Galef: Anyone can cherry-pick scientific studies to make a compelling case
Julia Galef · #8 Julia Galef: The Art of Changing Minds · Feb 20, 2016 · at 42:22
Julia Galef, co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality, explains how bad-faith actors manufacture doubt and uncertainty by exploiting statistical noise in published scientific literature.
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“I think it's quite easy to present what looks like a very compelling case for whatever you want to convince people of. Using, using studies using quotes from experts, using even, even randomized controlled studies, which are sort of the gold standard allegedly the gold standard in, in scientific research. The problem, like the reason that this is possible, and the reason this is all such a problem, is that there's so much scientific research that's done that it's quite possible to end up with a few studies that That seem to support the claim that, I don't know, cigarettes aren't linked to cancer. I actually haven't looked that up to see if there are studies showing that, but, you know, you can, if you do enough studies, some of them will, even just by chance, and often by experiment or bias, will turn out to show, you know, whatever you want. And so you can easily sort of selectively present the studies that support what you're claiming.”
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