[lolsal]

I don't think the parent is saying "what about sugar?", I think the parent is saying "why should we buy that this is consensus when consensus can be bought and paid for, as evidenced by this story about sugar and scientific consensus?"

[ziddoap]

In other words, "what about the the time when consensus was bought?".

And my reply would be: if you have evidence that the current consensus has been purchased, I am all ears.

[disambiguation]

It's always amazing to find people that are strongly "programmed" with discussion patterns. If "what about" then "dismiss claims". Nuance and critical thinking take a back seat.

This isn't whataboutism.

Whataboutism is reacting to "black lives matter" with "all lives matter".

It's a defensive argument to protect against your opponent shifting the goal posts.

However, it doesn't apply when your subject is a function of its context. In other words, whataboutism doesn't work when 2 subjects depend on each other, as they do here. This isn't "what about sugar", this is "how do we know there's no conflict of interest".

The onus is not on me to prove anything about the booster, it's on them to prove that they're worth listening to.

If you want evidence, then you probably didn't read my link because the evidence for sugar didn't emerge for years after the fact. Dealing only in absolutes is absurd.

Life is like poker, by the time you have all the information it's already too late.

[ziddoap]

>"Yup, case closed.

>And on a completely unrelated note:"

I'm not sure what nuance or critical thinking you want me to apply to that. My programming might be faulty, sorry.

>the onus is not on me to prove anything about the booster,

If you're starting off from a "I don't think scientific consensus holds much meaning" point of view, is there really anything that you would consider "proof" rather than Big Pharma manipulation? For eternity, you can just point back to that article and completely dismiss anything related to pharmaceuticals.

[disambiguation]

I never said "I don't think scientific consensus holds much meaning".

My comment says "how do we know there's no conflict of interest".

If you weren't busy building strawmen you might've caught the nuance.

Further, there's a variety of proof I would accept. My goal is to build trust, not to be a perpetual cynic.

[ziddoap]

>My comment says "how do we know there's no conflict of interest".

I never would have guessed that from your sarcastic comment and hand-wave to an article, followed up by "My point is simply that "scientific consensus" has lost some of its brand value." and scare-quoting around experts (implying, you know, that they aren't experts).

But you are correct, I conflated lolsal's interpretation of your comment with what you had said. My bad.

[disambiguation]

> implying, you know, that they aren't experts

The interview is with the CEO of BioNTech, not an impartial individual regardless of his qualifications.

Of course this alone doesn't mean anything.

Though we can attempt to create meaning by applying context, from Dec 2020:

> Moderna's chief medical officer, Tal Zaks, said last month that he believed it was likely the vaccine would prevent transmission but warned that there was not yet "sufficient evidence" of it.

https://www.businessinsider.com/who-says-no-evidence-coronav...

A quote that is technically correct, but at the time was highly suggestive, and eventually proved to be way off base.

So here we are again, taking quotes from "experts".

[kcplate]

And my reply would be that evidence is not always immediately apparent, but that doesn’t mean evidence doesn’t exist.

The commenter’s point was that due to other scandal, “scientific consensus” doesn’t hold the same weight it once might have held. Especially when powerful industries and Lot’s O’Money are involved. Not just sugar, but energy, tobacco, and yes…even other pharmaceuticals. TBH there seems to be a pretty direct correlation between any industry that tends to be regularly described as “Big [name of industry]” and these sort of scientific oopsies that turn up a decade or so later.

I’m fully vaccinated and boosted, but I am not going to be at all surprised if 10 years from now there is an “oops” with this too.

[ziddoap]

>And my reply would be that evidence is not always immediately apparent, but that doesn’t mean evidence doesn’t exist.

I agree, evidence may exist and if it does, I hope to see it.

The parent poster, in contrast, simply gave a sarcastic "Yep, case closed" and then, with no context, placed a link to the sugar scandal. Effectively, as I read it, "Yeah sure... but what about that thing with sugar?".

I'm not even arguing that the stance is wrong. Your middle paragraph, while holding a similar view, actually invites discussion around the topic. Hand-waving to an article with a sarcastic remark is just a deflection. Proposing an equivalence between two disparate situations with nothing behind it.

The other portion of my comment just suggests that you should have strong evidence (or argument that the strong evidence exists) when making strong claims, and that if you're a non-expert in the field you need to demonstrate why your non-expert opinion is equivalent to that of many experts. I'm not even sure how that is controversial, but apparently it is.

[kcplate]

To me “scientific consensus” is a wave of the hand response too. It’s generally dropped in these discussions by non-experts without much knowledge of who makes up that consensus or why they disagree with the dissent.

At any rate, I see both sides. I don’t trust big pharma or government, but I trust my doctor. If tomorrow he tells me “don’t get the next booster”, I’m not going to get it.