Instead of a sisyphean refutation of every attack, wouldn't a better strategy be to research and prove the attacker's conflict of interests (and thus discredit them)?
Frankly, in some cases that's likely to backfire. Point out that a global warming sceptic accepts huge amounts of money from an oil-company linked foundation and they'll take great pleasure in pointing out which green advocacy groups fund an awful lot of research on the other side of the debate. If the net effect is less trust in any climate science, they win.
And as everyone knows the green advocacy groups are making a TON of money from reselling non polluted air, and they are making a killing buying inland beaches!
There doesn't seem to be any equivalance there. I'm sure that they'd try to pretend there is, and indeed they already do make vague claims about a "climate change lobby" making millions, and it all being a front for "lefties", but that doesn't really alter the fact that it isn't there.
Equivalence doesn't need to exist for FUD to work.
(and to be fair, research whose funding appears to be predicated on the study being designed to support the funding foundation's official position on the issue is open to question regardless of whether the foundation has ulterior motives or not)
Indeed. IMHO, the only antidote to this is teaching people (and scientists) to be very, very sceptical whenever someone doesn't care if one of their arguments are refuted.
In an ideal world where everyone was a rational, disinterested superhuman who devoted themselves to a scientific pursuit of truth, only ever focusing on arguments would be the perfect approach.
Unfortunately there do exist people who deliberately and knowingly bullshit other people in order to get what they want. Such people absolutely win from a policy of "attack the argument, not the person" because their goal is not to further understanding or even win arguments, it's to confuse people into acting a certain way ... often paralysing them into inaction by creating the appearance of an unending debate.
Thus refuting one bullshit argument simply results in two more popping up to replace it. Even if some people remember the first argument that was refuted, this doesn't help, because:
• Lots of other people won't remember the names of who was involved, or won't be aware of the previous arguments at all.
• Of the people who do remember, the fact that a debate was happening at all may be taken as evidence that the people involved must be "experts", and thus the fact that they lost the argument doesn't necessarily reduce their credibility.
• If someone was a good enough bullshitter to require a response in the first place, they will probably be good enough at it a second time to ensure that if they get no response, some people will start to assume they must be correct.
This can rapidly turn into complete defeat by the people who are actually making reasonable points because they simply become exhausted and burn out faced with an unending wall of plausible sounding nonsense, which then eventually replaces reality with itself.
I've seen this problem play out in brutally sharp detail not so long ago. The people involved knew they were bullshitting, but didn't care because in their eyes it was all for the greater good.
The only solution to this is, in fact, to attack the credibility of the people doing it once they have repeatedly made absurd or invalid arguments, because otherwise it's much harder for people to learn to tune them out.
Although, in the case of a "Gish Gallop" you can very well argue against the method, which is not so much about presenting evidence as it is about keeping you from presenting your side of issue.
If I present my argument in a manner that intellectually dishonest and/or distorts your position, you can call me out on that without going ad hominem.
Arguing ad hominim is an easy way of getting out of the actual argument. If you watched any republican primary debate lately you can see it works really well in distracting you (weaker debating) opponent and creating confusion among the viewers about the candidates actual standpoint.
It serves not to disinterest the public, but the debater as it avoids the actual argument, with a side dish of confusion to the public.
It is however notable for often being used by those without actual arguments and thus should always be countered by an argument for your cause combined with one against theirs. But if left un-countered it might however get a life on its own and while this might be less true in science, it it killing in politics (see the electability 'arguments').
It can be a viable argument if bias is overly dominant in the research but is always supporting and never a single argument.
note: This is an opinion, like most 'arguments' are.
Once it has become clear that someone is a "Lord Voldemort", it seems to me there's little value in continued careful consideration of their positions. At that point, if it's possible, why not discredit them and allow the rest of the world to start ignoring them and spend time on more promising endeavours?
What conflict of interest does a Young Earth Creationist have? Not money. If you say religious belief, you'd be right, but it's not a terribly effective criticism because the majority of U.S. scientists are religious, too.
>What conflict of interest does a Young Earth Creationist have? Not money.
Why not money? Most of them built a career that is celebrated, while being lousy scientists, by playing the Creationist card and appealing to particular political/religious publics. And working for similarly minded organizations and "research" institutes.
>If you say religious belief, you'd be right, but it's not a terribly effective criticism because the majority of U.S. scientists are religious, too.
That would be relevant only if they let their religion influence their science. Which a computer scientist or a chemist doesn't have to, or at least as much as a evolutionary biologist.
> Why not money? Most of them built a career that is celebrated, while being lousy scientists, by playing the Creationist card and appealing to particular political/religious publics. And working for similarly minded organizations and "research" institutes.
I am not saying this is the case for YEC, but usually when you hold and defend some fringe belief, you often have books, videos on Youtube, dvds to sell, conferences to give, in some case museums [1]. (See conspiracy theorist Alex John films [2])
So yes, for some people there are some financial interest. But I would say this is not the main factor. If you have defended an idea for a long time, maybe you have sacrificed some part of your life like family or friend to your passion, and at some point it becomes so tied to your identity, that it must be impossible to realize how wrong your were.
The latter is true for any kind of belief, religious, political or even scientific.
Young Earth Creationism is something that people with lots of free-floating anxiety attach that free floating anxiety to. It's a belligerent, fear-based reactionary position but what bothers them is the perceived hubris and arrogance of scientists.
Plus, some people simply can't suspend disbelief of self-organizing systems. I have to wonder if there was trauma in science class for many of them at one point.
When I mentioned (as a 5th grade student ) to a 5th-grade student that evolution isn't exclusive to Creation , he burst into tears.
In general, highly charismatic religion seems somehow related to the general changes of the 1960s, coupled with some more sinister uses of mass media. I have to wonder if decades of television have made people addicted to willing suspension of disbelief of a particularly unexamined kind.
Conflict of interest does not at all imply bullshit of this nature -- it may imply a biased presentation, but a biased presentation is not the same as deliberately repeating arguments one knows are bad. Also, more often than not the source of the conflict of interest is simply the desire to protect one's reputation -- there are not many authors who do not suffer from that :)
Best way to deal with biased bullshit is open discussion where the biased parties make their arguments, and others evaluate them on quality and completeness. Competition on who is better at hiding biases and conflicts of interest, as opposed to who has the strongest argument, is not the best way at getting at the truth.
Now, knowingly and repeatedly making the same questionable arguments without even mentioning criticism, is quite another matter and should indeed count against one's reputation. Too bad we so often see all sides guilty of that one :(
I think the number one reason of science bullshit (and it's written in the article) is not conflict of interests in the sense of "money from evil big corps" but rather the "publish or die" system in the academic world.
Or you could say the scientist interest is to keep his job, which requires a certain volume of publications, and that conflict with publishing only results that are both sincere and worthwhile.
Of course, that would be the ideal way of combating this. If you're talking about financial stakes in certain findings however, these might be hard to prove (and stalking colleagues to prove they're playing dirty is not and shouldn't be in the spirit of the academic debate).
I think the procedure itself entails a conflict of interest: If you dispute certain findings by certain researchers (and you have a clear agenda), how can you be trusted to write an objective year-end summary of relevant findings in the field? I think these kinds of articles are the root of the problem. Of course, it would be far from easy to find an objective voice interested in writing these without having an 'ulterior opinion'. Still, I think editors should at least bar researchers from summarizing what they have a stake in (or summarizing a debate that they have taken part in during the last couple of months).
And who said that valid theories can't have scientists with conflict of interests behind them? Especially if the interests aren't "is paid by big corp to lie", but something ideological.