I refer you to Aldous J. Pennyfarthing, who discusses Green Bay Packers QB Aaron Rogers, who after "doing his own research" decided not to get vaccinated against Covid-19 and to lie about it to the public and his teammates. He goes on to complain -- on television, after doing a press conference the day before -- that he has been "cancelled by the woke mob." He sure has the proper bullshit memorized.
Yeah, I'm woke alright. I learned what it actually means to do research, and how to do it. through 7 years in graduate school and 25 years as a real researcher after that. Firing up your web browser and reading some random con artists and nut cases is not "doing research."
Doing research means using rigorous methods to establish facts and probability. If you have not had extensive training in the conduct of clinical trials then you are not capable of evaluating the findings of people who have had that training. That's nothing to be ashamed of. I can't throw a football worth a damn. Sports fans like to criticize decisions made on the field by professional athletes, and I might yell at the TV when I don't like a play call, but that's harmless.
If you want to do your own research on a subject about which you have little or no expertise, then the decision rule you must apply -- the only one available to you -- is to depend on people who do have the appropriate expertise, and we have a system throughout the world of certifying that. That means relevant degrees from accredited institutions of higher education, and often additional certificates and, in the case of medications and vaccines, extensive review by panels of independent experts and agency staff. They know what they're doing. You, Joe Rogan, Donald J. Trump, Alex Jones and Ron DeSantis do not.
If you don't understand that, maybe you've bumped your head a few too many times.
3 comments:
As usual, the central problem here is one which flummoxes me every time: how to get this letter to the person who needs to read it. In this case, that individual is Aaron Rodgers, quarterback of the Green Bay Packers.
It’s an age-old problem: we deliver comments before a meeting about the importance of attending on time, and then the people who need to hear it saunter in 15 minutes after the meeting has begun.
Gravity bins containing thousands of cough drops are conveniently placed in the lobbies of concert halls, a strong hint to people to be mindful of coughing in pianissimo sections. Nevertheless, one would-be soloist manages to regale an entire concert hall, containing thousands of people, with a tubercular hack in the most delicate section of a piece of music which 100 people spent a lot of time rehearsing, and thousands of others came to hear.
And Rachel Maddow continues continues to deliver thoughtful, fact-based information on the airwaves while millions of conservative drones are tuned in to Fux.
"They know what they're doing". Yes, sure, but they can make mistakes, as they would admit. For some, this is the point of “doing one’s own research”. And this in turn depends on the idea that a layperson can review the literature on some technical topic (in this case, medicine and public health) and come up with robust, reliable independent conclusions. Imho, this itself is an error, but one unrecognised by many.
The possibility of error, from reputable sources of expertise, has to be accepted. But also to be accepted is that the possibility of error is magnified, not reduced, by lay “research”.
Problem is, Gen Z lefties decry this sort of expert-dependance "gatekeeping" and insist that "informed consent" is the way. The right, unfortunately, is much better at these word games because they are shamelessly outcome-oriented and don't get bogged down by self doubt.
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