims by saying it doesn't have enough evidence, while
| the "default/fallback position" (held by the
| "establishment") is backed by even less evidence.
|
| Please provide an example.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| Politicians usually use the phrase "I haven't seen any
| evidence' which is an even weaker form.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Or "I don't recall seeing any evidence"
| pcrh wrote:
| Agreed, especially as articles titled "no evidence..." usually
| contain evidence in favor of the proposition (except that there
| is also evidence against it).
|
| I get similarly annoyed by the use of the term "significant" in
| statistics, which is a technical term in the field, not an
| expression of the importance or magnitude of the finding.
| Havoc wrote:
| Isn't it just an indicator that you're ready a corporate
| communications PR bullshit piece?
| roenxi wrote:
| The thing is that "No Evidence" is just flat untrue. If Crazy
| Carl says that aliens abducted his prize turnip, that is in
| itself evidence that aliens did the deed. It is wildly
| unpersuasive evidence, but nonetheless evidence. People like to
| believe that "someone says" isn't evidence, which is wildly
| disconnected from how human society works. Even alleged facts
| boil down to "someone says". The vast majority of people who know
| the constant of gravity never measured it for example, they just
| work with what someone told them - an authority figure saying
| something is quite strong evidence.
|
| Having evidence for untrue things also turns up naturally because
| of statistical mirages.
|
| "No evidence" is a phrase that gets used in untruthful ways.
| There usually _is_ evidence, of everything. True, false or
| irrelevant - there will be evidence of it in some form or
| another. The question is what standard the evidence reaches, not
| whether it exists.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| What they really mean is "no _scientific_ evidence. If Crazy
| Carl says that aliens abducted his prize turnip, there is still
| no scientific evidence of aliens.
| roenxi wrote:
| 1. That might rule out psychology as a branch of science.
|
| 2. This gets back to the point Scott is making - now define
| "scientific evidence". For any reasonable definition of
| scientific evidence, there is a lot of evidence for almost
| everything. I can find scientific evidence for aliens if I
| want to - to a terribly low standard, true enough - although
| what Scott picked on was homeopathy which works a bit better.
|
| People underestimate lies, damn lies and statistics. There
| are facts that back up any worldview, no matter how insane.
| Carl could find scientific evidence to back up his theory.
| There'll be anomalous weather station readings, weird sounds,
| academics papers published by crazy academics that kinda
| support him. We've all met monomaniacal people; they aren't
| shy of finding scientific evidence for their case. Still bunk
| though.
| wongarsu wrote:
| It also rules out game theory as a science. Which might be
| fine if you think that math isn't a science, but then you
| have to resort to physical experiments to collect
| scientific evidence that 100 + 2 is indeed 102.
| awwaiid wrote:
| I think they call that chemistry and it is indeed an
| important part.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| 100 + 2 doesn't exist in reality so...
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > For any reasonable definition of scientific evidence,
| there is a lot of evidence for almost everything.
|
| Slight tangent, but I've seen a similar thing when trying
| to decide which religion, if any, is true:
|
| Every one I looked at had at least a few very intelligent,
| seemingly rational adherents. It seems like there's a
| subjective element to what evidence each person finds
| persuasive.
| remram wrote:
| What if Crazy Carl has ever published a scientific paper?
| Does it count? Does the paper need to specifically be about
| turnips? Or about aliens?
|
| It's not like there is a "scientist" card that some people
| carry and some don't... and it's not like none of the
| hypothetical card-carrying scientists would ever have crazy
| opinions.
| kortilla wrote:
| No, scientific publications don't change it unless those
| publications are about the claim.
|
| A publications doesn't give you a free pass from scrutiny.
| remram wrote:
| Publishing a claim doesn't make it the scientific truth.
| Case in point, the many thousands of published studies
| about ESP.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| What do you mean here by "scientific truth"?
|
| Sorry to seem pedantic, but I think it matters here since
| we're talking about specific meanings of terms.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| It's not whether he has some magical "scientist" card, it's
| whether he ran an experiment.
|
| Imagine Carl ran an experiment where he put a sign in front
| of various groups of turnips asking for things like aliens,
| Bigfoot, or faeries to take the turnips.
|
| After running this experiment, only the turnips with signs
| associated to aliens were taken.
|
| In this scenario, Carl would have some scientific evidence
| suggesting aliens took his turnips. It'd be weak evidence
| that likely wouldn't be replicated, but still evidence.
| torstenvl wrote:
| This seems deeply flawed. How did the hypothesis forming
| the basis of the experiment get formed in the first place
| if there was "no evidence"?
|
| An analysis of compounds in DNA finds that there are,
| within a small margin of error, identical quantities of
| adenine and thymine, and identical quantities of guanine
| and cytosine. You have not yet been able to
| experimentally verify your hypothesis of a base pair
| rule. It is nevertheless _not true_ to say there is "no
| evidence" of a base pair rule.
|
| Sufficient evidence to form a reasonable hypothesis, but
| insufficient evidence to elevate your hypothesis to a
| theory, is still _some_ evidence, and it is a lie to say
| otherwise.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Is this in response to the alien comment. "This seems
| deeply flawed."
|
| Really? The scientific method is flawed.
|
| The OP had a funny alien example, so someone stretched
| and came up with a silly 'test' for a hypothesis of the
| alien ate the turnip.
|
| That doesn't mean 'testing' is flawed way of determining
| 'evidence'.
| torstenvl wrote:
| I never said the scientific method is flawed. Your
| understanding of it, however, seems to be profoundly
| deficient, if you think the scientific method says "the
| only thing that constitutes evidence of any sort is
| something that has been specifically verified by
| experiment."
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Testing and experimentation would be the high bar of
| evidence.
|
| Then of course there are gradations below that.
| Observational studies, are just observations after all.
|
| But because I can say "there is 'no evidence' that there
| are no aliens" is then the lowest bar, it doesn't mean
| there 'are' aliens.
|
| But the point here is that 'no evidence' is being used as
| a rhetorical technique to promote actually false
| findings.
|
| Kind of along the lines of simply injecting doubt into a
| debate in order to detract from real evidence. Like what
| has been done for cigarettes, sugar, etc...
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| Well it is scientific evidence, just weak. "1 person had
| their prize turnip abducted by aliens". Most people are
| waiting for 100 people to have their prize turnips to be
| abducted before they believe.
| hnfong wrote:
| The problem with your argument is that there are already
| hundreds if not thousands of alien abduction reports.
|
| (They probably didn't have turnips though, I hope that
| wasn't the point.)
|
| The problem here isn't whether this is scientific evidence,
| but that the evidence isn't sufficient for scientists to
| form a reasonable hypothesis about what gives rise to the
| phenomenon (which could be (a) aliens are real, (b) some
| form of mass hallucination, (c) some form of synchronized
| fraudulent claim, (d) etc. etc. ).
|
| I speculate that if somebody actually does a "literature
| review" of abduction reports they could pick out some
| signals to form some hypothesis, but presumably scientists
| have better things to risk their careers over.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| But crazy carl saying his prize turnip was stolen by aliens
| ISN'T evidence that his prize turnip was stolen by aliens,
| it's evidence that crazy carl BELIEVES/SAYS his prize
| turnip was stolen by aliens.
| aredox wrote:
| Maybe I don't speak English well enough, but I thought that
| "evidence" and "testimony" were clearly different things. E.g.
| in a judicial setting, a testimony may need to be backed up by
| "evidence" - the latter implying "physical", "objective"
| objects (documents, fingerprints, pictures).
| Drakim wrote:
| You are correct, the layman's version of "evidence" has a
| very different meaning from science and courtroom's version
| of evidence.
| stuartjohnson12 wrote:
| Evidence in the scientific sense is something is any
| information which increases the likelihood of a claim being
| true. The fact that someone is willing to testify is evidence
| that the claim is true - not bulletproof evidence, but
| evidence.
|
| Sometimes, people just saying something is extremely good
| evidence that it's true. My name is Stuart. I'm 22 years old.
| staunton wrote:
| > any information which increases the likelihood of a claim
| being true
|
| This sounds like "Bayesian evidence". However, I don't
| think "scientific evidence" has a precise agreed-upon
| definition. I would take "there is scientific evidence" to
| mean "some scientists say they have significant evidence
| that they themselves obtained directly and that they have
| published or presented".
| Symmetry wrote:
| And scientific evidence is also a very different bar
| depending on what sort of science you're doing. In
| medicine the gold standard is a double blind RCT but a
| geologist can't reasonably conduct RCTs with volcanic
| eruptions so they aren't required, but thankfully rocks
| are much simpler than biological systems. Or for
| psychologists p=.05 is enough for a study to be good
| evidence but particle physicists require much lower p
| values than that for something to be official scientific
| evidence.
| aredox wrote:
| It's clearly not good enough to pass a border, or to buy
| alcohol.
|
| And here I have absolutely no idea if it is true or not. I
| don't know you, I can't see you. You could be a bot, a dog,
| a scammer, a teenager... Your evidence means nothing
| "evident".
| halgir wrote:
| Testimony is a form of evidence, and in a judicial setting is
| often enough to convict without any supplementary physical
| evidence.
| Tomte wrote:
| In German criminal procedure there are five types of
| evidence, this list is exhaustive:
|
| Expert opinion, direct experience by judge, documents,
| testimony by witnesses, testimony by the accused.
|
| So testimony is one type of evidence here.
|
| In civil procedure it's the dame, just the terms differ
| slightly.
| rwmj wrote:
| "direct experience by judge" sounds like a can of worms.
| What if the judge believes religion is real based on their
| "direct experience", in a blasphemy trial?
|
| [Edit: Interesting replies, thanks!]
| Snow_Falls wrote:
| I suspect that's so they don't have to prove obvious
| things like: cameras exist, cameras can take pictures
| etc. Or for stuff like the defendant attacking someone
| during the trial.
| Tomte wrote:
| I don't know a good translation for "Inaugenscheinnahme".
| Literally "taking-into-eyeshine".
|
| It means observing the accused, the witnesses, objects
| introduced into trial and so on. In the sense of
| experiencing something with one's senses. It does not
| mean "let me apply my world view".
| Ographer wrote:
| This is what they are talking about:
|
| Visual inspection by the court, Sections 371-372a of the
| Code of Civil Procedure
|
| This consists of any direct, sensory inspection by the
| judge for evidential purposes. Contrary to the somewhat
| misleading term used, 'Augenschein', 'visual inspection',
| it may also include sensory inspection by touching,
| smelling, listening and tasting. Consequently, sound and
| video recordings and data storage media are also
| included.
| hnfong wrote:
| In English common law, this is called "taking judicial
| notice".
|
| It's usually for common-sensical things that aren't
| controversial. Of course, judges could misapply this
| rule, but if a judge is sitting on a blasphemy trial you
| have more problems (with the legal system) than a dispute
| about whether "religion is real".
|
| I suspect the rule is just to make things less "anal" for
| court procedings. Otherwise every small bit of fact needs
| to be proven. Things like "summer is hot", "Taylor Swift
| is a famous singer", "computers can be hacked", "smart
| phones can take photos", etc. etc. Surely you don't want
| to call expert witnesses for these, right?
|
| And given that the judge ultimately calls the shots
| (since they're the ultimate interpreter of the law),
| you'd have a problem if a biased judge is appointed
| anyway, no matter what rules of evidence is adopted.
| cal85 wrote:
| Wikipedia describes testimony as a type of evidence, in a
| judicial context. [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testimony
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I believe the opposite is actually true: in general, a
| physical piece of evidence means nothing unless accompanied
| by witness testimony tying it to the crime. A smoking gun is
| just a smoking gun unless a witness comes forward saying they
| saw the accused pointing it at the victim after the shot.
| Even for things like camera recordings, a witness of some
| kind must testify what it represents. The objects themselves
| merely serve to make the witness testimony more credible
| evidence, basically.
| Hinrik wrote:
| In the U.K. they even use the term "give evidence" for the
| act of testifying in court.
| ajross wrote:
| > The thing is that "No Evidence" is just flat untrue.
|
| No it isn't, it's a term of art and it tells you something very
| important: the second half of the phrase is _still only a
| hypothesis_ and no one has tried or been able to prove it in a
| rigorous way. And if you understand that, it gives you a lot of
| context for how to interpret it.
|
| Does it get misused by non-scientists to mean other things?
| Sure. But you get lied to every day with far more
| sophistication, so I guess I don't understand the huff about
| this particular bit of jargon.
|
| This was a weak article, basically. Leave the scientists their
| jargon, if you don't like how it's being used, argue about the
| specifics of the point.
| dml2135 wrote:
| I think the article is complaining about journalists much
| more than scientists.
| mistermann wrote:
| > No it isn't, it's a term of art and it tells you something
| very important: the second half of the phrase is still only a
| hypothesis and no one has tried or been able to prove it in a
| rigorous way.
|
| Can you restate the meaning of the term of art "No evidence"?
|
| Can you cite any source that explains this fact you are
| relaying in greater depth?
|
| Does science have a different term to communicate the
| nonexistence of evidence?
| staunton wrote:
| Basically, "there is no (scientific) evidence of X" means
| that nobody published a peer-reviewed paper yet presenting
| evidence for X. At least that's a common interpretation...
| mistermann wrote:
| Interesting, but that doesn't even attempt to answer any
| of the 3 questions I posed (you conveniently wrote in a
| different (easier to answer) phrase, and then answered
| that, _a statistically common human behavior in these
| scenarios_ ).
| ajross wrote:
| > Interesting, but that doesn't even attempt to answer
| any of the 3 questions I posed
|
| This is horrible sealioning[1], please stop. Surely if
| there's an entity responsible for rigorously defining and
| documenting the term under discussion, it's the _linked
| article_ and not arbitrary commenters in a discussion
| about it. No one anywhere in this thread is using this
| term in a way inconsistent with the articles, so if you
| have a complaint please take it there. Demanding we all
| stop and define terms is just a way of evading
| discussion. If you have an alternative definition, you
| can propose it yourself.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| This doesn't make sense since it's quite possible someone
| on HN has more expertise on the topic than the article
| writer.
|
| So of course we can't rely on the writer, or the written
| words, of any 'linked article' to be authoritative and
| decisive in any sense or in any capacity.
|
| i.e. Everything is only tentative until someone offers a
| better argument/proof/analysis/etc...
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| Statistically (at least as a frequentist), it is more correct
| to say "we do not find significant evidence of a difference
| between group A and B" than "we find evidence that groups A and
| B are the same". I would even pick " no evidence of a
| difference" over claiming a null result is evidence for the
| null (without additional work).
| Mattasher wrote:
| It's worth being very careful about these constructions.
|
| "no evidence of a difference" is fine so long as it's
| proceeded with "This study found", which when studies are
| translated to press reports often gets dropped, especially in
| headlines.
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| > when studies are translated to press reports
|
| On this particular issue, even the original studies often
| screw things up unfortunately. Frequentist statistics works
| very differently from people's natural intuition, and the
| attraction of a binary decision tool (NHST) has led to a
| lot of lazy thinking and sloppy science.
| sigzero wrote:
| Your example is NOT evidence: the available body of facts or
| information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true
| or valid.
| Angostura wrote:
| That's cool.
|
| What happens if I say that aliens did _not_ abduct Carl 's
| prize turnip, and instead it spontaneously combusted? Is there
| then 'conflicting evidence'?
|
| Seems to be that the 'evidence' in both these cases is so
| vanishingly small as to not be evidence
| araes wrote:
| Your response is effectively an antagonist style one (as
| written here). You're responding to Carl's statement, by
| immediately providing something to discredit Carl.
|
| If, you were actually someone involved with the turnip theft,
| and in a legal sense had something like standing to challenge
| Carl's statement, then your mutual testimony would probably
| be considered.
| thfuran wrote:
| If Carl tried to file an insurance claim for his stolen
| turnip, an insurance adjuster might ask a neighbor whether
| they saw what happened, but otherwise the neighbor who saw
| the turnip spontaneously combust has nothing resembling
| legal standing. You're suggesting that it is the insurance
| adjuster asking that determines whether the neighbor's
| statement is evidence, while Carl's statement is
| definitively evidence? Is the key to producing evidence
| being the first to make a claim about a topic?
| mo_42 wrote:
| I'm coming out as a Bayesian here. To me, "No Evidence" simply
| doesn't exist:
|
| > If Crazy Carl says that aliens abducted his prize turnip, ...
|
| Then, this is a piece of information like many other pieces.
| The question is only how I should process this. Maybe it will
| only strengthen my belief that Carl is, in fact, crazy. But who
| knows maybe I should factor in some more information. Is Carly
| really that crazy as commonly believed or was Carl taking some
| strange pills yesterday?
|
| Or in a COVID context: So if a scientist says "no evidence that
| asymptomatic people transmit the disease", it might change your
| beliefs about the disease or on the person talking about
| related topics in the future as you lost trust in that person.
| hackerlight wrote:
| The people who use the phrase "No evidence" mean "no good
| evidence that moves the dial to a significant degree". But
| for brevity they shorten it to "no evidence" and assume
| people are capable of filling in the gaps instead of
| interpreting it extremely literally. We often speak without
| perfect precision in order to communicate ideas quickly and
| easily, and it's up to the reader to extend charitable and
| common sense interpretations.
| hnfong wrote:
| The problem is that when public figures come out and say
| "there's no evidence...", they aren't assuming the public
| are smart and capable of understanding nuance and able to
| fill in gaps.
|
| At least in the COVID context, they were worried that any
| nuance would _confuse_ the public, so they simply gave the
| simplified, dumbed down version.
|
| Of course it backfired a bit. I honestly don't know what's
| the optimal play for them, but it seems a bit revisionist
| to say that they assumed the public was capable of filling
| in the gaps...
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| I'd say the difference is pretty simple: true evidence needs to
| be verifiable. Scientific studies provide evidence by
| describing the experiments/procedures needed to reproduce its
| claims.
|
| Evidence for untrue things is still evidence, if it is
| verifiable. However, there is such thing as "no evidence".
| Crazy Carl's claim by itself would not be verifiable, therefore
| it is not evidence.
| brightball wrote:
| Agree this completely. So much scientific evidence I see
| published is just survey results from participants...which is
| sometimes just marketing or question phrasing. It's often
| enough to run with a headline though.
|
| The standard for that evidence should be very different than
| the standard for reproducible physics, chemistry and biology
| experiments.
|
| Other times it's just an extrapolation of a preexisting data
| set. Running this query produced this result.
| gumby wrote:
| > So much scientific evidence I see published is just
| survey results from participants
|
| Don't forget the likely bias that you are talking about
| scientific results in the press, which is a negligible
| subset of scientific work and which is biased towards
| humans, and sociological studies in particular.
|
| From you comment I doubt you're seeing much work in insect
| embryology or slippage in gravel pile formation (I don't
| run across that stuff either)
| naasking wrote:
| Not sure it's that straightforward. Case studies are
| anecdotal data of this sort, you just have to understand the
| limitations of this sort of evidence.
|
| You could presumably check if Carl suffers from regular
| hallucinations, maybe run him through an fMRI to check if
| he's lying (assuming they can make that reliable), and so on.
| Each check increases confidence in the claim, even though it
| will never by itself be persuasive.
| kortilla wrote:
| There isn't a reliable lie detector though. There is a
| reason the saying is "extraordinary claims require
| extraordinary evidence".
| dekhn wrote:
| Do non-extraordinary claims require non-extraordinary
| evidence?
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| That's not how logic works.
|
| The equivalent statement is "extraordinary evidence
| doesn't necessarily imply extraordinary claims".
| dekhn wrote:
| My question is, let's say I discover something new that
| is totally consistent with existing paradigms. Do I need
| to provide less experimental evidence than somebody who
| is claiming something that isn't?
| pixl97 wrote:
| I think your statement is more one of definitions of
| words and their meanings then once of science...
|
| Lets say that somehow humans had not mixed baking soda
| and vinegar together before today. You decide to mix
| these things and get a mild foamy eruption that is cool.
| You do it twice and the same thing happens.
|
| In this 'ordinary' example I would say you need less
| evidence to make your claims because the means of
| reproduction of the experiment and testing are within the
| reach of almost everybody. This could be quickly
| validated across the globe, and the reproducibility is
| evidence.
|
| Now, if you require a billion dollar machine and a year
| of time to reproduce the experiment, you need to provide
| a lot of damned evidence so you don't waste a lot of
| scientists time and money that could be used for better
| things. Same with any experiments on people and/or the
| environment that can have effects that cannot be
| recovered from.
| dekhn wrote:
| Scientific evidence and decision making typically isn't
| done logically. Nearly everything, if not everything, is
| done as probabilistic analysis.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Yes? If I claim my name is Tudor, many people will just
| believe me outright without checking my papers or
| anything - a non-extraordinar claim doesn't require
| extraordinary evidence. If I claim I am the Pope, people
| will want more evidence than my saying so.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Needs to be verifiable for what purpose? Essentially all
| evidence is unverifiable, including the things you see out
| your eyeball when driving. At the very least, it's not
| reproducible that "car X had their turn signal on." Yet you
| risk your life on this information.
|
| We should have different standards of evidence for different
| scenarios. If Bob ate a suspicious species of carrot and
| ended up in the hospital, that's a reasonable indication to
| not eat that type of carrot, even though it's not a
| controlled experiment and technically anecdotal evidence. You
| don't need N=10 people to end up in the hospital to listen to
| a story.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| There is no evidence that "ironmagma is a not a troll".
|
| See, the 'no evidence' is used as a rhetorical device to
| make something 'appear' true.
|
| Falling back on the old 'all evidence is questionable'
| because our eyes can deceive, and all perception is
| subjective, so all of reality is in doubt, is a rabbit
| whole.
|
| Sure we live in a 'numinal' world. That doesn't mean we
| can't use thermometers to tell the temperature, even
| thought temperature itself is a construct.
| ironmagma wrote:
| I think the actual thing is that anecdotal evidence is
| actually quite compelling evidence. You can drive a car
| for days on end all on anecdotal evidence, successfully.
| It's just that it's less compelling than lots of
| anecdotes (data in aggregate).
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Ok. I think we are just arguing about different levels of
| 'rigor'.
|
| Of course, you can absorb information, observations, into
| your brain, and make judgments, like the road is wet, the
| light is red. It is fairly subjective, not recorded.
| Whether you report to the police that you swear the light
| was green. or Crazy uncle says aliens ate his turnips.
|
| They are really almost about the same level of
| verifiability. Then it is just probabilities that make us
| really dismiss the alien hypothesis.
|
| That is a lot different from forming a hypothesis,
| performing a controlled experience and taking
| measurements to prove/disprove hypothesis.
|
| When troubleshooting, I will take in all observations, no
| matter how strange. But I wouldn't say they are the
| problem without further verification.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > There is no evidence that "ironmagma is a not a troll".
|
| I think there is evidence:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ironmagma
|
| Trolls would reasonably able to be detected by the
| contents of their posts/comments. Looking over the
| comment history, I see an absence of evidence that they
| are a troll and, in this case, absence of evidence _is_
| evidence of absence [because we can reasonably exhaust
| all of the "trials" [past comments]].
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| That is if someone looks. And has the same subjective
| view to interpret those comments.
|
| I've seen plenty of people watch the exact same debate,
| and each believes 100% that their side wont hands down.
| Of course "there is no evidence" one side won or not.
|
| The point is that "there is no evidence" is being used to
| promote the opposite views.
|
| So I can disparage ironmagma in a title of an article,
| and all the reader who flips through them is left with
| impression that "ironmagma must be a troll, lot's of good
| people think so, and there is no evidence he isn't".
|
| I probably should have come up with better example. But
| there is "no evidence" that the outcome would be
| different.
| pixl97 wrote:
| > that's a reasonable indication to not eat that type of
| carrot,
|
| That's also why we avoided eating non-poisonous tomatoes
| for centuries leaving food proverbably on the table. The
| world experienced far more rapid progression when we
| started demanding reproducible evidence for reproducible
| events.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Which is a perfectly reasonable survival strategy. No,
| you might not reach a global maximum with it, but a local
| maximum is probably good enough in exchange for people
| not dying due to unknown causes.
| concordDance wrote:
| > true evidence needs to be verifiable
|
| "true evidence" should probably be replaced with "scientific
| evidence". If you have 10 witness on the stand, all who say
| they saw Bob shoot Alice then that is evidence that Bob shot
| Alice, even if we can't actually reproduce the shooting.
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| I would argue that true evidence (for a claim) can be
| defined as such piece of information that, when a third
| party is invited to examine it, they would arrive at the
| same conclusion as what was claimed.
|
| Scientific evidence ought to meet the standard. If someone
| produces a video showing Bob shot Alice (let's assume
| faking the video is technically impossible), that would
| also constitute "true evidence". In that sense, I wouldn't
| consider witness' testimonies "true evidence".
| hnfong wrote:
| I agree with the other replies that "true evidence must
| be verifiable" should only apply to scientific evidence.
|
| It's a fact that legal evidence in court does not need to
| be "verifiable". There are rules for what counts as
| admissible evidence of course (complex rules at that),
| but AFAIK none of those requirements is "verifiable".
|
| As I suggested in another comment, there's a big
| difference on how to evaluate scientific claims (which is
| required to be reproducible) and some random factual
| claim (eg. what did I have for breakfast). There is no
| way I can give "true, verfiable evidence" for what I ate
| for breakfast, but generally people take my word for it,
| and my word is "good enough" evidence.
|
| There are other types of claims where, because the
| evidence is inherently hard to obtain, even "low quality"
| evidence is taken into account, eg. digging up a clay pot
| could be evidence of civilization or human settlement in
| an area. (Surely no one in their right mind would say to
| support such a claim you need to somehow independently
| verify it, right?)
| pixl97 wrote:
| >There is no way I can give "true, verfiable evidence"
| for what I ate for breakfast
|
| This depends how far you are in the process of turning
| your breakfast into poop.
|
| As for the digging up of the pots... it depends on the
| exact nature of the claim.
|
| Digging up of the clay pot does mean there where humans
| with clay pots at that place some time in the past. The
| settlement claim is a larger claim, if they were
| travelers that lost their pots there, that's a lot
| different than the pots being buried in a basement of a
| permanent building. Finding lots of the same kind of pots
| over a wide area and scale of time show that a certain
| civilization (may?) have existed in that area.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > true evidence needs to be verifiable
|
| Scientific evidence needs to be repeatable.
|
| If others perform the same experiment, they should get the
| same experimental result.
|
| Once you start exploring the views of individuals and groups,
| you're more in the realm of the social sciences than hard
| science.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| > Scientific evidence needs to be repeatable
|
| This isn't even true. Suppose a supernova happens and you
| gather a bunch of data. That's not really repeatable.
|
| Same goes for lots of things in evobio. Clinical reports of
| one-off events, etc.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Supernovas go off all the time, we would not use them as
| a standard candle if the did not.
|
| If you gather a bunch of data on that supernova, you have
| evidence that supernova exploded. You don't have data on
| the nature of supernovas until you capture a wide range
| of them.
| gumby wrote:
| > > true evidence needs to be verifiable
|
| > Scientific evidence needs to be repeatable.
|
| I think the GP comment had it right.
|
| Consider I make some cosmological prediction based on Bob'
| observational data ("stars with this spectrum mostly
| contain elements X and Y"). It does little good to repeat
| my analysis, which is entirely done on a piece of paper or
| in a computer program.
|
| But Alice could say, "Well if that's true, then this other
| thing would have to be true too" and go check _that_.
|
| That's the difference between "verifiable" and
| "repeatable".
|
| Sometimes "repeatable" is a sensible form of verification.
| Last year we spent 9 months trying to reproduce results
| from an important (to us) paper. Eventually we came up with
| a reliable process to reproduce the results of the paper --
| the hypothesis was correct -- but it looks like the author
| just saw some signal a few times, and didn't really
| demonstrate the principle they were trying to validate. We
| couldn't use the same process described in the paper.
|
| Since we can now get the result whenever we want we
| consider the theory valid.
| smsm42 wrote:
| If you get a speeding ticket, likely the evidence is the word
| of the police officer who clocked you speeding. There's no
| way to go back in time, stand next to the officer and verify
| he actually directed the speed measuring device to your care
| and observed the number. Even if there's an audit trail -
| most of cases have nothing of the sort - it's extremely hard
| to verify it beyond any possibility of error. Other
| ticketable offenses - like rolling over stop or reckless
| driving - may have even less possible verification. And yet,
| if you tell the judge "your honor, there's absolutely no
| evidence I was doing that", while the police officer is
| standing right there testifying you did it, you probably
| won't find too much sympathy. Obviously, your understanding
| of what constitutes "true evidence" is not widely accepted.
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| We are talking about different kind of evidence here. There
| are two sense entries under the word "evidence" per Oxford
| Advanced Learner's Dictionary[1]:
|
| 1. the facts, signs or objects that make you believe that
| something is true 2. the information that is used in court
| to try to prove something
|
| I was talking about sense 1, you were talking about sense
| 2.
|
| I think the article is also about sense 1 of the word
| "evidence".
|
| [1]: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/
| englis...
| smsm42 wrote:
| It's the same thing. The court just has more procedure
| around it, but outside the court it's the same thing. If
| somebody tells you "I saw John dining with Jack's wife
| last night at the restaurant" then unless you hired a
| private detective or the restaurant has cameras inside
| and for some reason is willing to grant you access to the
| recordings, there's no way for you to verify this claim.
| However, claiming "there's no evidence that happened" is
| nonsense - you just heard the evidence, and any
| reasonable person would conclude you did. Does it make
| you believe it's true, by itself? That depends, how much
| do you trust the person who told you that? How much are
| you sure they aren't mistaken? You seem to be confusing
| "evidence" with "ultimate proof" - and the Oxford is not
| doing its best job to set you straight, to be honest - if
| something makes you believe it's true, it's certainly
| evidence, but not all evidence will make you instantly
| believe whatever it suggests it's true - you would need
| certain quality and quantity of evidence for it to become
| proof.
|
| What is worse, the media manipulators know that
| distinction. They do not actually confuse it - they know
| "without ultimate proof" and "without evidence" are
| different things. They never use it interchangeably, as
| it would happen if they, like you, were confusing the
| two. Instead, they use "no evidence" when they should
| have said "no ultimate proof" or "evidence, insufficient
| to make a definite conclusion" - to confuse you and
| present the matter as if there's actually only one
| possible conclusion, and you shouldn't even try to
| inquire about what it's based on, since there's literally
| nothing - "no evidence" - that you could look at. This is
| usually false, because if there was truly nothing, there
| would be little point of them trying to convince you.
| What they are trying to do is to prevent you from
| considering the evidence there exists, by falsely
| claiming "there's no evidence" and thus you should accept
| the conclusion pre-made for you. It doesn't mean if you
| consider the evidence you'd necessarily arrive at the
| opposite conclusion - but they are not willing to take
| the risk, they do not trust you. You can take that as
| another piece of evidence for how strong their argument
| actually is.
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| > claiming "there's no evidence that happened" is
| nonsense - you just heard the evidence, and any
| reasonable person would conclude you did.
|
| I am not sure about that. If someone claims that you had
| stole something from a store, which you know you didn't,
| responding with something like "where is your
| evidence/you have no evidence" sounds perfectly
| reasonable to me.
| juped wrote:
| it's not even super weak evidence, just the prior against
| turnip-abducting aliens is so strong
| andrewla wrote:
| The article addresses this exact point, and I would even go so
| far as to say that your conclusion, "'No evidence' is a phrase
| that gets used in untruthful ways" is entirely the point of the
| article.
|
| > Is there "no evidence" for alien abductions? There are
| hundreds of people who say they've been abducted by aliens! By
| legal standards, hundreds of eyewitnesses is great evidence! If
| a hundred people say that Bob stabbed them, Bob is a serial
| stabber - or, even if you thought all hundred witnesses were
| lying, you certainly wouldn't say the prosecution had "no
| evidence"! When we say "no evidence" here, we mean "no really
| strong evidence from scientists, worthy of a peer-reviewed
| journal article". But this is the opposite problem as with the
| parachutes - here we should stop accepting informal evidence,
| and demand more scientific rigor.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Not so simple necessarily as what people claim to be
| eyewitnesses to matters: If hundreds of people claim to have
| seen a building burning down but the building is still
| intact, then that isn't great evidence.
| hnfong wrote:
| I think there are different types of claims and they require
| different approaches.
|
| For something purported to be factual and experienced
| personally (eg. did the accused assault the victim? did
| person experience alien abduction?), there's arguably no
| better way to handle these kinds of evidence except through
| witnesses and their testimony (and maybe cross examination).
|
| Note that whether a single person _experienced_ alien
| abduction is not a scientific question per se, it is simply a
| question of a person 's subjective experience or memory.
| There's no hypothesis for this specific factual question, and
| no laws of nature are involved (yet).
|
| On the other hand, questions such as "what is the
| gravitational constant", or "why do people report alien
| abductions?" is a scientific question. For the latter,
| scientists could hypothesize that (a) aliens are real (b)
| there's some kind of mass hallucination going on (c) some
| other weird phenomenon, etc. I think it's actually arguable
| that we don't have enough evidence to provide a convincing
| hypothesis about the general phenomenon (of abduction
| reports), but people confuse this lack of scientific
| hypothesis with the phenomenon not being real.
|
| If you actually think about it, there's no reason any
| scientist could authoritatively say whether a particular
| person actually experienced alien abduction or not, just like
| no scientist could say whether a particular person had been
| assaulted or not. We might not have theories to explain the
| phenomenon, but that doesn't mean the reports are not true.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > The thing is that "No Evidence" is just flat untrue. If Crazy
| Carl says that aliens abducted his prize turnip, that is in
| itself evidence that aliens did the deed. It is wildly
| unpersuasive evidence, but nonetheless evidence.
|
| I've encountered a similar issue in arguments for / against
| various religious claims.
|
| Even when people are arguing in good faith, there's sometimes a
| disagreement about what evidence is considered valid.
| hnfong wrote:
| The problem (in your case) about religion is when one side
| wants to convince the other side.
|
| For example, I have personal "spiritual" revelations that I
| acknowledge nobody in their right mind would believe unless
| they witnessed/experienced something similar themselves. (And
| I make this claim in good faith.)
|
| And this is actually fine. People hold different views
| because they have different experiences. And while
| communication can narrow the gap, it doesn't eliminate it
| completely.
|
| I think it's an actually interesting thought experiment to
| suspend your disbelief about whatever you currently believe
| about alien abductions, and imagine that you actually
| experienced it yourself. What could you have said to convince
| people it actually happened? Is there a way to not become
| Crazy Carl besides pretending it didn't happen?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > If Crazy Carl says that aliens abducted his prize turnip,
| that is in itself evidence that aliens did the deed. It is
| wildly unpersuasive evidence, but nonetheless evidence.
|
| You're correct, evidence exists on a spectrum from "highly
| implausible" to "highly plausible".
|
| > People like to believe that "someone says" isn't evidence,
| which is wildly disconnected from how human society works.
|
| Human society is multi-faceted.
|
| In the sciences, "someone says" is the lowest form of evidence
| there is. It is so close to "no evidence" that we simply
| disregard it without further thought.
|
| In the legal system, "someone says" is the highest form of
| evidence there is - witness testimony can, and routinely does,
| trump any other evidence.
|
| These are the two extremes. Other human societal systems use
| the word "evidence" to mean anything in between these two
| extremes.
|
| You are conflating the science's usage of the word "evidence"
| with the legal usage of the word "evidence".
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| nonetheless, the point stands. The original phrase is "the
| plural of anecdote is data" and sometimes in the early aughts
| that got corrupted to "the plural of anecdote is not data".
|
| It's important, because _all_ of our evidence flows through
| subjective interpretation and a human reporting mechanism.
| Even if a computer mainlines some numbers to a data store,
| there 's a subjective force: why did the experimenter choose
| to focus on _those_ measurements?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > nonetheless, the point stands.
|
| I'm not contending the point (I'm in slight agreement with
| you, I believe). I'm only trying to point out that people
| are often talking past each other, because each person in
| that two-way conversation are often using different
| meanings of the word "evidence".
|
| There is too much nuance to call either end of the spectrum
| "wrong for the meaning of 'evidence'".
| soerxpso wrote:
| > In the sciences, "someone says" is the lowest form of
| evidence there is. It is so close to "no evidence" that we
| simply disregard it without further thought.
|
| Not really. "Someone says they conducted an experiment in a
| certain way and the data they gathered was as follows:" is
| still a form of "someone says You're trusting that they
| aren't lying about their data (and they often are).
| pixl97 wrote:
| In science the point of someone saying they conducted an
| experiment in a certain way is so you can also perform said
| experiment and reproduce their evidence. If you choose to
| or not is a different story.
| mhuffman wrote:
| >In the sciences, "someone says" is the lowest form of
| evidence there is. It is so close to "no evidence" that we
| simply disregard it without further thought.
|
| hmmm. So citations in scientific papers are really disses?
| Interesting!
| malfist wrote:
| That's not OP's point and you know it.
| trashtester wrote:
| > In the sciences, "someone says" is the lowest form of
| evidence there is.
|
| Actually, it really depends on: - who says it - is the
| statement within their field of expertise - do they have
| known or likely personal incentives - does the topic carry
| significant political, religious or ideological implications
| - is the topic politicized - is the field itself heavily
| ideological or activism oriented, hard science or somewhere
| in the middle - is the statement consistent with statements
| from most other trusted experts
| snowwrestler wrote:
| > The vast majority of people who know the constant of gravity
| never measured it for example, they just work with what someone
| told them
|
| In the U.S., at least, this is not true. Middle school and high
| school physics curricula include experiments to measure
| gravitational acceleration, so in theory (to the extent
| curricula are followed and students are present), almost
| everyone has measured it at least once.
| taeric wrote:
| This is ignoring other words that we have. If Crazy Carl says
| that something happened, that is a claim, not evidence. That
| something is missing is evidence, but not that anyone/anything
| in particular took it.
|
| And pushing that "alleged facts" boil down to "someone says" is
| ignoring some methods of science. Some people have recorded
| what the value of gravity on earth is. They have also recorded
| an analytic equation to calculate it, with the argument that it
| would work in other locations. They have then worked examples
| validating the equation in other locations. They have also
| given directions for how you can, personally, validate the
| value where you are. This is all very different than "someone
| says."
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Courts would consider it to be 'evidence' if 'Crazy Carl' was
| saying it on the witness stand, just very low quality and
| unpersuasive 'evidence'.
| taeric wrote:
| Fair, I should have said "physical evidence" there for the
| missing items. My point was more that there is a
| difference, even if you can lump them in a very broad
| category term.
| alexvoda wrote:
| Maybe we should not be mixing the meaning of "evidence" in
| a scientific context with the meaning in a legal context.
| Clearly science does not care about human laws, verdicts,
| juries, etc.. Different contexts, different meanings. Just
| because an unsupported claim can be valid legal evidence
| does not mean it can be scientific evidence.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| In the scientific context it would still be considered
| 'evidence' of some kind because there is indeed a very
| very very small chance an alien in fact, in ground truth,
| stole the prized turnip for whatever reasons.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Or, in cases where corroborating evidence does not exist,
| one should believe the high frequence event causation
| rather than the low one first.
| npteljes wrote:
| Consider that 'no evidence' is a contraction of the phrase 'no
| verifiable / scientific evidence'.
| sjhdjshdjskhds wrote:
| > - an authority figure saying something is quite strong
| evidence.
|
| If you were in 15th century, you would believe everything
| Church says which is the authority figure at that time.
|
| If you are in North Korea you would believe everything the
| Party says.
|
| So an authority figure saying something is not really evidence
| isn't since the meaning of the word should stand the test of
| time and location.
| roenxi wrote:
| It is still evidence. However it is evidence for something
| that turns out to be untrue.
| wholelotta wrote:
| Kind of a pedantic argument focused on the "letter of the law"
| not physical reality. Physical state change of value to the
| aggregate must occur for society to work; propagation of empty
| rhetoric alone leads to social collapse; wouldn't really call
| that "working on propagation of rhetoric alone". Physical
| reality must provide evidence society works or people revolt.
| Thats what people mean when they say there's "no evidence".
|
| For thousands of years society "worked" propagating religious
| babble then it didn't. It's low quality evidence society works
| on rhetoric.
|
| If we say the trucks are on their way with food and they don't
| show, the words meant nothing and the literal reality will
| dictate next steps.
|
| Society doesn't "work" on propagation of symbolic logic. It
| works when material outcomes are stable and equitable for the
| aggregate.
|
| When society relies on functionally illiterate ossified minds
| propagating nostalgia babble, whether the babble is religious
| or statistical mirage that ignores the material stability of
| the aggregate (socializing a communal upside to a small cohort
| of mega rich rent seekers helicoptering us) societies fall
| apart.
|
| Humans have real needs and when they're met, society works.
| When they're not due to over reliance on belief and philosophy
| society fails.
|
| There's plenty of high quality evidence to refute society works
| due to propagation of rhetorical statements. Real things need
| to occur too. Pre-language nomadic tribes built shared material
| stores, all based on the obvious physical reality. There is
| zero evidence society works on rhetoric at all and plenty the
| rhetoric propagates nothing but mirage.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| > If Crazy Carl says that aliens abducted his prize turnip,
| that is in itself evidence that aliens did the deed. It is
| wildly unpersuasive evidence, but nonetheless evidence.
|
| Even as someone who has made a similar point recently, I think
| this is going too far. Carl claiming aliens is evidence of
| _something_ weird going on with Carl, but there 's still no
| reason to take his claim at face value. More likely Carl has a
| screw loose (good to know!) or is pulling a con.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| If there's a con here it's being pulled by whoever stole
| Carl's turnip and framed the Aliens. We all know Carl has a
| screw loose, but raiding his garden is still a crime.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| No, if Crazy Carl says aliens abducted his prize turnip, that
| is an allegation, not evidence. Evidence is used to prove or
| disprove allegations.
| tqi wrote:
| I think this is just a small part of a larger discussion, which
| is what the role of science communication should be. Is it to
| inform the public or is it to help change public behavior. It
| seems pretty clear in retrospect that the CDC had a specific
| public behavior outcome they were trying to achieve, and framed
| their evidence or lack thereof with that in mind.
|
| I think that was a mistake because of the erosion of trust, but
| to be totally honest, I'm not sure where I stand on this
| overall.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2021)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Some discussion then:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29586998
| nkurz wrote:
| Hi Chris. You don't know me, but I'd like to discuss
| something HN related by email. Could you write me at the
| address in my profile? No hurry, non-urgent.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| I think the author is too naive.
|
| First of all, the authors of the declarations in the example
| headlines are not "scientists and journalists", they are
| authorities and journalists. People like CDC officials or the
| director general of the WHO are of course scientists, but they
| are not speaking as scientists in those news pieces. They are
| speaking as politicians.
|
| Secondly, I don't think they used the "no evidence" template so
| much with COVID because they were "fundamentally confused". Most
| of the headlines in those examples are clearly politically
| motivated: authorities wanted people not to panic, to keep
| working, and above all, to keep consuming. Hence the
| proliferation of "no evidence" headlines for things like the
| virus being airborne (inconvenient for bars, restaurants, shops,
| etc. - in fact one headline explicitly mentions bars and gyms);
| kids spreading the virus (inconvenient for parents taking their
| kids to school and therefore being able to work as ususal), etc.
| Each and every one of the headlines was very convenient to keep
| the wheels of "business as usual" spinning, what a coincidence,
| right? So no, they were not "fundamentally confused", they just
| were trying to bias the public towards a certain direction, and a
| great way to do that is to use the "no evidence" narrative which,
| as the post author explains, is ambiguous so no one can accuse
| them of outright lying.
|
| Note that I'm not saying there aren't examples where such
| headlines _do_ stem from confusion. I just don 't think it's the
| case of the particular examples in this post.
| darkerside wrote:
| Hanlon's Razor being to be applied here. People like to point
| to conspiracy by politicians, but what I really saw were people
| trying to get the call right, jumping to conclusions, and then
| failing to realize it. If there were any semi conscious
| ulterior motivations, they were probably related to personal
| success.
| narrator wrote:
| Hanlon's razor would lead to the acquittal of almost every
| criminal defendant if applied consistently. Somehow, it only
| gets applied consistently to politicians, especially those
| the person invoking it tends to agree with.
| titzer wrote:
| Politicians absolutely do not get the benefit of the doubt by
| default. We must assume they are corrupt and mendacious all
| the time and put mechanisms into place to force them to not
| be by punishing them when they don't comply. They have to
| earn trust, and we always have to keep verifying.
| jewayne wrote:
| I have noticed that the assumption that politicians are
| corrupt and mendacious is actually quite empowering to the
| corrupt and mendacious politicians. It is remarkably
| effective at steering honest people away from politics,
| however.
| peteradio wrote:
| politicians conspire as an artform, I don't mean that as any
| sort of mindblowing revelation just practical application of
| english language.
| Kranar wrote:
| Neither the Director of WHO or CDC officials are politicians.
| nativeit wrote:
| Define "politician".
| peyton wrote:
| A politician is an elected official or somebody who is active
| in party politics. The WHO director is elected, and the
| current CDC director who founded Doctors for Obama is active
| in party politics.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| These sorts of roles absolutely are political. No one picks
| the WHO/CDC director for their ability to accurately pipette.
| NoPie wrote:
| I agree, they are not politicians. However, they are deciding
| policy and that means their job is political.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Secondly, I don't think they used the "no evidence" template
| so much with COVID because they were "fundamentally confused".
| Most of the headlines in those examples are clearly politically
| motivated
|
| Whence motivating the popular reaction that understands an
| authority claiming "no evidence" as strong evidence of the
| thing.
|
| It's a correct reaction way more often than it's wrong. But it
| steals the possibility from scientists to claim that despite
| several studies looking for it, there's no evidence (e.g. of
| vaccines causing autism).
|
| Or, in other words, what those politicians did is an
| irresponsible society-destroying act. They should be held
| accountable for it.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| What? I have no idea what you tried to say here...
| nkurz wrote:
| He's saying that in a politicized world (like the one we
| live in) the use of the phrase "no evidence" is a sign that
| the author is lying to you. He's claiming that if you if
| read a story by someone in power which claims "No evidence
| for X", you should update toward "X is probably true but
| politically inconvenient".
|
| He's not claiming this is logical, only that empirically
| it's a good strategy.
|
| A parallel might be that if the board of a company in the
| midst of a scandal puts out a statement saying "We have
| full faith in the CEO", your actual conclusion should be
| that the CEO is on their way out. This isn't what the words
| mean, but in practice it often turns out to be the right
| bet to make.
| lp4vn wrote:
| I have the impression that people nowadays are completely
| infantilized. They will believe anything that supports their
| worldview and be heavily skeptical of whatever hurts their
| sensibilities. It's not even to the point of communication
| anymore, even with proper communication a large part of the
| population will behave like a 6 years old boy throwing a tantrum.
|
| Quick example, we had creationism before 2010, after 2010
| something even worse(terraplanism) appeared.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| > terraplanism
|
| Thanks for informing me about this term, it's awful and I hate
| it.
| renewiltord wrote:
| In general, I think Officious Phrase Use is usually evidence of
| bullshit. Applies equally to "no evidence", "some evidence",
| "stop resisting a lawful order", etc. It's usually a sign someone
| with little on their side is trying to sound official and legit.
| NoPie wrote:
| I understand how public can misunderstand this phrase but
| scientifically it is clear and justified.
|
| Sometimes "no evidence" means that we haven't found compelling
| evidence yet. Some people are desperate and want all the studies
| to be done immediately and evaluate the risk if the theory is
| real or not.
|
| But for scientists the desire to reach certain outcome is
| actually counterproductive as it can introduce bias. Slower and
| less passionate process can lead to better results.
|
| For example:
|
| 1) We had no evidence of covid being airborne and then we found
| this evidence.
|
| 2) We had no evidence that masks help and then we found no
| evidence.
|
| Two different theories, two different outcomes. Covid is airborne
| and it changes our understanding (however, we gradually realized
| that it is impossible to limit the spread and all the measures
| ultimately were useless). And that masks most likely had very
| little effect.
|
| The reporters could write better for lay public explaining that
| "no evidence" means that currently we don't have evidence but it
| could be found later or that "no evidence" is actually that we
| have a lot of evidence that is indicating in some other direction
| and the chance of new evidence that rejects those findings is
| smaller but still could happen.
| darkerside wrote:
| Also scientifically justified, "Scientists investigating
| whether COVID is airborne". Either of those headlines leads
| people down a path.
|
| Also, I think the whole question here is, who decides what
| qualifies as "compelling" evidence?
| stevenAthompson wrote:
| >Also, I think the whole question here is, who decides what
| qualifies as "compelling" evidence?
|
| Qualified experts. Any other answer eventually turns into
| political gibbering and social media nonsense.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Sometimes 'no evidence' also means there is evidence, they're
| just ignoring it. Like myocarditis.
| acdha wrote:
| Where by "ignoring" you mean "carefully studying and doing
| comparative risk analysis"? That risk was reported early on,
| and has been very well covered over time but each round of
| studies has shown that catching COVID while unvaccinated is
| substantially riskier.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Public health officials summarily denied any association
| early on. The only serious risk they acknowledged was
| propylene glycol allergy.
| acdha wrote:
| Do you have any evidence to support that assertion? I
| first learned of the issue from the scientific community
| tracking the data collected by the public health
| community.
|
| Here's an example of what that looked like in June 2021,
| covering developments in May, just 5 months after the
| first country in the world had approved the vaccine (UK,
| 2020-12):
|
| https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/myocarditis-
| coronavirus-va...
|
| Similarly Israel's public health agency's report was
| covered in June 2021:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-sees-
| probab...
| linuxftw wrote:
| Here's a quote from the very Reuters article you linked:
|
| > The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said last week that
| heart inflammation after receiving the Pfizer vaccine had
| been no cause for concern as such incidents were similar
| rate to those in the general population.
|
| The CDC and other agencies also continue to heavily
| downplay the risk as 'mild myocarditis.'
| acdha wrote:
| Yes, and that's accurate. People have carefully monitored
| it, but the risk is very low and much lower than getting
| COVID. That doesn't fit any definition of "ignoring" in
| the English dictionary just because antivaxxers would
| desperately love to have something they weren't wrong
| about.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "No cause for concern" and "denied any association" are
| not the same thing.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Both of those are 100% accurate claims.
|
| So what are you actually upset about?
| hnfong wrote:
| I think "ignoring it" is unnecessarily imputing bad faith.
|
| But ignorance is a thing, even for authorities.
|
| There's a difference between a person/institution having no
| evidence of X, and no evidence of X _in general_. So, "who"
| doesn't have evidence, and how much effort they took to
| attempt to find evidence before they declared it non-
| existent, is a relevant question when "no evidence" claims
| are proposed.
|
| It's funny, because when a person or institution comes out
| and says " _there is_ no evidence " of whatever (without a
| context), it would be discredited if any obscure person in
| the world has such evidence, even if not widely published. It
| would, IMHO, be much better to say that "we have looked into
| <all the reasonable sources and literature> and found no
| evidence" instead.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| "We had no evidence that masks help and then we found no
| evidence."
|
| Actually we did from the decades surgeons wore masks to prevent
| the spread of airborne diseases. Once we knew Covid was one of
| them, then even if the protection was one way, it would have
| reduced infections if everyone wore one.
| u32480932048 wrote:
| One of my pet peeves is the continued use of ambiguous
| phrases like "masks work" or "masks help" when there are
| effectively two different mechanisms (inhalation/exhalation).
|
| I suspect the prolonged mass confusion over such an
| elementary topic will be one for the Science Communicator
| books.
| titzer wrote:
| IMHO the issue is that _masks work_ but _masking_ as a
| social phenomenon can suffer a number of problems, like
| non-compliance, partial compliance, poor fit, _children_ ,
| misuse, reuse, damaged masks, cloth masks, _needing to eat_
| , and all kinds of factors. So scientific experiments in a
| controlled setting with one or two people show that masks
| work as a mechanism, but getting everyone to go along with
| and practice good masking etiquette might not work so well.
| So population studies show masks working much worse than
| their mechanism would suggest they can. _Especially_ when
| there is intentional non-compliance and protests motivated
| by culture war battles.
|
| Arguing with people who just spout "masks don't work" and
| then intentionally are non-compliant (and encourage others
| to) is like arguing with motivated idiots.
|
| No, _masks work_ , period. _Masking_ only works if people
| freaking do it.
|
| edit: spelling
| agos wrote:
| on the flip side, so much of the Covid discourse was
| about these fabled policies which would do great things
| (but required 100% compliance), followed by
| indignation/panic and hysteria/angry mobs when it turned
| out that 100% compliance is hard.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| We won't need 100% effectiveness and 100% compliance. If
| they only work at 10% effectiveness, then over a network
| of thousands, they will measurably save lives.
|
| Studies have shown they work (such as
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33483277/), despite the
| 'ah, yes but only [insert unsupported caveat here]' of
| some.
| timr wrote:
| > No, mask work, period.
|
| ...on a mannequin, in a lab, or when used as a filter
| between two hamster cages. Perhaps. But there have now
| been plenty of negative studies _in hospitals_ , which
| really starts to beg the question: if you can't get
| effective compliance in a _hospital_ , where are you
| going to get it?
|
| Just to be clear, I was with you right up until the part
| I quoted. It's fine to say that mechanistic studies show
| something to be true, but it's _totally wrong_ to leap to
| the conclusion that these mean anything. If I tell you
| that you 're 100% certain to lose weight if you stop
| eating, that's True ("Starving works. Period."), but it's
| not meaningful.
|
| Every failed drug ever tested _worked in a laboratory_
| before it went to clinical trials.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Except masks do work. Here:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33431650/ - "We recommend
| that public officials and governments strongly encourage
| the use of widespread face masks in public, including the
| use of appropriate regulation."
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33370173/ - "Evidence
| suggests that the potential benefits of wearing masks
| likely outweigh the potential harms when SARS-CoV-2 is
| spreading in a community". Mentions the network effect.
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32497510/ - "Face mask
| use could result in a large reduction in risk of
| infection" https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-
| conditions/coronavirus/i...
|
| "...on a mannequin, in a lab, or when used as a filter
| between two hamster cages. Perhaps." No, you are coping
| hard. The studies above are not done by idiots.
|
| "if you can't get effective compliance in a hospital,
| where are you going to get it?" Nice pivot, but the
| subject is whether they work, which they do. Compliance
| is a different question. That's like arguing that condom
| effectiveness is low when people don't use them properly.
| And because the figure is low, let's just conclude
| condoms are ineffective so people should stop using them
| altogether.
|
| "Every failed drug ever tested worked in a laboratory
| before it went to clinical trials." And some actually
| worked in trials. Your job is to explain which is the
| better analogy. That unanticipated practical
| considerations exist does not invalidate every conclusion
| you dislike.
|
| However, even if masks work slightly, or not at all, even
| if there are dozens of studies saying so, there is enough
| conjecture to warrant wearing them anyway just in case.
| If two equally qualified mechanics disagree on whether to
| change your brakes, you change your damn brakes. If you
| don't that's stupid. If you don't and then drive a
| busload of people, that's criminal.
|
| But masks do work, and they're cheap and barely an
| inconvenience. The problem is everyone thinks they're
| smarter than an epidemiologist. Thanks Internet.
| timr wrote:
| I'm not getting in an argument about this. You don't
| understand what you're reading, and you're cherry picking
| papers based on a poor understanding of data quality. I
| will say that your first link is the Masks4all (Jeremy
| Howard) paper, and it is not a reputable scientific
| publication. It doesn't follow a valid methodology for a
| literature review, and leaves out/minimizes major RCTs
| that don't support their pre-determined conclusions.
|
| The second link is not a study, or a meta-review, and
| contributes nothing. The fourth link is not a scientific
| paper at all.
|
| The third link is the WHO summary of masking data in
| mid-2020. It covers the same ground as the Cochrane
| review (below), but re-weights the data somewhat
| arbitrarily to achieve the stated conclusions.
|
| The Cochrane review is the gold standard summary of the
| evidence for public masking, considers all published
| data, and includes/excludes/weights data based on a
| rigorous standard for statistical and experimental
| quality. Please read it.
|
| https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858
| .CD...
| Sporktacular wrote:
| If masks only work one way and one infected person is in a
| train car with 10 uninfected people, then they all get
| protection if they all wear masks.
| isolli wrote:
| Surgeons don't wear masks to prevent the spread of airborne
| diseases. They wear them to prevent spittle going into an
| open wound and to protect themselves from blood splatter.
|
| If they wore masks to prevent airborne diseases, they would
| wear them when meeting patients, not just during the
| operation.
| sobani wrote:
| The difference is during a regular meeting, the skin is
| uncut. The skin is a major protection against diseases and
| the body has a bunch of mechanisms at its regular openings
| (nose, ears, etc) to protect you.
|
| When you cut through someones skin, you bypass one of the
| major first lines of defense. Therefor surgeons reduce the
| risks, for a similar reason why clean their tools before
| use.
| timr wrote:
| > Actually we did from the decades surgeons wore masks to
| prevent the spread of airborne diseases.
|
| Funny you should say that. There were randomized controlled
| trials on _exactly this question_ prior to 2020. Guess what
| the outcomes were?
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4480558/
|
| (Notably, this review is from 2015...it is not subject to the
| ridiculous politics of Covid.)
|
| > However, overall there is a lack of substantial evidence to
| support claims that facemasks protect either patient or
| surgeon from infectious contamination. More rigorous
| contemporary research is needed to make a definitive comment
| on the effectiveness of surgical facemasks.
|
| Also, rather (in)famously, a review saying the same thing was
| censored from the web in spring 2020, because...reasons.
|
| While I'd personally love to see extensive, rigorous
| investigation of this question, simply repeating "masks
| work", or "people didn't do it correctly" (your current
| argument) when _all of the current high-quality evidence
| suggests otherwise_ doesn 't inspire confidence in those of
| us who actually use the scientific method.
| classichasclass wrote:
| Are you actually suggesting we should have surgeons unmask
| in an operating theatre and see if the rate of post-op
| infections go up? I'd like to see that get through an IRB.
| This is the same mentality that says every current
| vaccination should be compared against saline placebo.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| No, I think they're more saying that until studies prove
| with certainty that surgical masks work with 100%
| effectiveness, doctors should not feel the inconvenience
| of having to wear them.
| classichasclass wrote:
| The specific claim quoted was for surgeons, though. I
| don't see how this can be tested without having them mask
| off in the OR.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| True, but I don't see them proposing something so
| irresponsible by a surgeon. Just everyone else.
| NoPie wrote:
| Actually we could. Maybe we won't do such studies because
| they are irrelevant because avoiding spitting into the
| surgical opening is a reason good enough. But then we
| cannot claim that masks during the surgery prevent the
| spread of airborne viral diseases.
|
| But if we needed to guard for them and the good evidence
| is lacking, then not testing would be unethical.
|
| Yes, even covid vaccine today could be compared with
| placebo, for example, in children. Europe never mandated
| covid vaccine for children and today in the UK they
| cannot even get the vaccine unless in a risk group. The
| US however recommends covid vaccine for children without
| the evidence that it makes any difference today. It
| definitely should be tested in trials before such
| recommendations.
|
| I don't think that IRB would reject such studies. At the
| start of pandemic everybody was saying that doing human
| challenge trials by infecting healthy volunteers would be
| unethical. And yet the UK did them. The red tape takes
| time and I can understand that during pandemics we may
| need to act quickly and cannot test everything. But in
| principle we can and do need to all kinds of trials to
| obtain proper evidence.
| classichasclass wrote:
| As you say, COVID was an outlier because of the urgency
| of the situation and the newness of it. We don't have
| either situation with OR hygiene, and if we're wrong and
| OR masks actually are doing something preventive, then we
| would be doing harm to the patients involved relative to
| the inconvenience to the surgeon.
|
| The vaccine question was about vaccines in general, much
| as RFK Jr is talking about doing. Again, with the weight
| of long experience on how well they prevent diseases in
| mind, it would be unethical to expose a kid to that by
| giving them a placebo shot. Measles is pretty benign but
| not totally so. See a case of SSPE in your career and
| you'll never forget it.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| "All of the high quality evidence"
|
| If the claim masks don't work didn't come from the same
| people who said isolating didn't work, I might take them
| seriously. I might not just see it as motivated reasoning
| or another lame effort to discredit or cast suspicion on
| authorities.
|
| If it didn't come from the same conspiracists who see
| nefarious censorship everywhere or people who only see
| their personal rights being infringed over our social
| obligations to each other, I might take them seriously.
|
| Or I could take them seriously if they understood the risk
| of confirmation bias by cherry picking preferable
| information when credible contradicting studies or meta-
| studies exist (like this one that states "The preponderance
| of evidence indicates that mask wearing reduces
| transmissibility per contact by reducing transmission of
| infected respiratory particles in both laboratory and
| clinical contexts."
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33431650/ ). Or the risk of
| socially promoting that one-sided certainty.
|
| Or if they just understood the precautionary principle that
| if in the face of competing evidence, we could potentially
| all benefit from taking the more cautious approach at the
| risk of minor personal inconvenience, I might take them
| seriously. But I don't because they aren't serious people.
| And they aren't even slightly interested in applying the
| scientific method.
|
| And they don't realise they are in the loud, unreasonable
| minority who have a megaphone they would never have had
| before the Internet, and they don't feel obliged to use
| that power responsibly. With time and education I hope they
| will dwindle in number, or at least shut up a bit.
| timr wrote:
| The Masks4all paper (your link) is neither credible, nor
| is it a study. It should never have been published.
|
| It is a mashup of a literature review with a bad
| methodology, and a simulation that adds no new
| information to the debate. It excludes and/or minimizes
| randomized clinical trial data when that data doesn't
| support the desired narrative.
|
| For those who might read this later, the Cochrane
| collaboration published a high-quality review of masking
| literature:
|
| https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858
| .CD...
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| I was curious what an llm might think about this comment:
|
| > Please rate the following comment from 1 to 5 on how
| rational it is, how emotional it is, and whether or not
| the author is making a strong or weak argument:
|
| > Rationality: 3/5 - The author presents a reasoned
| argument supported by a reference to a scientific study.
| However, the argument is somewhat undermined by a lack of
| direct engagement with specific counter-arguments and a
| generalizing tone about those who hold opposing views.
|
| Emotionality: 4/5 - The comment is emotionally charged,
| especially in its dismissive tone towards those who
| disagree with the author's perspective. The language used
| ("lame effort," "shut up a bit") indicates a strong
| emotional investment in the topic.
|
| Strength of Argument: 3/5 - The argument is moderately
| strong. It relies on a credible source and logical
| principles like the precautionary principle and the risk
| of confirmation bias. However, it is weakened by broad
| generalizations about the opposing side and a lack of
| specific rebuttals to their claims.
|
| That lines up pretty well with how I perceived that.
| There is a lot of emotion and broad generalizations in
| these conversations. Is anyone changing their minds about
| any of this after 4 years of digging into their
| positions?
| indymike wrote:
| > Actually we did from the decades surgeons wore masks to
| prevent the spread of airborne diseases.
|
| I remember asking my dad (who was a doctor who performed
| surgeries - mostly c-sections and appendectomies - often)
| about masks, and his answer in the early 80s was interesting:
|
| "It's mostly to prevent me from getting spit into open wounds
| and incisions when I'm talking or I have to sneeze or cough.
| Bacteria is a real problem, and the mask stops that."
|
| I never really thought much of that until recently.
| classichasclass wrote:
| But you can see this go both ways. Ortho surgeons in total
| procedures have full air filtering due to the large amount
| of bone dust that's liberated, some of which are very fine
| particles. No one wants to breathe that in.
|
| Meanwhile, I'll be in TB clinic shortly with an N95 mask
| on. I've yet to convert my TB test in 17 years.
|
| We absolutely rely on surgical masks not to contaminate the
| field. But they don't have one way valves, so if we trust
| the airflow one way, it's logical to trust them for airflow
| going the other.
| generalizations wrote:
| >> "It's mostly to prevent me from getting spit into open
| wounds and incisions when I'm talking or I have to sneeze
| or cough. Bacteria is a real problem, and the mask stops
| that."
|
| > so if we trust the airflow one way
|
| Pedantic, but it matters: that's not airflow, that's
| droplets and spit.
| bluGill wrote:
| Just because you have not looked for evidence does not mean it
| doesn't exist.
|
| I have no evidence that my neighbor has a water softener - but
| that evidence does exist and I could obtain it in several ways
| (ask him; break into his house). Maybe he doesn't have one,
| maybe he does - but either way the evidence exists if I cared
| to look for it.
| andrewla wrote:
| That's one sense in which it is used, but the other sense is
| the opposite -- "no evidence that covid vaccines cause people
| to become magnetic" is not a "yeah, we haven't checked for the
| evidence yet, but we'll get right on it".
|
| The point of the article is because this can cut both ways it
| is impossible to distinguish between the shades of meaning, and
| the phrase should be discarded entirely.
| blub wrote:
| There's different kinds of "masks" and different kinds of
| "work"
|
| FFP3 are the standard for protecting against airborne disease
| and they work as intended. That's literally one of the purposes
| they're designed for. FF2/N95 also work quite well, which was
| known for a long time, including from SARS and MERS studies.
|
| Work can mean that they prevent transmission or reduce the
| risk. It might have been worth wearing a surgical mask, as I
| remember reading that it did reduce risk enough for it to be
| recommended in Germany once the establishment got over their
| mask procurement predicament.
|
| Finally, original Covid was not as contagious as current Covid,
| which is one of the if not the most contagious airborne
| disease.
|
| Based on e.g. SARS it would have been rational to recommend
| FFP2 masks, as was done in e.g. South Korea. However,
| incompetent Westen governments utterly failed to make such
| masks available to the population, so they tended to err on the
| "no evidence masks work" side.
| gdubs wrote:
| No evidence sounds definitive. "We _lack_ evidence" would be
| clearer, for instance, because it at least suggests that their
| _could_ be evidence, but it hasn't been found yet.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| No, actually, definitive would be "We have evidence to the
| contrary".
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| __lack__ evidence sounds like you have already made up you
| mind but is just searching for confirmation.
|
| I'd say a better expression would be "we don't know yet
| whether ...", e.g.: "we don't know yet whether Covid is
| airborne".
| indymike wrote:
| > Sometimes "no evidence" means that we haven't found
| compelling evidence yet.
|
| Most of the time when no evidence is used, it's to drive
| political or business activity. For example:
|
| "There is no evidence that Asbestos is unsafe."
|
| I wish that news media would just be honest, or tell us when
| research is ongoing so people people were not panicking over
| something that is simply just not known.
|
| "Researchers have good reason to believe that masks will help
| prevent the spread of COVID-19, but research is ongoing at
| _______ to determine if COVID-19 is airborne, and how effective
| masks are in preventing the spread of COVID-19."
|
| Unfortunately, the truth is boring and outrage and panic drive
| clicks.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| Except of course that masks _do_ help, and we _did_ find
| evidence. However many would like to justify their inability to
| accommodate the slightest inconvenience necessary to help the
| people around them - a clear case of starting with the premise
| ( "I don't like wearing a mask") and then perceiving any data
| through that view.
| NoPie wrote:
| That's not accurate. Obviously there are many different
| studies with different conclusions. But by "evidence" we
| usually mean the total conclusion from all of them. In
| medicine it is usually done via metareviews and even then
| evidence can be graded to different levels and quality.
|
| So, in short, Cochrane review shows that we don't have a good
| quality evidence that masks were effective. And the low
| quality evidence indicates that masks either had no or very
| little effect. Some people try to quote one or two studies
| out of context but that's not helpful because we need to take
| the totality of evidence into account.
|
| It is possible that once we obtain high quality evidence,
| these conclusions will be overturned. Surprisingly there is
| very little interest in doing such studies.
| samtho wrote:
| The problem with the phrase "No evidence" outside of a
| scientific context is that it sounds like it's dodging the
| question, when, as you pointed out, it just means we don't have
| data to support that relationship. The other way this is used
| is to try to "prove" a negative by communicating that we cannot
| establish a link, and may be accompanied by the expert stating
| there is evidence for the opposite case. Text bites rarely have
| context other than this "no evidence" statement.
|
| For a layperson, they feel like they are having the wool pulled
| over their eyes and are not given a truthful answer. For
| example: Interviewer: Can you say for certain
| that X causes Y? Scientist: We have no evidence that X
| causes Y. Interviewer: But can you say for certain that
| Y is NOT caused by X? Scientist: There is no evidence
| of that relationship.
|
| The scientist is trying to choose their words carefully because
| they are operating on the principle of only communicating what
| the data is telling us. The interviewer wants a clear,
| definitive answer. Both parties become frustrated.
|
| I do agree with the article that this is poor communication
| because the scientist sounds like a lawyer and is hiding
| something rather than stating the facts of the situation. I'm
| sure there are better ways to communicate this that communicate
| either "we don't know yet" and "we do not believe there is a
| link" instead this line.
|
| Side note: another related and interesting distinction is the
| difference between unproven and disproven. If you saw a
| headline that a major hypothesis was "unproven", it means only
| that there is no data to support it. Disproven is what the
| layman often thinks this means which is actively finding
| evidence to the contrary.
| seanwilson wrote:
| "Statistically significant" is another misleading one for most
| people I think. People not familiar with the phrase are going to
| understand it as "important" or "large effect". Something like
| "high confidence" would be better, along with reporting the
| effect size.
|
| A lot of the time the effect size is low (and will probably
| disappear with better controls) so leaving this out and leaning
| on the term "significant" is good for clickbait.
| silent_cal wrote:
| Same with "not statistically insignificant". People think for
| two things to be at all related they must be "statistically
| significantly" related, but it's not true.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| I like that, in this age, science tries to keep statements
| factual. "No evidence" is an objective statement of fact to
| counter the millions of examples of baseless conspiracy BS
| getting algorithmically hyped into people's news diet. It's a
| good thing. As new evidence appears that fact is corrected, and
| people can act accordingly. Without positive claims of truth,
| science can try to stay objective.
| mistermann wrote:
| Can you link to a scientific article that explicitly explains
| how science has discovered a way to determine nonexistence
| _perfectly_ (zero possibility for error) in all cases?
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| I have a link to such an article but unfortunately its
| contents only renders legibly in a browser using a more
| modern epistemology than the one you are currently using,
| sorry.
| mistermann wrote:
| Playing the comedy card, another[1] popular technique one
| will notice when studying human behavior during the
| discussion of ideological matters.
|
| Perhaps someone will study this phenomenon some day, and
| perhaps use the knowledge they have obtained to do
| something to address the problem.
|
| [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38912340
| Sporktacular wrote:
| It's such a weird standard to hold. Why does "there is no
| evidence" have to be perfectly true? It's a falsifiable claim
| that anyone is free to disprove, so do your own meta analysis
| and present the counterclaim. Science has to try to be
| objective and thorough and that gives it credibility.
|
| Compare that to the unfalsifiable claims of conspiracists
| like "China engineered the virus but covered it up so well we
| have no evidence". And then the same people accepting
| suggestions of a much weaker claim that it escaped from a
| lab, as proof that what they said all along has been proven
| correct.
|
| "No evidence" is a perfectly acceptable scientific claim, as
| open to refutation as any other.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| I think "evidence" of why I should or shouldn't believe something
| is a bigger possible red flag (and deserving of scrutiny) than
| "no evidence", to which I can remain skeptical and more confident
| that I'm not being manipulated.
| jl6 wrote:
| It's an equal-opportunities offender, being deployed in both the
| "no evidence that X is beneficial" and "no evidence that X is
| harmful" forms.
| pflenker wrote:
| I think the author is too nit-picky here, as the phrase "no
| evidence" has a superficially similar, but nuanced meaning based
| on the context - _and this is fine_. It can't be the burden of
| whoever writes something to cover all possible edge cases of
| understanding, depending on the medium you need to be able to
| rely on certain _a priori_ knowledge.
|
| We have a lot of similar shorthands in journalism, the one that
| comes to my mind immediately is the phrase "the markets reacted",
| even though there is no living, conscious thing which is "the
| market" and can have a reaction. Similar to "no evidence", this
| phrase has a meaning which varies in detail but which is
| superficially the same and it's up to the reader to understand
| it.
| dml2135 wrote:
| I think your point is valid, but it is also the job of
| journalists to effectively communicate to the public, so if a
| turn of phrase is repeatedly misunderstood by a segment of the
| public, it may make sense to reevaluate it.
| javier_e06 wrote:
| The article remind me years ago I was in a meeting where a
| developer had a presentation of his c++ thread factory that we
| were supposed to use instead of creating our own threads. After
| the end of the presentation a developer asked a question about
| his own use-case that also reflected on the complexity of the
| proposed tools were asked to use. The developer presenting took a
| pause looking at him and blurted by looking back at the slide in
| the screen: "In your case, how to use the library, is evident by
| self-inspection"
|
| The meeting concluded ;)
| zvmaz wrote:
| I remember at the start of the pandemic a tweet by a famous
| biologist and philosopher about masks and the spread of the
| disease. He stated confidently that "there is no evidence" that
| masks slow down the transmission of the virus (he most probably
| changed his mind). I had some respect for this guy, but it's all
| shaken know. In fact, it's all shaken for most intellectuals.
| MDWolinski wrote:
| The problem with society is that we live in a world where
| everyone demands answers NOW and people in positions that need to
| provide answers MUST give answers. So regardless if a politician
| or authority figure knows the answer or not, everyone is
| unwilling (for whatever reasons) to say "I don't know."
|
| When I worked at Apple retail, we were trained that if we were
| asked a question that we didn't know the answer to was to say, "I
| don't know, let's find out together" and you either did some
| research on Apple's site or asked someone who may know with the
| customer.
|
| Because nobody wants to say that they don't know the answer...yet
| (and that's key) they take the current working theory and say
| there's no evidence to the contrary.
| pb060 wrote:
| Completely unrelated but Apple telling employees what to answer
| to customers is what makes interactions at their stores feel so
| artificial and clumsy.
| MDWolinski wrote:
| The point of that answer in specific is so the specialist
| doesn't make up an answer if they're not 100% sure it's the
| right answer for the customer. Its goal was to make the
| specialist feel it's okay to say you don't know to the
| customer but that you're going to work with them to find the
| right answer.
| pb060 wrote:
| I just read my comment and realized how unfriendly it was,
| sorry about that. Thank you for not replying as rudely as I
| did.
| satisfice wrote:
| The status of something as evidence is partly down to a judgement
| about relevance.
|
| If some random person in 1970 jokingly were to have said "Yeah, I
| killed JFK." That wouldn't have been considered "evidence" of
| that person's culpability in JFK's death. But if there were other
| evidence that established the plausibility of that person having
| possibly killed JFK (worked at the Book Depository, hated JFK,
| owned a rifle, expert markmsman, etc...) then the statement
| becomes a kind of evidence-- a confession.
|
| So the status of something as "evidence" and not merely data can
| change based on the context.
|
| Here's another example. There was water all over the floor of my
| kitchen. Initially, we suspected that I may have spilled some
| water while filling a humidifier. There was evidence for that in
| the form of my own memory that I had spilled some, a few hours
| earlier, and there were water streaks down the side of the
| humidifier. This seemed to be supprting evidence. But then my
| wife remembered that she had filled a pan to check for leaks in
| it and then forgot all about it. That pan was now empty. In light
| of that evidence, which was very compelling (we even verified
| that there was indeed a leak in that pan) the earlier "evidence"
| STOPPED being evidence at all.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| "Science communication" is a label adopted by so many shills
| chasing ad revenue (and thus controlled by elite through
| algorithmic censorship) or outright direct paid shills by
| corrupted institutions (such as the WHO). The goal therefore was
| never to more effectively "communicate science," but rather to
| use the legitimacy of the label of science to promote approved
| conclusions. This article assumes a misunderstanding where
| intentional misrepresentation was involved.
| Podgajski wrote:
| "there is no evidence that 5G electromagnetic radiation has non-
| thermal effects on biological beings" is something I hear
| constantly.
| codeflo wrote:
| Words sometimes have a technical and a colloquial meaning.
| Colloquially, "no evidence" means the thing that technically
| should be called "unconvincing evidence" or "little evidence".
| This is similar to the word "theory", which has a different
| meaning colloquially than technically.
|
| Question: If science communicators use the colloquial meaning
| instead of the technical one, are they bad science communicators?
| Or especially good ones?
|
| I think it's the latter. I also think if you're smart enough to
| know the technical definition, you should be smart enough to make
| this translation without making a stink about it. And given that
| half of the given examples are about COVID, there's some chance
| that the author has an axe to grind.
| andrewla wrote:
| "The author" here is none other than Scott Alexander, formerly
| of Slate Star Codex. For what it's worth, I wouldn't worry too
| much about his axe grinding; if there's anyone you can take at
| face value he would be the one. When he has biases he's pretty
| clear that he has them.
|
| You point out a colloquial meaning of the phrase "no evidence",
| but look closer at his examples -- these are routinely used in
| both colloquial and technical ways, and in the end muddy the
| waters more than necessary. In his words, from the article:
|
| > You can see the problem. Science communicators are using the
| same term - "no evidence" - to mean:
|
| > 1. This thing is super plausible, and honestly very likely
| true, but we haven't checked yet, so we can't be sure.
|
| > 2. We have hard-and-fast evidence that this is false, stop
| repeating this easily debunked lie.
|
| > This is utterly corrosive to anybody trusting science
| journalism.
| zug_zug wrote:
| I like the article and the proposals.
|
| I think "no evidence" is problematic and I think Bayesian
| reasoning is fundamental to science reporting. Maybe it doesn't
| even go far enough though, sometimes you need domain expertise.
|
| Consider:
|
| * Pesticide A was evaluated by the FDA and was declared safe in
| USA.
|
| * Pesticide A was evaluated and banned in Europe.
|
| * Pesticide A's molecule is similar to pesticide B, which is
| declared unsafe in USA.
|
| * Of the last 10,000 pesticides to be declared safe by the USA,
| it actually turns out that Y% of them end up later being declared
| unsafe or only safer at a lesser dose.
|
| * Pesticide A has only been evaluated by giving a 10,000x dose
| and looking for effects within a 1-week period. It has never been
| evaluated by giving a natural dose and looking for long term
| effects, nor effects on pregnant mothers.
|
| * State that uses Pesticide A (but also many other products) has
| a 10x elevation of very rare cancers
|
| This is a very realistic picture of the type of datapoints you
| might start with.
|
| ---
|
| Or consider a case like this:
|
| * Fighter pilot says he saw an alien spacecraft accelerate 100x
| the speed of a rocket with no noise, or visible propellant
|
| * 50 other people say they saw strange things in incidents too
|
| * There's good reason to think that faster-than-light-travel
| violates causality
|
| * Scientists haven't found any radiowaves that indicate
| intelligent life anywhere they have looked
|
| I think the point is: I don't see how you get good answers
| without a bunch of really good bayesianists in the FDA or in
| Science
| hnfong wrote:
| I totally agree, but even good bayesianists still can't deal
| with the problem that people want _concrete answers_ , and they
| don't accept "it depends on your priors"... :-/
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Isn't it part of the job of the good Bayesianists to
| establish their own reasonable set of priors? It seems silly
| for a layman to ask a statistician if there's any there there
| and have the statistician say "Well that depends, what do
| _you_ think? "
| hnfong wrote:
| The whole point of priors is that everyone can have
| different ones.
|
| If the priors don't affect the results too much (due to a
| _huge_ amount of evidence), then you can just get the same
| results using frequentist methods.
| zug_zug wrote:
| People wanting concrete answers is a good force. Authorities
| saying "We don't know" is also a good force.
|
| Combine these two good forces and you end up with "Let's do
| some more research" which is what we need more of. "Is autism
| actually going up in the US? We don't actually know, and
| instead of bayesian hedging, let's construct some studies
| that definitively answer that."
| hnfong wrote:
| In my comment I originally considered writing "people want
| _concrete answers, now_ "...
|
| I totally agree that for important issues more research is
| always needed when one needs to resort to Bayesian
| analysis, but sometimes for policy reasons somebody needs
| to make a decision quick and they can't wait 2 more years
| for indisputable evidence. COVID is a good example,
| governments can't just say let's wait for two years and see
| what happens... Even for the autism example, even if
| authorities only find a substantial but not definite
| likelihood that autism is going up, they are supposed to
| prepare for policies that might help alleviate the problem,
| instead of waiting it to become a definite problem and then
| fixing it after the fact. For example, let's say chemical X
| is deemed to have 80% chance of causing increased autism,
| it's hard to argue we should wait until it's 99% before
| restricting the use of X. Of course if it turns out upon
| more research the likelihood is closer to 0% the policy can
| be reversed.
| 0xTJ wrote:
| In my opinion, this says more about poor education standards
| regarding critical thinking.
| cturner wrote:
| I am not fond of the author's substitute suggestion -
| "Scientists: Snake Oil Doesn't Work". This turns scientists into
| a priesthood of experts, and that is not what science is about.
|
| Science is a process, not an authority. We should not "trust the
| science". We should analyse and question it for ourselves.
|
| I think the essential problem with the style of journalism from
| the article is that it reduces the substance of stories into an
| appeal-to-authority. It is not a trustworthy authority - there is
| plenty of history for people employed as scientists to make
| assertions that now look ridiculous.
|
| Journalists should put more focus to the arguments and less to
| the conclusions.
| taeric wrote:
| I thought there was some subtlety where snake oil does, in
| fact, work? The problem was "snake oil" sold by people that
| were deceptive as to what they were actually selling. Do I
| remember that history wrong?
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| >This turns scientists into a priesthood of experts
|
| >We should not "trust the science"
|
| Unfortunately, those are accurate descriptions of many people's
| relationship with science, including many academics and
| scientists themselves.
|
| Whether by malice or subconscious self-deception, the most used
| and useful part of scientific studies is the conclusion,
| without regard for the reproducibility and efficacy of the
| experiments or observations. The veracity of these conclusions
| is weighted by two things:
|
| 1. The existence of data-gathering and experimenting rituals,
| but not necessarily the soundness of the data or experiments
|
| 2. How aligned the conclusion is with the expectations and
| beliefs of the scientists, their funders, and their target
| prospects
| vjk800 wrote:
| There can't be evidence for something for which no evidence was
| sought.
|
| Coming from academic physics background, the state of medical
| research boggles me. Let's start from so called "meta studies".
| Why are they needed? You'd think that if the individual studies
| were done carefully enough, a single study would be enough to
| establish a fact. Instead, you see meta studies with sentences
| like "we examined 142 studies on X for Y, out of which 76% showed
| statistically significant improvement". If we assume that the
| majority "vote" here is the correct result, what the hell did the
| 24% of the studies do wrong? Why aren't the people who made them
| expunged from the community for doing questionable research?
| remus wrote:
| > what the hell did the 24% of the studies do wrong? Why aren't
| the people who made them expunged from the community for doing
| questionable research?
|
| I think 'expunging people from the community' is a pretty risky
| path to go down. Perhaps they're looking for a small effect and
| doing a single study with high enough power is tricky? The real
| world is a messy place, there's loads of (perfectly innocent,
| as well as nefarious) ways those 24% of studies could have come
| to a different conclusion.
| csours wrote:
| 'No evidence' is not a satisfying answer.
|
| It's very easy to satisfy the human mind. It's very easy to stay
| satisfied. The human mind wants to be satisfied, it does not want
| the truth. Consult any list of fallacies to see the difference
| between facts and satisfaction. The true nature of the universe
| is very complex and hard to understand.
|
| Thus we have science. Science, as a practiced art, is a way to
| delay satisfaction of the mind. My mind will not be satisfied
| about question X until certain questions are answered.
|
| (Bear with me) It can be very clearly observed that the Sun goes
| around the Earth. Every day I can observe this. I am satisfied.
| It is ONLY when other questions come up, that I must become
| unsatisfied and make more observations, and come up with a new
| theory.
|
| I may observe the phases of the moon, and see that the Sun shines
| on the lunar surface from a certain angle. This observation is
| not consistent with the Sun orbiting the Earth, as I know that
| the Moon is closer to Earth than the Sun; thus the daily Lunar
| cycle should match Earth's cycle. My observations are not
| consistent. (There's also a lot of other evidence, but I like
| this one).
|
| In fact, it is just an illusion caused by the Earth spinning
| round.
|
| ====
|
| Science communicators need to talk about tests a lot more - what
| mental model is an expert using, and how do they test that model?
| How is evidence incorporated into that model to update it?
| hot_gril wrote:
| Even if mainstream news fixed this "no evidence" problem, their
| headlines and articles are already playing too many games to be a
| good source of scientific knowledge.
| bo1024 wrote:
| Another important meaning of the phrase is "we searched for
| evidence of X and failed to find it". In other words, we failed
| to reject the null.
|
| I think Scott means to wrap that up in the second bullet point
| ('we have evidence X is false'), but of course, there are
| important distinctions there. Of which journalists may not be
| aware, or may not spend much time on.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| What an incredibly good article. I hope science journalists take
| notice.
| a-dub wrote:
| this is succinctly captured by the truth table for logical
| implication. let p be the existence of evidence and q be the
| state. if p is false, the expression is true regardless of the
| value of q.
| xianshou wrote:
| An excellent example of an anti-shibboleth, also known as a
| "frisco":
|
| https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/45448571632/the-opposit...
|
| These signal words act as a silent, passive test of competence in
| that once you hear them, you can be assured of the speaker's
| ignorance and discount their opinions accordingly.
| gdubs wrote:
| The thing a lot of people here seem to still be missing is that
| "no evidence", coming from scientific authorities, carries an
| implication that there's no evidence.
|
| But with science, we don't actually _know_ that to be true unless
| we look.
|
| This is an important distinction because in popular culture, 'no
| evidence' seems to get a lot more headline space than 'we have an
| untested hypothesis'.
|
| Over the past decade, it feels like the aspect of curiosity and
| hypothesis have disappeared from science, which has become much
| more institutionalized, compartmentalized, and formalized. It's
| 'peer review or gtfo'.
|
| It is not literally correct to say there's 'no evidence'. We
| don't know! There could be! 'No evidence _yet_' at the absolute
| minimum.
| orblivion wrote:
| Before even looking at the content of the article I agree. This
| phrase drives me nuts. It's so imprecise. How hard did you look
| for evidence? Did you discount evidence from "known deniers"? Do
| you count statistical anomalies as evidence? If not, what name
| should we use for those, because they're not _nothing_.
|
| And this ambiguity, imho, is exploited politically all the time.
| orblivion wrote:
| Having read it, I'll add that it seems like journalists would
| never adopt these suggestions because they're afraid (for
| better or worse) of letting the public think for themselves.
| They want to sound authoritative because they've made the
| decision for the public.
| tou23 wrote:
| Instead of saying "there is no evidence that Covid is airborne",
| they should say "there is no evidence about whether Covid is
| airborne or not", in other words, there is no evidence one way or
| the other. Just saying "no evidence that X" omits the crucial
| detail -- whether there is evidence that (not X).
| bilsbie wrote:
| I just assume all science communication is bad. (I think we are
| at that point)
|
| Instead I keep a corral of trusted communicators on X. Since I've
| vetted them I can trust their takes a bit more.
|
| Edit: since people seem to be interested. As a practical example,
| when that latest high temp super conductor news came out I
| immediately had two or three different deep dives on my feed with
| balanced takes and solid explanations.
| karaterobot wrote:
| We're sort of living through an epistemological crisis. Not
| only from the postmodern "there is no truth" perspective, but
| from the venal "truth by itself does not get clicks"
| perspective in media, as well as the related "incentive
| structures are not aligned with the rigorous, methodical,
| expensive accretion of truth" perspective in research. Maybe
| that's a slight overstatement, but is trending truer rather
| than falser as the days go by. We anxiously await a corrective
| we hope will come soon.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| I agree up until this bit:
|
| > If the story is that nobody has ever investigated snake oil,
| and you have no strong opinion on it, and for some reason that's
| newsworthy, use the words "either way": "No Evidence Either Way
| About Whether Snake Oil Works".
|
| You spent how long telling me that "no evidence" is bad writing,
| and your solution is "no evidence" + weasel words? That's even
| worse. Just recognize that the thing you have no opinion on is
| _not_ newsworthy, and just drop it. That 's right, _less writing
| is good journalism_.
|
| The greater problem here is the fear of authority. If there is a
| position to present, then _present it directly_. If the position
| is that snake oil doesn 't work, then just say it. If you aren't
| a good enough authority, then find someone who is.
|
| This is where scientific communication has ultimately failed. The
| strongest authorities we have all use the _weakest language_ that
| they can! By refusing to represent a strong position, we have
| left a void. That void will inevitably be filled by the least
| scrupulous authors. Whatever fills the void will be implicitly
| held _in awe_ by the lack of direct criticism we had constructed
| around the void in the first place.
|
| Refusing to participate creates an inverse cult. An anti-cult
| where everyone agrees to never share what they believe. It
| spreads its anti-message just as quickly, and cements itself just
| as divisively, as any evangelist organization does. We must
| recognize that the anti-cult lives on equal footing with the
| cult. The true power of each exists, not in their core truth
| claim, but at the boundary of argument. Argument is engagement,
| and engagement is fuel. To avoid engagement is to starve.
| oharapj wrote:
| This is a pretty misguided argument.
|
| There are some topics that are still being researched, and if
| people say anything other than 'There's not enough evidence
| either way and so until we know more sit tight.' or something
| to that effect, they're simply being misleading.
|
| At the same time, these topics are being sensationalised by
| various people and so something should be said about them. You
| can use stronger words to discuss the sensationalisation
| itself, but when discussing the topic and the evidence itself
| rational, even handed language should be used as that is the
| language of science.
|
| Unfortunately using (misleading) stronger language to stand out
| more against unscrupulous actors merely ruins your integrity
| and message. It's better to be a source of good information for
| the people looking for it than to add to the pile of
| untrustworthy noise
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| > There are some topics that are still being researched, and
| if people say anything other than 'There's not enough
| evidence either way and so until we know more sit tight.' or
| something to that effect, they're simply being misleading.
|
| OK, but then the argument is conclusive vs. inconclusive.
| Obviously that's something you can present a clear position
| on. This position does not exist in a vacuum: you brought up
| the lack of consensus _in response_ to a vain assumption of
| consensus. The most important part of your entire sentence
| was, "sit tight".
|
| What is often done instead is to present broad inconfidence.
| Anyone who assumes any consensus anywhere has broken the
| cardinal rule. They have made the obvious mistake, and will
| suffer the consequences. Here's the problem with that tactic:
| we _all_ suffer the consequences.
|
| Weasel words don't resolve the contentiousness of scientific
| communication. They dodge it.
| fasterik wrote:
| This seems like a needlessly pedantic parsing of the phrase "no
| evidence". I agree with Scott that we should take a Bayesian
| approach to scientific claims. So what does "no evidence" mean to
| a Bayesian? It means that I don't have have any data that would
| cause me to update my priors significantly on a given claim. This
| is consistent with both the "low evidence" and "low probability"
| sense of the phrase.
|
| Words and phrases can have different meanings in different
| contexts, and that's fine. It sort of reminds me of debates over
| the term "proof". It's perfectly legitimate to say that something
| has been "scientifically proven", as long as we understand that
| we're not talking about proof in the mathematical or logical
| sense, but in a probabilistic sense.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| The place where this gets really entertaining is certain areas of
| Wikipedia. Sometimes I research natural medicine by consulting
| the relevant articles there, and you can really tell when a
| substance is efficacious, because Wikipedia has gone out of its
| way to flatly deny the existence of evidence for that, and "the
| lady doth protest too much" about said lack of evidence.
|
| Of course there is abundant evidence that herbal/natural remedies
| work: thousands and thousands of years' worth, but said evidence
| has systematically been supressed, destroyed, and denied by that
| which came after it (many times, on behalf of the Catholic Church
| which sought to erase paganism in all its forms, which included
| herbalism and natural healing.) For example, the Aztecs used the
| poinsetta plant as an antipyretic, which may explain its quite
| widespread cultivation by the time that the Conquistadores
| arrived, who subsequently used it as a symbol of Christmas.
|
| But it's hilarious to read the medical "experts" of Wikipedia
| hold their breath and stamp their widdle feet as they insist that
| stuff doesn't work, because nobody's dissected and tested it in a
| sterile lab over the last 50 years.
| function_seven wrote:
| My (I think related) pet peeve: "There is no safe level of..."
|
| I _hate_ that phrase. It implies to many people that any level
| whatsoever of X is a danger to you.
|
| Some examples: "There is no safe level of alcohol consumption"
| and "There is no safe level of lead".
|
| These both may be technically true. That even one beer a year is
| worse for your body than complete abstinence. Or even a single
| fishing weight making incidental contact with your hand is worse
| then never having touched one.
|
| But c'mon. The amount of risk posed by very low levels of
| consumption or exposure is so minuscule that we can safely (hah!)
| declare it okay.
|
| I've seen people calling for lead to be banned from roofing
| flashing applications, and total bans on alcohol, citing these
| statements that "there is no safe level...".
|
| You give me a reasonable definition of "safe", and I bet I can
| determine the safe levels of each of those things. The safe level
| of alcohol consumption is not 0.0000 units. It's somewhere above
| that. Same with lead exposure. You can have minimal exposure that
| results in no discernible difference in your quality of life.
| Where's that line?
| onetoo wrote:
| I think it's to communicate that even if you think it's not
| that bad, it's never good: A single beer every month probably
| won't kill you, but there is a non-zero increase in risk. By
| definition, any amount is a danger.
|
| I believe that kind of communication intends to combat the more
| laissez faire "a beer here and there won't kill you," which
| glosses over the fact that, yeah, it probably won't, but it's
| also not without statistical risk. Getting rid of that attitude
| reduces the risk of alcohol-related health complications across
| the population as a whole.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| All this "science communication is bad" thinking is missing the
| forest for the trees; The public doesn't seem to know how to
| educate themselves (in a time with more possibility to actually
| educate yourself somewhat than ever before), doesn't understand
| how to read or interpret a piece of media in general (a high
| school level concept), seems to gleefully ignore things they WERE
| taught (like basic math), and often explicitly describes science
| and education in general as "liberal brainwashing"
|
| Yeah, it's going to be impossible to "communicate" with someone
| who filled their ears with concrete and is shouting as loud as
| possible "I think you are the devil (literally)"
|
| This has nothing to do with science communication. Entire swaths
| of the American public believe "My ignorance is as good as your
| evidence", or worse, that if they don't personally understand
| something, then it can't be true.
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