Just over 10 years ago, the evolution/creationism debates were once again all heated up. The fact we're still "debating" that reality should be evidence enough debate is worthless, but @hoofnagle and I were noting the futility of engaging the merry-go-round of denialist debate.
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Influenced by the work of previous skeptical debunkers like
@specterm on HIV/AIDS, and@deborahlipstadt on Holocaust denial,@hoofnagle and I wanted to demonstrate how the working parts of denialist arguments, whatever the ideology, were functionally the same & not worth debatingShow this thread -
So in 2007 we wrote the denialism blog. Hosted at scienceblogs (bought out now by ACSH - ironically an astroturf group) we talked about the 5 tactics that typified denialist argument. https://www.denialism.com/about/ Also memorialized at
@skepticscience https://skepticalscience.com/5-characteristics-of-scientific-denialism.html …Show this thread -
Those tactics were conspiracy theories, cherry-picking data, fake experts, moving goalposts, and logical fallacies. Our hypothesis was it's actively harmful to debate with people who were engaging in these tactics.
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Debating people who are lying and spreading misinformation only serves their purposes - to expand their audience, and to legitimize these dishonest brokers as worthy of engagement as scientists or experts. Debating a denialist is scoring an "own goal".
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We believe that if we taught people to see the tactics at work and reject them we could short circuit the cycle of amplification of misinformation. This hypothesis and the 5 tactics were then introduced into the literature by Diethelm and McKeehttps://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/19/1/2/463780 …
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Subsequently, thanks to
@johnfocook we have solid data to show this hypothesis is correct. In this paper he demonstrates the two critical findings - presentation of misinformation increases polarization/disbelief (consistent with ideology)..https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0175799 …Show this thread -
Second he shows that an "inoculation" - in which tactics of denialists are explained prior to exposure - the misinformation no longer works! This is consistent with others' work that suggests priming people to recognize disinformation can be protective.https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/gch2.201600008 …
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We've also learned a lot about *why* the tactics of denialism are effective. I talk a lot about our "monkey brain" for a reason. Turns out, evolution didn't make us logical computers, it made us social apes. Our default programming or "heuristics" aren't necessarily logical.
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As a result we're susceptible - all of us regardless of raw intelligence - to various cognitive biases. Our cognitive processing isn't designed necessarily to determine what is "true" or accurate so much as to synthesize it with what we already believe. http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/386437/26885168/1456706316787/culturaloriengationofmassopinion.pdf?token=WBJ5vQLxD%2FRnxkoFxN3aB1RegiE%3D …
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And indeed those values which are inconsistent with our preformed culture will remain relatively impervious to contrary facts. Thus the idea of "cultural cognition" - our heuristics tend to protect our central values from any inconvenient facts: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1000449 …
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The default mode of reasoning is to start with opinion than gather the facts that are consistent with it, and reject the facts that aren't. When we encounter information inconsistent with preformed belief we just reject it. This is "motivated reasoning". https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2703011 …
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To change one's method of reasoning takes training and effort. We don't start out logical, it's something that must be beaten into us, because our heuristics are designed for social apes - not spacefaring, nuclear bomb making, carbon generating humans - and there's the danger.
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In order to hone in on what is true we don't need more debate, in which one group of monkey brains roots for their side against the other. The problem isn't some "information deficit." We all have all the information we need at our fingertips.
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What we need is universal training in critical thinking, rational analysis, and scientific method. We need to inoculate against denialism. And we need less encouragement of polarizing, unhelpful activities such as debate, which are more sport than exercise in critical thinking.
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And thanks to
@BrandyLJensen for tweeting about@ambientGillian's excellent article.Show this thread
End of conversation
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