Jun 24, 2022·edited Jun 24, 2022Liked by Joomi Kim
I'm a computer programmer, "don't do your own research" makes zero sense in my field. By the time you're done with formal training, there are entirely different ways of doing things. You *have to* constantly be updating your skills on your own if you want to be at the bleeding edge of the industry. Moreover, it's completely possible for someone who's dropped out of High School to learn and be better at these concepts than someone with a PhD from a top school. Your worth comes from how well you accomplish the tasks in front of you, and education is merely a tool to help.
This reminds me of an article I read during college about the AIDS epidemic. I cited it as an avenue into explaining what's going on today, since at that time there was so much scientific uncertainty that doctors were really trying a lot of different things, much to the behest of the afflicted community. Eventually, many of those in the gay and black community started "doing their own research", and examining a lot of the scientific evidence alongside many medical doctors, and it got to the point that many of those in these communities actively participated in these medical meetings and engaging in the science themselves.
Of all things, I think COVID made the public generally aware of their naiveite when it comes to science and medicine. I think it led to a huge dichotomy where there now became those who wanted to dig a little deeper and those who just wanted to follow the approved narrative.
Unlike other times, the free dissemination of information through open-access journals meant that more people were allowed entry into the world of science, and many gatekeepers did not like that because controlling the route of information meant controlling the narrative. Allowing these people in meant that they could now question studies and criticize things that didn't seem right. I think that's why there was such a hard clampdown on fact-checking.
At the same time, I do believe there are people who are still learning about the "idea" of science more than engaging in scientific rigor, but even so I think even wanting to engage is a step in the right direction.
I do find it interesting that media pundits are those trying to tell us not to do our own research since we aren't experts. I have to wonder how much scientific research they have done themselves to disseminate COVID information to the public.
Thanks for your interesting analysis of this topic. My own anecdote about 'risky' research outside my field was that I could immediately tell that the "proximal origins" paper was blowing smoke even without knowing what an "o-linked glycan" is. The tell was when they made this deeply flawed argument: sars-cov-2 spike is not how a computer analysis would have optimized it for binding, therefore it is not made in a lab. The problems with that are so immediate and obvious that any bright high school student should be able to find them.
In its current incarnation, the 'you are not qualified' argument is intended to promote the centralization of decision making. If the general public cannot possibly evaluate injections, drugs and treatments properly, then the decisions must be made for them. Of course elite have long since concluded that the average person cannot make decisions regarding energy usage or consumption and now they are arguing that people should not be able to choose what food to eat. The realm of things for which we are supposedly not qualified seems to expand daily.
The idea that the average person should not decide for themselves but simply acquiesce to the promulgations of supposed experts is inimical to democracy. Those making it seek to move policy debate out of the public domain and behind closed doors. Worse, they will use a "No True Scotsman" fallacy to excommunicate experts critics who disagree with them as is happening now to Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. Pierre Kory.
The end result of this is becoming very clear: rule by an elite of self-proclaimed experts who are never wrong even when they are telling you to do the opposite of what they told you to do last week. Such a regime cannot survive indefinitely as they should properly sink under the weight of their own failures, but historically the process of removing authoritarian rule has often proven to be quite painful and difficult.
Having met Dr Pauling and studied his work, I was always deeply offended by his dismissal. I get the sneaking suspicion that my distrust of “experts” may have stemmed from those early days as a research scientist.
I went onto the field of Deep Sea bacteria and DNA repair. These bacteria were not thermal vent but rather from 5,000 meters and deeper. There really weren’t any experts in those days. I was not an expert but I knew something about DS bacteria. I had to test everything. Of course the lab I worked in had done significant ground work, I was lucky that I did not that have to start with a bare minimum.
I guess my point is I had to draw from other systems and known concepts. I had to do my own research. I still do my own research from areas such as medicine, food, and well just about anything. Some times I miss that target, mostly because that data isn’t there or the facts have been obfuscated. But I take responsibility for that. I feel it’s my right to gather information.
Jun 24, 2022·edited Jun 24, 2022Liked by Joomi Kim
I am one of the people that Forbes and friends don't think should be doing my own research. I have an ordinary degree from a very ordinary university gained 30 years ago. And yet I have spent hundreds of hours reading articles and papers about the virus and responses to it.
Do I have the chops to spot statistical issues in data tables on page 11 of a paper? Probably not. But that doesn't mean that I can't bring some critical thinking to the issues. I can look at the credentials of those who wrote the articles or papers and I can think about the biases that will be affecting them, both for and against the narrative. I can look at the face validity of their arguments in the context of what I know about the way science and humans work. I can look at the predictive reliability of the claims; so for example, I can see that absolutely nothing that Ferguson from Imperial predicted has come to pass, so that gives me a weighting to apply to his pronouncements. I can see if scientists are being encouraged to bring forward their views, or if they are being censored, and I can think about the reasons for that. I can consider whether there seems to be a groupthink operating in a domain and, if so, what are the forces that are keeping that narrative alive.
Above all, I can be conscious of my own biases and challenge myself by actively seeking out contrary views. I am very confident that this is not what the people writing these articles do on a regular basis.
The problems in science are deep rooted and well documented. Relying on that system to give us answers based on a simple majority is naive and foolish.
Just 2 days ago I was watching a lot of videos about real-life effectiveness of different martial arts and the topic of delusion there with people learning and believing in techniques because "they work" (in their narrow, perhaps very optimistic, practised scenarios) without ever testing them under pressure. The Tai Chi guy here was apparently overwhelmed by the sheer speed and "chaotic" punches of his opponent. Those nice forms he can do can't be too helpful with that ;)
It seems a very good analogy to the idealized, simplified model of what those "vaccines" supposedly do, making a lot of implicit assumptions which are very "optimistic".
Looking forward to properly reading the post on the weekend (I only speed-not-really-read it for now ;)), looks like a thorough illumination from several angles.
Being part of a group - any group - biases one's thinking. We need "the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do." Apple 1997 -- S. Jobs
This may be tangential but I remember one of the conclusions in Superforecasting by Tetlock that seems relevant. From memory, their data showed motivated and well-informed amateurs were on average better forecasters in a particular area than domain experts. But the experts were very good at giving excellent post rationalisations when they were incorrect (I think by implication much better than the amateurs who didn't have a field of potential reasons to draw on). It's a few years since I read the book but that was the gist.
Jun 26, 2022·edited Jun 26, 2022Liked by Joomi Kim
"Do your own research"? Every time I walk out my front door. 'The world is my laboratory' in retirement, kick the tires of everyday life once in a while and all sorts of hidden truths come tumbling out. I helps having worked for a continuous improvement company for my entire career. What the company's experts had done on the previous job wasn't good enough, each and every person's job was to beat the previous standard. A challenging and satisfying environment, that - I wish every job could be as gratifying.
Don't be satisfied with the status quo, don't settle for what other people think. Have some fun, kick the tires a bit.
Great article, Joomi, thank you for articulating this so well.
From within my (second) field of futures studies (my first field being engineering), this basic ethos has been not only uncontroversial for almost 30 years, but openly embraced. Post-normal science was introduced there in 1993 by Silvio Funtowicz & Jerry Ravetz, in this article in the journal Futures: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/001632879390022L.
A basic tenet of post-normal science is the legitimacy of what Funtowicz & Ravetz called the "extended peer community". From the point of view of post-normal science, those of us doing our own research are fulfilling this role of this extended peer community. Post-normal science was proposed specifically to address the limitations of normal (institutional) science under conditions in which facts are disputed, outcomes highly uncertain, and stakes high. Perhaps most importantly though for the situation in which we now find ourselves, it was also formulated as a way of moving beyond the nihilism and disillusion that followed from post-modern critiques of normal science.
The world of covid is very much the world that post-normal science was proposed to deal with. Coming from this background, the disparagement of ordinary people doing their own research as ignorant or naïve has struck me as itself the far more ignorant position. At one level it's almost amusing, but for the harm it does to the epistemic commons.
Those headlines remind me of a verse that was posted in many classrooms in the fundamentalist Christian high school I went to: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths." ~Proverbs 3:5-6
A nice verse to have on hand for kids who ask too many questions you can't answer.
I am a professional, world class "do your own researcher" because, of course, most experts are either corrupt, bought and paid for, full of crap, biased, crybabied, full of hate/nonsense/bitterness and oh yes, lies. This is one of the reasons I have invented a new theory of behavior to replace the prevailing "Operant Conditioning" model which has been around for almost a century and is fatally flawed for a multitude of reasons. I'm not going to get into my own theory here (working on revealing via podcastery) but to show you how worthless Operant Conditioning is, it is the basis for almost all of the foreign policy decisions used by our left wing (deep state) state department types when dealing with, say, Iran, Afghanistsan, Putin, Xi etc.. over the past few decades. Pretty much all of this has gone horribly wrong because Operant Conditioning doesn't work in the real world. It worked in a Harvard basement on harmless animals like rats and pigeons in cages monitored by B.F. Skinner and his army of left wing grad students who have continued to belabor us with nonsense up until current day. They never tell you that Operant Conditioning fails (vanishes into thin air) the moment you are dealing with a DANGEROUS animal (or world leader) that is not inside of a cage in a laboratory in a Harvard basement with limited or no options to express their "REAL" behavior. Sorry, I'm rambling on... So anywhoo, how did I figure all this out? (It's also the reason SEA WORLD crashed and burned (no, it wasn't animal abuse, sorry, Blackfish duped you)....
WELL, I figured it all out by DOING MY OWN DAMN RESEARCH!!! Great article again, even though I haven't read it all yet!!
It is even easier than that. I did no research, just some arithmetic; a case fatality rate of under 1% primarily focused on the very old and very sick did not apply to me. I would rather pass on an injection of unknown risk based on a rushed process than accept a sub 1% risk. Control group, unvaccinated 57 year old, attorney , accountant financial executive that makes risk assessment calculations for the past 30 years, this was an easy one.
I'm a computer programmer, "don't do your own research" makes zero sense in my field. By the time you're done with formal training, there are entirely different ways of doing things. You *have to* constantly be updating your skills on your own if you want to be at the bleeding edge of the industry. Moreover, it's completely possible for someone who's dropped out of High School to learn and be better at these concepts than someone with a PhD from a top school. Your worth comes from how well you accomplish the tasks in front of you, and education is merely a tool to help.
This reminds me of an article I read during college about the AIDS epidemic. I cited it as an avenue into explaining what's going on today, since at that time there was so much scientific uncertainty that doctors were really trying a lot of different things, much to the behest of the afflicted community. Eventually, many of those in the gay and black community started "doing their own research", and examining a lot of the scientific evidence alongside many medical doctors, and it got to the point that many of those in these communities actively participated in these medical meetings and engaging in the science themselves.
Of all things, I think COVID made the public generally aware of their naiveite when it comes to science and medicine. I think it led to a huge dichotomy where there now became those who wanted to dig a little deeper and those who just wanted to follow the approved narrative.
Unlike other times, the free dissemination of information through open-access journals meant that more people were allowed entry into the world of science, and many gatekeepers did not like that because controlling the route of information meant controlling the narrative. Allowing these people in meant that they could now question studies and criticize things that didn't seem right. I think that's why there was such a hard clampdown on fact-checking.
At the same time, I do believe there are people who are still learning about the "idea" of science more than engaging in scientific rigor, but even so I think even wanting to engage is a step in the right direction.
I do find it interesting that media pundits are those trying to tell us not to do our own research since we aren't experts. I have to wonder how much scientific research they have done themselves to disseminate COVID information to the public.
Thanks for your interesting analysis of this topic. My own anecdote about 'risky' research outside my field was that I could immediately tell that the "proximal origins" paper was blowing smoke even without knowing what an "o-linked glycan" is. The tell was when they made this deeply flawed argument: sars-cov-2 spike is not how a computer analysis would have optimized it for binding, therefore it is not made in a lab. The problems with that are so immediate and obvious that any bright high school student should be able to find them.
In its current incarnation, the 'you are not qualified' argument is intended to promote the centralization of decision making. If the general public cannot possibly evaluate injections, drugs and treatments properly, then the decisions must be made for them. Of course elite have long since concluded that the average person cannot make decisions regarding energy usage or consumption and now they are arguing that people should not be able to choose what food to eat. The realm of things for which we are supposedly not qualified seems to expand daily.
The idea that the average person should not decide for themselves but simply acquiesce to the promulgations of supposed experts is inimical to democracy. Those making it seek to move policy debate out of the public domain and behind closed doors. Worse, they will use a "No True Scotsman" fallacy to excommunicate experts critics who disagree with them as is happening now to Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. Pierre Kory.
The end result of this is becoming very clear: rule by an elite of self-proclaimed experts who are never wrong even when they are telling you to do the opposite of what they told you to do last week. Such a regime cannot survive indefinitely as they should properly sink under the weight of their own failures, but historically the process of removing authoritarian rule has often proven to be quite painful and difficult.
Having met Dr Pauling and studied his work, I was always deeply offended by his dismissal. I get the sneaking suspicion that my distrust of “experts” may have stemmed from those early days as a research scientist.
I went onto the field of Deep Sea bacteria and DNA repair. These bacteria were not thermal vent but rather from 5,000 meters and deeper. There really weren’t any experts in those days. I was not an expert but I knew something about DS bacteria. I had to test everything. Of course the lab I worked in had done significant ground work, I was lucky that I did not that have to start with a bare minimum.
I guess my point is I had to draw from other systems and known concepts. I had to do my own research. I still do my own research from areas such as medicine, food, and well just about anything. Some times I miss that target, mostly because that data isn’t there or the facts have been obfuscated. But I take responsibility for that. I feel it’s my right to gather information.
I am one of the people that Forbes and friends don't think should be doing my own research. I have an ordinary degree from a very ordinary university gained 30 years ago. And yet I have spent hundreds of hours reading articles and papers about the virus and responses to it.
Do I have the chops to spot statistical issues in data tables on page 11 of a paper? Probably not. But that doesn't mean that I can't bring some critical thinking to the issues. I can look at the credentials of those who wrote the articles or papers and I can think about the biases that will be affecting them, both for and against the narrative. I can look at the face validity of their arguments in the context of what I know about the way science and humans work. I can look at the predictive reliability of the claims; so for example, I can see that absolutely nothing that Ferguson from Imperial predicted has come to pass, so that gives me a weighting to apply to his pronouncements. I can see if scientists are being encouraged to bring forward their views, or if they are being censored, and I can think about the reasons for that. I can consider whether there seems to be a groupthink operating in a domain and, if so, what are the forces that are keeping that narrative alive.
Above all, I can be conscious of my own biases and challenge myself by actively seeking out contrary views. I am very confident that this is not what the people writing these articles do on a regular basis.
The problems in science are deep rooted and well documented. Relying on that system to give us answers based on a simple majority is naive and foolish.
The universe is playing pranks on me! Lol.
Just 2 days ago I was watching a lot of videos about real-life effectiveness of different martial arts and the topic of delusion there with people learning and believing in techniques because "they work" (in their narrow, perhaps very optimistic, practised scenarios) without ever testing them under pressure. The Tai Chi guy here was apparently overwhelmed by the sheer speed and "chaotic" punches of his opponent. Those nice forms he can do can't be too helpful with that ;)
It seems a very good analogy to the idealized, simplified model of what those "vaccines" supposedly do, making a lot of implicit assumptions which are very "optimistic".
Looking forward to properly reading the post on the weekend (I only speed-not-really-read it for now ;)), looks like a thorough illumination from several angles.
Being part of a group - any group - biases one's thinking. We need "the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do." Apple 1997 -- S. Jobs
This may be tangential but I remember one of the conclusions in Superforecasting by Tetlock that seems relevant. From memory, their data showed motivated and well-informed amateurs were on average better forecasters in a particular area than domain experts. But the experts were very good at giving excellent post rationalisations when they were incorrect (I think by implication much better than the amateurs who didn't have a field of potential reasons to draw on). It's a few years since I read the book but that was the gist.
"Do your own research"? Every time I walk out my front door. 'The world is my laboratory' in retirement, kick the tires of everyday life once in a while and all sorts of hidden truths come tumbling out. I helps having worked for a continuous improvement company for my entire career. What the company's experts had done on the previous job wasn't good enough, each and every person's job was to beat the previous standard. A challenging and satisfying environment, that - I wish every job could be as gratifying.
Don't be satisfied with the status quo, don't settle for what other people think. Have some fun, kick the tires a bit.
Great article, Joomi, thank you for articulating this so well.
From within my (second) field of futures studies (my first field being engineering), this basic ethos has been not only uncontroversial for almost 30 years, but openly embraced. Post-normal science was introduced there in 1993 by Silvio Funtowicz & Jerry Ravetz, in this article in the journal Futures: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/001632879390022L.
A basic tenet of post-normal science is the legitimacy of what Funtowicz & Ravetz called the "extended peer community". From the point of view of post-normal science, those of us doing our own research are fulfilling this role of this extended peer community. Post-normal science was proposed specifically to address the limitations of normal (institutional) science under conditions in which facts are disputed, outcomes highly uncertain, and stakes high. Perhaps most importantly though for the situation in which we now find ourselves, it was also formulated as a way of moving beyond the nihilism and disillusion that followed from post-modern critiques of normal science.
The world of covid is very much the world that post-normal science was proposed to deal with. Coming from this background, the disparagement of ordinary people doing their own research as ignorant or naïve has struck me as itself the far more ignorant position. At one level it's almost amusing, but for the harm it does to the epistemic commons.
Amazing and captures my thoughts on the matter.
Those headlines remind me of a verse that was posted in many classrooms in the fundamentalist Christian high school I went to: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths." ~Proverbs 3:5-6
A nice verse to have on hand for kids who ask too many questions you can't answer.
As I have said since I was a little boy always asking questions and talking to people, often "Experts" -
An "Expert" is often a person that studies more and more, about less and less, until they know "ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING" about nothing at all.
I am a professional, world class "do your own researcher" because, of course, most experts are either corrupt, bought and paid for, full of crap, biased, crybabied, full of hate/nonsense/bitterness and oh yes, lies. This is one of the reasons I have invented a new theory of behavior to replace the prevailing "Operant Conditioning" model which has been around for almost a century and is fatally flawed for a multitude of reasons. I'm not going to get into my own theory here (working on revealing via podcastery) but to show you how worthless Operant Conditioning is, it is the basis for almost all of the foreign policy decisions used by our left wing (deep state) state department types when dealing with, say, Iran, Afghanistsan, Putin, Xi etc.. over the past few decades. Pretty much all of this has gone horribly wrong because Operant Conditioning doesn't work in the real world. It worked in a Harvard basement on harmless animals like rats and pigeons in cages monitored by B.F. Skinner and his army of left wing grad students who have continued to belabor us with nonsense up until current day. They never tell you that Operant Conditioning fails (vanishes into thin air) the moment you are dealing with a DANGEROUS animal (or world leader) that is not inside of a cage in a laboratory in a Harvard basement with limited or no options to express their "REAL" behavior. Sorry, I'm rambling on... So anywhoo, how did I figure all this out? (It's also the reason SEA WORLD crashed and burned (no, it wasn't animal abuse, sorry, Blackfish duped you)....
WELL, I figured it all out by DOING MY OWN DAMN RESEARCH!!! Great article again, even though I haven't read it all yet!!
It is even easier than that. I did no research, just some arithmetic; a case fatality rate of under 1% primarily focused on the very old and very sick did not apply to me. I would rather pass on an injection of unknown risk based on a rushed process than accept a sub 1% risk. Control group, unvaccinated 57 year old, attorney , accountant financial executive that makes risk assessment calculations for the past 30 years, this was an easy one.