34 Comments

I read the original paper, nodding along as I did so, until I got to the end and they took a giant shit on the whole premise.

"These people demand facts and want to see the data themselves. They don't see experts as infallible. But they are stupid racists anyway."

Yet another example of assuming the conclusion that science comes from institutions and not the scientific method. And yet another example of nobody actually bringing the data that proves us wrong. All they have is namecalling.

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consider this charming missive from page 15:

"and we show how the binary opposition of literacy/illiteracy is insufficient for

describing how orthodox visualizations can be used to promote unorthodox science.

Understanding how these groups skillfully manipulate data to undermine mainstream science requires us to adjust the theoretical assumptions in HCI research about how data

can be leveraged in public discourse"

it's called "performing science." one does this by gathering data, checking it for accuracy, and then analyzing it to draw conclusions. that, literally IS orthodox science.

y'all should try it. you might learn something!

instead, they engage in this shabby false equivalence by declaring "specific institutional conclusions" as "orthodox science."

this is either breathtaking mendacity or a complete failure to understand how scientific method works.

it's fascinating how much one can learn about a person from that which they ascribe to others.

this is MIT quite literally arguing that they lost this round of "science debate" because we were better at making presentations and clever graphs.

they sidestep the entire issue of content, rigor, and scientific method. this is the issue framing of a marketing department, not a science lab.

what a shambolic black eye for an alleged institute of technology.

they have become a seminary.

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Their real argument is that you should not have access to the data.

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Being called "stupid racist" is a badge of honor. We need to embrace it, in similar fashion to El Gato's memes. When that's all they have, it's because we are right. But we still need to claim our victory.

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Hat tip, my friend - the bad cat has outdone itself, once again! I just keep shaking my head at how this could happen. Even so many who have science degrees but do not work in academia today appear to have turned their backs on science and embraced institutionalized scienz. Rome teeters on the edge of a dark age.

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el gato malojust now

i had long resisted the seemingly pat branding of the post-modernists as post-rational, but i have simply run out of excuses and charity for them. it's a dogmatic cargo cult of rationality hiding its justification by faith and justification by assertion behind a veneer of non-interrogatable intersectional knowing and prickly cancel culture assaults on heretics.

it's the new church trying to overturn the enlightenment and that makes it a full on war for the essence of humanity, personhood, and human flourishing. this is dark ages thinking and demands for obeisance and totalitarian submission pretending to be science and reason by aping its appearance while repudiating its substance.

this is no longer an academic game for the salon, this is dangerous, weaponized social poison masquerading as justice and ethics.

i have no plans to go quietly.

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Best post ever. As a geologist, I have always been fascinated by how the historic progression of earth sciences has been slowed down and even stopped for long periods of time by appeals to institutional authority. From uniformitarianism vs. universal ocean precipitates, to plate tectonics and continental drift vs. a variety of now defunct explanations for mountain building (such as the earth shrinking and wrinkling like an old apple). You have hit the nail directly on its head re the discarding of any semblance of scientific method in the "science" around this pandemic. I have found myself completely astonished by the pseudoscience BS coming from public health "authorities" and universities. Horrified at the rather brutal suppression of alternative opinion and debate. Scientists MUST be seriously sceptical. One who purports to be a scientist without scepticism, without willingness to consider other interpretations of the data, is a poseur, a fraud, despite degrees and positions. Lots of those around these days it appears.

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excuse me miss karen, but do you think that maybe this might be because getting credentials is easier than maintaining virtue and open mindedness?

after all, you only have to get them once.

thank you.

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In part. Ego is the big problem. Young scientists, at least the non-stupid ones, tend to be hyper-curious, open-minded. But as they become established, particularly in academia, surrounded by worshipful students & younger researchers, most become way too invested in their "stories", and it seems to be increasingly hard for them to view new hypotheses in an open-minded way. Impossible if the new ideas contradict their own. Geological sciences have never gotten the big government bucks medicine and epidemiology do. I would imagine the money-power thing is an enormous additional barrier to intellectual objectivity in those fields.

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crystal Lee is funded by WEF/Gates crowd.

Her only citations are her own posters referencing her own paper.

https://twitter.com/kevin_mckernan/status/1376517308076716034?s=21

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wow. the irony of the researcher claiming we must trust institutions for science and not methods and assertion over evidence then having all her institutional gravitas derive from self reference and self assertion as an authority is thick enough to stand a spoon in.

truly, appeal to ones own authority is the most fun of the appeal to authority fallacies.

but i'm not quite sure i have ever seen it done in such a layered fashion before.

she's a literal matryoshka doll of nested appeals to self authority.

can the singularity be far away?

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Their review reads like a parody SNL skit

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“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”-Richard Feynman

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An expert is the de person who knows a lot of things that don't work

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MIT: Flat Earthers run the ivory tower. How dare anyone do observation and draw inference that offends the institution!

No such thing as dispassionate data analysis, is bilious BS, a talent I have been accuse of having! They never reveal the passion they accuse is offensive to a fiction they accept!

On the scatter diagram Berenson may be a bit too inductive and might belong. Ethical skeptic is definitely far too well read for MIT!

Some hoped the era of 'science advancing one funeral at a time' was over. Not so at MIT the Flat Earthers' ivory tower.

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This paper is hilarious. The lack of self awareness by the authors is something out of a Monty Python sketch.

Don't let up. Let's do a follow up disecting the "brilliant" contributions of the paper's authors to Coivd research (or, anything...). I suspect it will be as thin as OJ's book on the search for the real killer.

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Crazy thought, but what if this is a 'signaling' from the hostages that they're on our side? They had to write in code (ie the absurd conclusion) in order to get the message out?

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a pleasing thought. "blink twice if you're being held regulatory hostage." alas, this seems too comfortable down the middle of the post modernist fairway to likely be such. ms lee does not appear to be trying to play simplico to criticize the powers that be without admission of so doing but rather genuinely seems mired in the non-objectivist quagmire of deconstructionism's pretty word games and the propagandistic possibilities they generate.

hers is a "how to" manual for refuting scientists with propaganda by defining scientific method as "just one way of presenting data" and acting as though skepticism and a desire to peer more deeply into data is some human weakness being cunningly exploited by the anti-maskers in contradiction of orthodoxy.

her very statement about "using orthodox scientific methods to support unorthodox conclusions" speaks volumes here as in it's presumptions that the conclusions of orthodoxy are somehow intrinsically valid despite not being rooted in orthodoxy methods of scientific knowing.

this is the logical equivalent of palming a card in 3 card monte.

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They appealed to their own authority

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And they should loose a lot of reputation, in 5 years

We should not forget

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I've noticed a couple of true scientist lately (Dawkins and Harris) have errored by starting their logic on a foundation of what other 'scientist's' have reported. If they read this, they would surely be awakened from their lazyness.

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Brilliant piece, as always. Are we anti-masker rationalists chimpanzees or bonobos, though? EL Gato switches midstream. Cats are notoriously fickle. If we are chimpanzees, our fight is going to be full-on aggression. If bonobos, we will smother the maskers with love.

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i suspect we are both, ronald. some are lovers, some are fighters...

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They have codified scientific nihilism. Nothing means anything so the chimps must be told what to do by their titled betters who are able to contort the data into supporting narratives which further their preferred societal outcomes.

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Not sure how this got missed in the MIT kerfuffle.. it's wonderful! Currently this is my third most favorite el gato behind number one (unlikely to be displaced) In praise of lawn darts.. number rwo science + politics = political science.. thanks for being purrfectly wonderful! >3

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"no wonder their civilization is going into such decline and disarray"

And you are just the cat to bring this to people's attention.

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Given the fact (Mattias Desmet, Stuart Ritchie, et al) that around 85% of all scientific articles published contain some debilitating data which brings conclusions drawn into question, why do we even bother referencing them anymore? Institutional and regulatory capture is wildly out of control. Full stop. An overhaul is required otherwise there is no off ramp on the highway to totalitarianism. May the 5%-ers (the "I will never concede" crowd) live on!

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