srconstantin.github.io/2021/06/09/Edu I stand by my opinions here.
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Umm… you have a PhD and afaict bring at least that level of effort to your research reading outside your field. I don’t think 99% of lay people could do even approximately what you do without at least some of the training you’ve benefitted from.
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I mean, yes, I'm educated, realistically not everyone will be able to do what I do.
I still think that "do your own research" is more respectful (even when it's targeted at people who probably won't) than "just listen to me, I'm one of the Elect."
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and I'm much more likely to encounter people being overly insecure about their intellects and not even trying to go straight to the data/papers, rather than people who "do their own research" but really shouldn't.
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(and no, I don't think every "crank" who believes a false thing is on balance better off "listening to experts"; I know several anti-vax types who are pretty sound on other issues.)
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The condescension and noble lies seem to come mostly from bureaucrats not researchers. I can’t think of any active researcher who has the “one of the elect” posture. Mostly they just seem to struggle to communicate at all with laypeople.
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There are researchers whose attitude is condescending and don't act in good faith. For example, the ones who conducted the PACE trial. me-pedia.org/wiki/PACE_trial
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There's another group that tends to be condescending - practitioners. Doctors, or nurses, or contractors, and so on. If you can trust whatever default auto-pilot script they follow to be good enough for your situation, that's one thing, but that category excludes many people.
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For example, many medical devices are not tested on women at all. If you happen to be a woman, there's a high probability that your medical care will be impacted by several such things. Caroline Criado Perez wrote a book about it. carolinecriadoperez.com/book/invisible
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I think experts, not just bureaucrats, but researchers and practitioners too, have earned a lot of the distrust and skepticism. I would prefer a world where "do your own research" was not needed as a counterweight to the sheer amount of shoddy practices and perverse incentives.
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This seems orthogonal. It’s great when incentives and aptitude to solve a problem line up neatly. They rarely do. My point is “do your own research” is not a general solution in either case. The world is too complex for everyone to be an expert on everything that affects them.
And the line is rarely trotted out around highly individual conditions. The phrase is usually deployed alongside crackpot theories of shared problems, advanced where trust has eroded. “They lied about masks so vaccines contain 5G chips” type leaps.
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Indeed. I resent that I have to do literature reviews to have a chance that interacting with the medical system will not harm me. "Do your own research" is not a general solution, or even a good individual solution. However "trust experts" can be even worse as a general solution.
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My general solution is neither doing my own research, nor trusting experts. It’s lowering my expectations and standards. Mediocre compromises 99% of the time.
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