Comment by jmcqk6
3 days ago
You're making a chain of assumptions and deductions that are not necessarily true given the initial statement of the scenario. Just because you think those things logically follow doesn't mean that they do.
You also make throw away assertions line "That's why so many claims are only found to not replicate years or decades after they were published." What is "so many claims?" The majority? 10%? 0.5%?
I totally agree with you that the nuances of the situation are very important to consider, and the things you mention are possibilities, but you are too eager to reject things if you think "that specific example should undermine your belief quite significantly if you're a rational person." You made lots of assumptions in these statements and I think a rational person with humility would not make those assumptions so quickly.
> What is "so many claims?" The majority? 10%? 0.5%?
Wikipedia has a good intro to the topic. Some quick stats: "only 36% of the replications [in psychology] yielded significant findings", "Overall, 50% of the 28 findings failed to replicate despite massive sample sizes", "only 11% of 53 pre-clinical cancer studies had replications that could confirm conclusions from the original studies", "A survey of cancer researchers found that half of them had been unable to reproduce a published result".
The example is hypothetical and each step is probabilistic, so we can't say anything is necessarily true. But which parts of the reasoning do you think are wrong?
Oh so you're talking about replications in a very specific field, one completely different from the example you're using elsewhere of climate change.
Your first step is "It's a group of scientists and their work was reviewed, so they are probably all dishonest."
Even that is an unreasonable step. It is very possible for a single person to deceive their peers.
Deductive reasoning like this works so much better for Sherlock Holmes, in fiction. In reality, deductive reasoning tends to re-enforce your biases and ignore the vast possibility space of alternatives.
I didn't pick the example of climate change, but the field is irrelevant. It was just an example. The argument applies equally well regardless of what the hypothetical scientists are inventing data for.
It is possible for a single person to deceive all their peers if you assume unlimited incompetence and naiveity, but that should reduce your faith in what they say just as much!
The argument uses logical induction, not deduction. Induction works fine and is the sort of ordinary reasoning used by people every day. It's normal to trust a group of people less after they were caught lying. If you don't do this, you're the one being irrational, not other people.