To wonder why a person who claims they have done 'extensive research'...

[Newrunner29]

...belives they are as knowledgeable as someone who has dedicated their career and have the relevant professional qualifications in a subject? It really fustrates me and makes me concerned for future.
I see on the Internet all the time this 'extensive research' line and think, what makes u more knowledgeable and also the line could literally mean anything.

I found this twitter feed which is loosely linked, even when confronted this person continues to spead misinformation. i would love to know why?
I would say there is a level of arrogance to it to.

"Most people's 'own research' involves cherry picking things that they already agree with and not realising that the conclusions that they draw are likely to be influenced by confirmation bias"

And you think academics never do this?

@Gwenhwyfar

Just a year and a half ago 'experts' were telling us NOT to wear masks and it was ordinary people who were clambering for it. It's not as simple as experts always knowing best.

In fact, the leading experts in Asia (who had been through a couple of pandemics) were advising that masks were necessary. The "experts" in WHO and the UK who were advising against were doing so for political or other reasons. It is the case that leading science is the best advice there is for things like pandemics - it is a question of making sure the expert is speaking as a scientist, if that makes sense.

@Gwenhwyfar

Just a year and a half ago 'experts' were telling us NOT to wear masks and it was ordinary people who were clambering for it. It's not as simple as experts always knowing best.

There are several parts to this.

Some experts consistently called for the use of appropriate masks (Trisha Greenhalgh comes to mind).

As a variation on the above, some experts recognised the value of appropriate masks, knew that they weren't available, and chose to discourage the use of masks in case there was a risk trade-off with people relying upon them to do something that they couldn't do.

The people who believed that there was no case for masks for the general public have either remained convinced of that or changed their minds in the light of the evidence or as a precautionary principle once there was more knowledge about the mode of transmission.

It drove me insane how many people didn't want to listen to the leading experts in relation to covid, and how long it took for people to realise the dangers, because the leading scientists were being so incredibly clear, and giving really clear interviews for the benefit of nonscience people, information was easy to find thanks to the 'net, and it was easy to work out who were the leading scientists as they had leading professional positions and years of experience with pandemics and they were coming to similar conclusions about dna etc at the same time, even though they were operating from different jurisdictions

I don’t think they truly believe they are more knowledgable.

I think they decide their position from the outset then search for scant ‘facts’ which loosely support their view. The facts are almost always misinterpreted.

I see it a lot on here with people determined not to follow their doctor’s advice to be induced etc because they want a home birth (or whatever).

I also got called ‘horrible’ the other day for pointing out the benefits of breastmilk are negligible for an individual’s health if you look at the numbers 🙄

IME there are several signals those afflicted use including 'extensive' research, 'watch this video', 'scratch the surface' 'do your own research' when it's clear someone decides what they want to believe then looks for any evidence to justify it.

I've received real fury when I prefer evidence-based research papers to a hokey video by a scientist with no expertise in the field or a medic who has been struck off or in one case it turns out is having a psychotic breakdown.

I think it's indicative of Dunning Kruger combined with an echo chamber of agreement by similarly ignorant people though I don't really understand the psychology.

I've seen research that indicates providing evidence or facts usually just reinforces the incorrect beliefs - anti-vaccinations even before COVID.

Perhaps belief and religion is a better framework rather than science where belief and faith is key and opposition reinforces and there is a need to convert others. Or perhaps party politics where hacks support the party line and follow it as it changes.

I was surprised at the number of people who instantly became experts in international trade relations then constitutional law during the Brexit process in the UK to reinforce the pro-Brexit position they was wanted to support.

I find the contortions COVID 'sceptics' sometimes adopt interesting too. Don't wear masks. It's 5G, even in regions or nations without 5G rollout. Don't use medicines produced by big Pharma. The latter had a wrinkle where two people I know are massively anti-medicine but it seems it's OK to use Big Pharma medicines provided mainstream science don't want those medicines to be used for the disease in question then it becomes OK (HCQ and Ivermectin) especially when there is a study showing no positive effect and sometimes significant risks as that is then evidence 'they' are trying to hide something. But as soon as there is an evidence-based study showing a positive effect (COVID and some steroids) then the medicine is off the table.

I really struggle with the induced amnesia about the positions they held before and the conspiracies or catastrophies that didn't happen, but with none of the recognition and rigour that science has that when evidence changes, the current theories or practice legitimately changes accordingly.

I cynically get amused when I see academics paddle in somewhat similar waters. They fight for the narrowest nuance in their field then often spout unsupported rubbish in fields about which they understand nothing (back in the day, a historian spouting rubbish about genetics, eugenics and intelligence). To be fair, they tend to do this much less than the social media/Youtubers.

People are so used to being manipulated
misinformed and misled by the media, politicians and businesses, they no longer have confidence in those presenting them with the facts. Where covid issues are concerned, the constantly changing and conflicting information has led many to mistrust what they are told. For every expert saying something, another says something else. Put this together with a wealth of easily accessible information, and the inevitable outcome is people coming up with their own conclusions.

What did Gove say "everyone has had enough of listening to experts"?

It's no wonder we get absolute idiots thinking they know better.

It isn't just covid. In relation to parenting too, in relation to parenting vulnerable people in care or from care, there is a huge body of scientific research which gives clear advice about child development and parenting based on that reserch and how developmental trauma fits with that framework, yet you have the care givers choosing to not read the research because "all children are different" "you can't parent from a RCT" or "it isn't like buying a mountain bike". And when it all goes wrong, the people who pick up the pieces do so using research based methods and are then - at that late stage - successful in turning the children's lives around.

Arrogance and ignorance. Some people don't understand what research is and assume reading a few ranty bits and pieces on the net qualifies them to state that they have 'done their own research' and gives them parity with real informed opinion. It gives them status in their own eyes and those of their similarly uninformed friends. They are generally completely immune to reason should you disagree with them and are best avoided.

*I've got 5 degrees - including a PhD - I've done stats as part of my MSc, I absolutely know how to do research on any topic. I also know my own limitations in being able to critically evaluate and make sense of that research in any field which is not my own.

I have researched my own health conditions in order to understand the possible outcomes and treatments - I'm a scientist, I understand how to read science and medical research, but I wouldn't be daft enough to think I understood the research as well as someone who was an expert in that field.*

^^This.

Same here - I’ve got four degrees including a PhD, and in both humanities and stats-related social science subjects (with a good basic grounding in science and maths as well - by that I mean As at A-level in physics, chemistry and further maths). My job is quite literally research; and I have access to Web of Knowledge, Medline, etc. etc.

Research by itself (or even access to the right materials) also requires a good basic knowledge of research methods in different disciplines; the underlying terms and assumptions of a discipline; and the ability to judge what kinds of research you’re looking at and how they fit into the overall picture. It also, crucially, requires the ability to know when you don’t know - i.e. when your interdisciplinary or disciplinary knowledge isn’t sufficient for you to understand something.

My ex-partner had a type of cancer that was so complex that even the registrars and consultants in that field said they themselves weren’t able to fully understand the cytogenetics of it because it was just so specialised - they had to defer on some things to the research cytogeneticists. A layperson even with a PhD could just about get a handle on the basics, but had absolutely no chance of fully comprehending the research.

There are some fields - virology included - where you need excellent research skills and experience just to be able to tell what you know from what you don’t know. The idea that a layperson could fully get up to speed themselves is just daft. (Real specialists in a subject will also happily tell you when they don’t know - they don’t pretend to know it all.)

This is all of course completely related to the complexity and type of the knowledge or field that you’re dealing with. Knowing your child better than a teacher, isn’t remotely the same as claiming to be as well informed on coronavirus as a professor of virology. There are things you can become well informed on as a layperson and things you really can’t, or where you need enough knowledge and skills to judge where your expertise falls short and someone else is better qualified to judge.

I also got called ‘horrible’ the other day for pointing out the benefits of breastmilk are negligible for an individual’s health if you look at the numbers I thought the benefits were huge for the babies while actually being breastfed - both protection from poor preparation of bought milk and also protection from the breast milk itself. The benefits reduce after the breastfeeding ended though - but then the child is older and therefore more robust.

I think it's indicative of Dunning Kruger combined with an echo chamber of agreement by similarly ignorant people though I don't really understand the psychology.

There is some criticism of the Dunning Kruger research.

- The Dunning-Kruger effect was originally described in 1999 as the observation that people who are terrible at a particular task think they are much better than they are, while people who are very good at it tend to underestimate their competence
- The Dunning-Kruger effect was never about “dumb people not knowing they are dumb” or about “ignorant people being very arrogant and confident in their lack of knowledge.”
- Because the effect can be seen in random, computer-generated data, it may not be a real flaw in our thinking and thus may not really exist

www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking/dunning-kruger-effect-probably-not-real

'Research' when I was growing up denoted something that mostly happened in universities, labs and museums, carried out by clever highly trained people who were devoting their lives to their specialist field. Recently teachers started asking schoolchildren to 'research' a topic for a 2 page project. This meant reading a book or looking something up on the internet. From there we moved to people talking about researching their holiday options, which just meant looking things up. It's no wonder the word has become devalued and misunderstood. Clear agreed meanings of words are essential for communication.

But you don’t need qualifications to do your own research. What a cop out! I don’t need qualifications to research car safety. I don’t need to run my own crash test dummy trials or be a qualified engineer. And that's a problem in itself - most of us cannot access the scientific papers - their subscription rates are geared to large institutions. Typically you can access the abstract, but no more.

@EmbarrassingAdmissions thank you. I will scratch beneath the surface. It says a lot about my prejudices that I agree with the author's first line that I want it to be true.

Also, thanks to social media mostly, many people seem convinced that disagreement is hate. Makes discussion difficult.

@justnippingoutwillbe5mins

I also got called ‘horrible’ the other day for pointing out the benefits of breastmilk are negligible for an individual’s health if you look at the numbers I thought the benefits were huge for the babies while actually being breastfed - both protection from poor preparation of bought milk and also protection from the breast milk itself. The benefits reduce after the breastfeeding ended though - but then the child is older and therefore more robust.

Yes, on a global scale which includes countries with poor sanitation etc. But if you would otherwise make up formula safely then that isn’t an issue. The poster was mainly referring to the lower cancer risks for the mothers, but didn’t understand that the reduction in risk by, say, 30%, was a reduction of the background risk and therefore really very small. For example a background risk of 1% reduced by 30% would be something like 0.6%.

They were fine with scaring bottlefeeding mums with these unquantified cancer risks, but not so happy when I put them in perspective. That made me horrible, apparently.

@justnippingoutwillbe5mins

I also got called ‘horrible’ the other day for pointing out the benefits of breastmilk are negligible for an individual’s health if you look at the numbers I thought the benefits were huge for the babies while actually being breastfed - both protection from poor preparation of bought milk and also protection from the breast milk itself. The benefits reduce after the breastfeeding ended though - but then the child is older and therefore more robust.

Isn't this the difference between the large and demonstrable effects in the population as a whole, and the effects on an individual which may not be noticeable.

[quote Zilla1]@EmbarrassingAdmissions thank you. I will scratch beneath the surface. It says a lot about my prejudices that I agree with the author's first line that I want it to be true.[/quote]
I'm in the position where almost every time I think I know something, I nearly always have to think of the last time I checked, IYSWIM.

Some research areas are changing so quickly, that something that has been the standard for decades, has now updated 5 times in the last 3 years as research has reached some degree of maturity.

I remember discovering that there are now some well founded criticisms of the Hawthorne Effect. It's quite a paralysing time sink having to check some commonly accepted phenomena all the time (depending on the context).

@MereDintofPandiculation yes absolutely. The collective benefit will be much more noticeable. But this poster was claiming to ‘see’ the difference in health between her own bf children, and bottle fed children.

For me, it all started with KellyAnne Conway's "alternative facts" in that famous press conference. She invented a phrase which described Donald Trump's lies as a type of truth. Imagine the cheers and sighs of relief from InfoWars, News Intl, Breitbart etc etc.

Now anyone can claim anything with the expectation that if they say it enough, a certain percentage of people will believe it. Hence The Big Lie. Hence Masks = oppression/death etc. Hence Q'Anon. It really doesn't seem to matter that it's a huge pile of steaming ordure which leads to people dying and being killed. Nobody seems to be able to contain the spread of lies on Facebook and other media platforms even though Mark Zuckerberg is a billionaire. I mean, he could afford a few more moderators if he really felt so inclined, couldn't he? but clearly, he doesn't.

As far as dumbass conspiracies are concerned, it's really not worth engaging with the loonies. It just makes the sane people feel angry. For instance, I watched a clip of Alex Jones ingesting a dose of ivermectin on his channel the other day, whilst claiming that Anthony Fauci is 'a murderer'. Initially I experienced anger and incredulity but I soon realised it wasn't really worth the bother. People like that will either be prosecuted for their crimes or they won't. Go figure.

@EmbarrassingAdmissions My background isn't psychology or sociology but I've heard about the difficulties in replicating some experiments in both those general fields to confirm replicability and validity. If you work in a dynamic area then I suppose it's a cost of doing business to have to make sure things haven't moved on.

"There are several parts to this.

Some experts consistently called for the use of appropriate masks (Trisha Greenhalgh comes to mind).

As a variation on the above, some experts recognised the value of appropriate masks, knew that they weren't available, and chose to discourage the use of masks in case there was a risk trade-off with people relying upon them to do something that they couldn't do.

The people who believed that there was no case for masks for the general public have either remained convinced of that or changed their minds in the light of the evidence or as a precautionary principle once there was more knowledge about the mode of transmission."

Yes, and? My point still stands.

I think that people are scared of what they can’t understand and what they can’t control and this is a weird form of taking back control for them.

I completely agree and I think it’s why these people feel the need to excessively ‘spread the word’ on SM to feel empowered when they find something scary/uncontrollable.