Right, because professional researchers and academics have never been blinkered by biases or had financial motives to publish certain things or the fact that most published research is unreproducible horseshit. I don’t need a meta-analyses and cross corroborated studies to know something works for me despite all the published reasons that say it shouldn’t (or vice versa). Pathetic attempt at gatekeeping IMO completely forgetting that most research is in fact based on tinkering and trial & error. Professional researchers are not magically immune to human biases and fallacies, case in point thalidomide, trans fats, “heart healthy” seed oils etc etc.
I think you have this backwards. They aren’t saying that professional research doesn’t have any of these problems. They’re just iterating what research is, and pointing out that the “do your own research” crowd are almost never actually doing any research.
I would agree that scientific practice is far from the ideal in the post, but it doesn’t claim that researchers aren’t susceptible to those biases. That is why there are processes in place like peer review.
Peer review isn’t an infallible process, it has been shown to be super susceptible to cronyism for example, and even outside of it churns out a vast array of (mostly) useless unreproducible, or sometimes even entirely fraudulent, research. I don’t even have a problem with the former part, research is actually a lot more tinkering and trial based than some set-in-stone endeavour and it certainly wouldn’t hurt the good Ms Sparado to remember that.
I am paraphrasing the post from memory but it came across extremely gatekeepy and condescending with the “but have you conducted double blind trials like I have?” (or sentiments to that effect) as if those are the only valid ways of conducting research. Not even a slight sign of humility in how much researchers and academics have got wrong themselves and maybe to use that as an example in caution when doing your own research.
I think it’s more complex than this. Yes, absolutely, if something works for you personally but it’s not supported by scientific consensus, that makes sense to follow your own research. Health routines, diet, religion, whatever you do in your personal life, especially if you aren’t concerned about whether your neighbors are doing it too. The sentiment of the post applies best to subjects that apply broadly to groups of people, like vaccines, or trans people, or climate change, or even creationism or flat earth. If you aren’t following the scientific consensus, then you may be hurting yourself or others. Yes, science gets things wrong, but it also has drastically improved quality of life for everyone.
All those processes described there (and more, such as double blind experiments, peer reviews and so on) were invented and are used even though it would be less effort to not use them exactly because “professional researchers and academics are blinkered by biases or sometimes have financial motives to publish certain things” and those in that domain recognized it and concluded they had to do create tools to clean up their sources of those things as much as possible.
And, guess what, people who are NOT professional researchers and academics, also often “are blinkered by biases or sometimes have financial motives to publish certain things” (in fact certain groups of those people, such as politicians, are almost totally driven by money and biases in what they say and write) and those very same processes also work for filtering biased and money-driven writings and speeches of people who aren’t in Science.
You seen, what you got in that post was a box of tools to enable you to validate your sources, any sources, and your response was raging against being given tools by going “whatabout scientists”.
One can only conclude that you like your sources with “biases and published with financial motives”.
Right, because professional researchers and academics have never been blinkered by biases or had financial motives to publish certain things or the fact that most published research is unreproducible horseshit. I don’t need a meta-analyses and cross corroborated studies to know something works for me despite all the published reasons that say it shouldn’t (or vice versa). Pathetic attempt at gatekeeping IMO completely forgetting that most research is in fact based on tinkering and trial & error. Professional researchers are not magically immune to human biases and fallacies, case in point thalidomide, trans fats, “heart healthy” seed oils etc etc.
I think you have this backwards. They aren’t saying that professional research doesn’t have any of these problems. They’re just iterating what research is, and pointing out that the “do your own research” crowd are almost never actually doing any research.
I would agree that scientific practice is far from the ideal in the post, but it doesn’t claim that researchers aren’t susceptible to those biases. That is why there are processes in place like peer review.
Peer review isn’t an infallible process, it has been shown to be super susceptible to cronyism for example, and even outside of it churns out a vast array of (mostly) useless unreproducible, or sometimes even entirely fraudulent, research. I don’t even have a problem with the former part, research is actually a lot more tinkering and trial based than some set-in-stone endeavour and it certainly wouldn’t hurt the good Ms Sparado to remember that.
I am paraphrasing the post from memory but it came across extremely gatekeepy and condescending with the “but have you conducted double blind trials like I have?” (or sentiments to that effect) as if those are the only valid ways of conducting research. Not even a slight sign of humility in how much researchers and academics have got wrong themselves and maybe to use that as an example in caution when doing your own research.
I think it’s more complex than this. Yes, absolutely, if something works for you personally but it’s not supported by scientific consensus, that makes sense to follow your own research. Health routines, diet, religion, whatever you do in your personal life, especially if you aren’t concerned about whether your neighbors are doing it too. The sentiment of the post applies best to subjects that apply broadly to groups of people, like vaccines, or trans people, or climate change, or even creationism or flat earth. If you aren’t following the scientific consensus, then you may be hurting yourself or others. Yes, science gets things wrong, but it also has drastically improved quality of life for everyone.
All those processes described there (and more, such as double blind experiments, peer reviews and so on) were invented and are used even though it would be less effort to not use them exactly because “professional researchers and academics are blinkered by biases or sometimes have financial motives to publish certain things” and those in that domain recognized it and concluded they had to do create tools to clean up their sources of those things as much as possible.
And, guess what, people who are NOT professional researchers and academics, also often “are blinkered by biases or sometimes have financial motives to publish certain things” (in fact certain groups of those people, such as politicians, are almost totally driven by money and biases in what they say and write) and those very same processes also work for filtering biased and money-driven writings and speeches of people who aren’t in Science.
You seen, what you got in that post was a box of tools to enable you to validate your sources, any sources, and your response was raging against being given tools by going “whatabout scientists”.
One can only conclude that you like your sources with “biases and published with financial motives”.
Finding a thing that worked for you is great, but that does not make you an expert in that thing or qualified to give advice to other people about it.