this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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Instead of jumping straight to competing views I habitually first look at the basis for the view.
So for your example I would be looking at his sources of scientific information, checking that they do in fact say what he thinks they say and that they were published in journals of good standing.
Then I would look around the subject a bit and see if they represent the consensus or if there is debate over them.
I often see people argue competing views while accepting flawed premises. For example a person presenting the view that the measles vaccine was what was responsible for the notable worldwide rise in child respiratory illnesses in the same timeframe. The opposing argument was that correlation doesn't equal causation and there isn't necessarily a link.
But in reality when I took a look there wasn't even any correlation to begin with, as child respiratory infections have decreased in that timeframe. So in this case neither the view or the competing view are meaningful.
This is a very good point; if the premise is flawed, no argument can make it cogent.
In this specific example, the author provides extensive references to both papers that support his view and those that are countering his view, but then points out the conflicts of interest in the papers that are opposed, he doesn't seem to provide any conflict of interest information in the supporting papers, the reader is left to assume (beyond a few instances) that there are none.
That sounds good. I'd always want to take a look under the hood myself though.
Like, quickly check if what he's presented really is a representative sample of his opponents' output. Another good shortcut for if it's really not your field/intelligible to you, is to check what other reputable scientists are saying about his work and why.
My habit of double-checking facts can drive people a bit crazy though.
In my field, I generally will get multiple sources for complex things.
In other stuff that I'm interested in, I'm less rigorous. But in this instance, I feel the confirmation bias is so strong, I need to do a bit more checking.
Fair enough. I think I have the same bias as you about overly processed food.