The Argument from Peer Review?

Monday, August 09, 2010

The characteristic that sets the government apart from all other social institutions is its ability to legally wield force against private citizens. This is the retaliatory force of self-defense delegated by individuals to the government and is properly used by the government only to protect their rights. Today, there is massive confusion about the nature of individual rights and the proper purpose of government, which results in the government failing to do many things that it should and undertaking many things it should not. Either of these would be bad enough, but we have both situations and we suffer further from their unintended effects.

As an example of all of these ills, take academic research. Our government constantly violates our property rights by taxation (and by other methods of mass theft, such as the creation of fiat currency to raid our savings) -- rather than protecting those rights. Our government is in the business of running a massive, bureaucratized educational system -- a task which is well beyond its proper scope. Finally, our government ends up creating orthodoxies in many academic fields as just one unfortunate result of the first two failures.

How? In a mixed economy, the government holds vast amounts of loot to dole out to academic researchers (and can threaten to take even more). This taking and distribution the government must attempt to justify to the various other pressure groups to whom such a distribution will be seen as a threat, either in the form of less in the government trough or more from their own pockets. Since there is no way for government officials to understand every area of research well enough to allocate such funds to the best researchers, they must rely on the word of those with the best reputations in their fields. This plainly sets up a cadre of people in each field as arbiters of funding allocation and this is a disaster, regardless of the merit of their work, for it incentivizes more work within their established theories, discourages work that challenges it, and isolates the dissident worker even more than he otherwise would be from his peers.

And, when the answer to a specialized question improperly comes to bear on some proposed government policy, as with the question of whether there is global warming due to human activity, the problem grows even worse! To cut to the chase, the question of whether the government should regulate an activity that causes no immediate danger to others is one of political philosophy. Certainly, the government should prevent us from performing activities that harm others, but whether we are all going to die or suffer any time soon is not the focus of the debate over the political agenda associated with the theory of man-made global warming. That debate is (improperly) centered on how the government will confiscate our property and control our use of what it does not take, with the worst-case, possible answer to a controversial scientific question being used to justify as much such confiscation and control as possible.

Among the results of such massive confusion have been (1) laymen arguing themselves blue in the face about the answer to a question they are not really qualified to answer (although they are certainly entitled to form an opinion one way or the other), when this isn't really the issue at stake anyway; and (2) certain scientists and their political allies using an alleged "consensus" on the same scientific question, as a rhetorical battering ram against anyone who opposed such vast (and illegitimate) government power.

With this milieu of confusion as our backdrop, enter Brendan O'Neill of Spiked, who discusses a peculiar version of the Argument from Authority. Much of this will sound familiar to any target of the global warming "consensus," but the form and versatility of the argument he outlines might take anyone not forewarned by surprise.

According to O'Neill, Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, authors of The Spirit Level, a book which argues that societies that are "equal" "do better" than "unequal" ones:

... have imposed an extraordinary condition on future debate about their book. Because much of the criticism of The Spirit Level has consisted of "unsubstantiated claims made for political purposes" (in their view), "all future debate should take place in peer-reviewed journals", they decree.

Wow. In one fell swoop they have painted any criticism of their book that appears in non-peer-reviewed journals as somehow illegitimate. They snootily say that "none of [the] critiques are peer-reviewed" and announce that from now on they'll only engage in discussions that "take place in peer-reviewed journals". So any peep of a critique that appears in a newspaper, a book published by a publishing house that doesn't do peer review, a non-academic magazine, an online magazine, a blog or a radio show -- never mind those criticisms aired in sweaty seminar rooms, bars or on park benches -- is unworthy because it hasn't been stamped with that modern-day mark of decency, that indicator of seriousness, that licence which proves you're a Person Worth Listening To: the two magic words "Peer Reviewed." [minor format edits]
First, on reading Pickett and Wilkinson's "decree," linked above, I recalled how the confusion of the AGW debate would often could cause laymen against AGW (the political agenda) to look askance (not completely without justification) at results that supported AGW (the scientific hypothesis). In that light, I can understand why Pickett and Wilkinson, as people who, arguendo, have unearthed some unsettling statistical relationships, would tire of answering ill-founded objections to their economic or statistical analyses and could legitimately decide to pick their battles. At the same time, the facts remain that (1) their arguments probably will be used to justify statism, given the intellectual confusion of our day; and (2) part or all of what they argue may be wrong, but beyond many laymen to refute. I have not read this book, but it could well be that Pickett and Wilkinson themselves are leftists and are indeed using this book for that very purpose. One way or the other, O'Neill does raise a good point: Laymen are entitled to their own opinions, and in fields dominated by state-entrenched orthodoxies, they might be better off ignoring those orthodoxies. (That said, we would all be better off insisting on a following a proper philosophical hierarchy in debates about political philosophy.)

But that brings me to my second point: Laymen might be better off ignoring certain schools of thought as state-entrenched orthodoxies, but it does not follow that every predominant school of thought or methodology is necessarily such an orthodoxy, or that objectivity has become extinct in every academic field. Suppose, buried among Pickett and Wilkinson's statistics are data about crime rates and poverty that, properly interpreted, actually illustrate some great evil of the redistributionist state. Wouldn't peer review supporting such a point actually make it better-established and thus more useful to advocates of capitalism? Might such an analysis be beyond the training or knowledge of most laymen, and thus unavailable to us? There is a great danger in populist, anti-academic rhetoric, such as O'Neill's term "gatekeepers," that a fallacy equally dangerous to laymen as blind trust in "experts" -- blanket condemnation of "gatekeepers" -- can arise. That, too, is to be avoided and to be shot down by whomever can detect it whenever it arises.

And thus we see one of the great tragic, unintended consequences of government funding of academic research. The job of the intellectual whose specialty is in an area requiring special knowledge not usually available to laymen has become much harder. Peer review, which is properly a check for objectivity, has been compromised and its value (when properly performed) increasingly forgotten. Maverick academics of all stripes are more likely to treated as charlatans by established academics and as heroes by laymen in certain areas, when objective peer review could separate the former from the latter more reliably and more quickly.

Conversely, the layman is left more on his own than ever before.

-- CAV

Updates

Today
: Note: There appear to be Blogger problems. My comments get posted, then disappear. Once the problem is fixed, my comment(s) should appear here and, if necessary, I will remove repeated postings of my comments.

8-10-10: The comment problem seems to be a new, but poorly-implemented anti-spam filter that deletes comments with hyperlinks or even URLs within them. I hope this is just a bug and not a new "feature" as I find having links within comments useful, but only time will tell.

10 comments:

Galileo Blogs said...

Very interesting. You accurately capture the subtle and not-so-subtle distortions on scientific advancement caused by government funding of scientific research.

I especially like your main point that government grants create "new orthodoxies." It entrenches the orthodox cheerleaders of the status quo scientific agenda. At the same time, it ensnares maverick scientists in an intellectual and financial molasses, from which original, true ideas can barely emerge. Moreover, it increases the freedom of action of "mavericks without a cause," the charlatans whose only claim for attention is that they are different.

Regulation of businesses (and everyone else) works in a similar manner. Unnecessary doubt is cast on innovative and established products alike. Yet, at the same time quackery can gain governmental approval, and maverick products can gain an unearned allure.

Look at the treatment of drug companies. Every one of their new drugs is treated as a potential thalidomide, regardless of the reputation of the drug company or the care of the research behind the drug. Everyone is guilty until proven innocent. At the same time, herbal medicines, which are less regulated, are believed to have some special curative powers.

All of these governmental actions interferes with the ability of researcher and publisher, manufacturer and customer, doctor and patient, to freely exchange ideas using their own judgment. Stamped on their millions of decisions is the forceful boot of the government official, who imposes his will on all, regardless of context, and the parties' voluntary judgments.

Steve D said...

“Laymen are entitled to their own opinions,”

Particularly with respect to any implications of the hypothesis which go beyond whether or not the science is correct. However, this entitlement does not preclude intellectual honesty. If you are talking about something you know nothing about it should be admitted.

“That said, we would all be better off insisting on a following a proper philosophical hierarchy in debates about political philosophy.”

One of the main issues that people have is their inability to do this. The problem with ignoring the state-entrenched orthodoxies is that they could in many cases at certain levels be correct, particularly wrt scientific hypothesis even if they are hopelessly wrong regarding the political implications. (What if the government does happen to be correct? Then what do you do!) Because of intellectual confusion people might believe that because the science is valid the proposed political solutions are as well. Imagine for a moment that the extreme AGW theories were proven to be completely correct. Most people would at least partially accept the suggested political policies. This is one reason why people who are for statism tend to argue in favor of AGW while those who are against it tend to argue against AGW, regardless of whether they have any clue about the science. (However I believe another reason for this is emotional attachment to a conclusion – see below)

I was asked once by this elderly conservative lady about what I thought of AGW (you get asked a lot of these sorts of questions when people find out that you are a scientist). I essentially told her although I had looked at the science to some degree, I wasn’t couldn’t give a definite answer. She was absolutely sure it was completely bogus and it amazed me at how she could be so sure about the science – when she wasn’t a scientist and had far less qualification and knowledge of it than I did.

(BTW sometimes 'I don't know' is the correct answer)

“I recalled how the confusion of the AGW debate would often could cause laymen against AGW (the political agenda) to look askance (not completely without justification) at results that supported AGW (the scientific hypothesis).”

It’s not just that people can’t separate the political from the scientific or identify out the correct level of philosophical hierarchy. I’ve also noticed that in debates, especially on the internet how confused they can be about the issues and arguments even within the same hierarchical level. Particularly for issues they care strongly about they have a very difficult time separating a good argument from a bad one and tend to use both (or try to counter both) indiscriminately. They pile on and sometimes can’t resist adding a bad argument to a good one, or failing to recognize the one good argument in a list of otherwise bad ones. They are emotionally invested in the issue and their thought processes are often a confused muddle. Invariably in the comments that follow the good argument is forgotten as people tear the rest of the arguments apart.

Properly we should make our arguments not against a straw man but the opposite. Take on the strongest arguments your opponent can offer – or even better offer up an even stronger argument. A win: win situation – you will either become more sure of your thought process learn something new.

Gus Van Horn said...

(I reply anonymously since Google won't let me post comments to my own blog today.)

Steve,

"'Laymen are entitled to their own opinions,'

Particularly with respect to any implications of the hypothesis which go beyond whether or not the science is correct. However, this entitlement does not preclude intellectual honesty. If you are talking about something you know nothing about it should be admitted.
"

Indeed, and as you say later, "I do not know," and "I am not completely sure," are perfectly valid things to say. We can't and don't know everything.

"'That said, we would all be better off insisting on a following a proper philosophical hierarchy in debates about political philosophy.'

One of the main issues that people have is their inability to do this. The problem with ignoring the state-entrenched orthodoxies is that they could in many cases at certain levels be correct,
"

This is something that really bugs me sometimes when I see Objectivists and sympathizers discussing topics where there is clearly a state orthodoxy. It's not hard at all to believe that the state is pushing some kind of garbage down everybody's throats. But is it? not always.

Also, one important point that I should have stressed earlier. An orthodoxy as something enforced or "encouraged" by the state is never a good thing. However, an orthodoxy can, despite such coercion, be partly or mostly correct, just like parts of a mixed economy can be freer than others.
"What if the government does happen to be correct? "

After seeing the global warming debate and another in which I strongly suspected the science was wrong, but which I saw unwarranted philosophical conclusions being drawn, I have realized that it is helpful to approach such package-deal types of arguments as if the science is completely right.
"BTW sometimes 'I don't know' is the correct answer"

Not only that, when someone is trying to bully you into accepting his conclusion without your having looked at all the evidence you want, saying, "That's what you think," is perfectly appropriate.

"Properly we should make our arguments not against a straw man but the opposite. Take on the strongest arguments your opponent can offer -- or even better offer up an even stronger argument. A win: win situation – you will either become more sure of your thought process learn something new."

That is excellent advice, and dovetails with my approach to mixed arguments.

Gus

Anonymous said...

(Since Google won't let me post comments to my own blog, this is me posting anonymously, in my sixth or seventh attempt to reply to GB. This time, it nuked my reply to GB after pretending it wasn't going to post one to Steve D.)


GB,

Your comment regarding drug regulation vis-a-vis herbal supplement non-regulation is quite interesting in that the thalidomide-versus-panacea trope reflects, I think, a deepening cultural suspicion of science and reason in some quarters, and a confusion about what science is in others.

Scientific claims can be checked. Arbitrary claims cannot. To anyone who does not know to discard the latter, suspicion ends up falling entirely on whatever can be checked.

In addition, the following particularly bedeviling problem arises for laymen in complicated disciplines in which maverick theories are pitched straight to them (as one can see indirectly from a discussion by Travis Norsen of the crackpot Theory of Elementary Waves): For laymen, many such theories might as well be arbitrary for the amount of training or knowledge needed to evaluate them properly!

The layman has fewer reliable indicators of whether an expert is to be trusted than he would have were the academic marketplace of ideas not so distorted.

One tragic result can be seen when the seriously ill, often prohibited from trying new drugs developed by actual scientists, end up trying quack remedies. He cannot avail himself of actual knowledge (due to drug regulations or entrenched orthodoxies), and he is in a poor position to judge for himself from the alternatives he does have.

Gus

Andrew Dalton said...

I have also noticed the problem that Steve describes. I see it as the consequence of a way of thinking, shared implicitly by many people, that trivializes the importance of ethics as a field of study in its own right. Instead, normative questions are treated as the handmaiden of the special sciences -- not only the physical sciences, but also medicine, psychology, economics, etc.

So, the (overwhelmingly leftist) professional academics say that "science says" X, and therefore "you should do" Y. And the populist conservatives disagree with prescription Y, so they are certain that conclusion X must be wrong. They never challenge the false notion that scientific ideas somehow command a particular course of action in an obvious or algorithmic way.

With controversies such as AGW, I like to pose the question in a form such as: "Is some discovery from climate science going to suddenly make statism practical and right?" Since we know that the answer is no, because we have already validated the role of man's mind in his survival, then the science as such cannot be a threat.

Gus Van Horn said...

Andrew,

This is probably the most succinct expression of that problem I have ever seen. The question is: Why is it so common?

Aside from many people not having a clear idea of a philosophical hierarchy to begin with, I think a couple of other things come into play.

First, there is the idea that philosophical ideas do not constitute actual knowledge. Ethics, in the minds of many, are commands from on high or arbitrary conventions, and in either case have no relationship or real bearing to daily, "mundane" affairs like science, which demonstrably does.

Second, most people accept variants of common answers to various philosophical questions as the entire framework for their thinking on those questions. (e.g., altruism is ethics in their minds). All that's up for grabs is implementation, but implementation of WHAT? Altruism or collectivism.

(For brevity, I will only mention that a scientific discovery evaluated within a correct philosophical framework can result of many different implementations.)

So, for example, AGW looks like a big threat to conservatives who like their standard of living because the theory (assuming for the sake of argument it's true) constitutes an ironclad argument to them that their standard of living EQUALS "bad stewardship." They never question the call to sacrifice themselves to nature, so they smear the science instead.

Gus

Anonymous said...

There is a program that airs on the classical musical radio station that I listen to called "Block and Bird, a clear voice for Science." That's also their tag line as they exit the program. (You can hear the capital letter in the pronounciation.)

I've taken to calling it "A clear voice for Socialism," because whether or not the underlying science is valid, the proposed policy prescription is always more government.

In the early days of AGW there was paper reviewed in "American Scientist" where they were describing methodologies for detecting global warming. In the body of the article, they admitted, though not directly, that their looked for effect was 3 orders of magnitude smaller than their reported margin of error. You would never have gotten that information from the executive summary.

My father, who had his PhD in botany, used to say that the process of education was to learn more and more about less and less until you finally knew everything about nothing.

C. Andrew

Gus Van Horn said...

C.,

Your comment reminds me of another point related to political advocacy disguised as research.

Statistics many people don't understand and an avalanche of facts do indeed concern experts in science, but are wholly irrelevant to questions in political science beyond clearly demonstrating one way or another that something poses such a danger that it (or its use) ought to be regarded as a violation of individual rights in certain circumstances.

But in today's debate, nobody thinks about individual rights, and a ton of information often serves to establish someone as an authority in a political argument.

Gus

Steve D said...

“But is it? not always.”

I am sure that if statists feel the truth supports their cause they would have no qualms about using it. Worse than a complete liar is someone who tells the truth half the time (or half truths all of the time).

“I have realized that it is helpful to approach such package-deal types of arguments as if the science is completely right.”

I agree. Even if it is not the case today, someday the science may someday be right. In any event your answer to it remains the same.

“However, an orthodoxy can, despite such coercion be partly or mostly correct”

My guess is that throughout the history of science the consensus view is more often right than wrong. However when it has been wrong it is often spectacularly wrong, and makes the history books. (I realize that a consensus is not necessarily an orthodoxy)

“The question is: Why is it so common?”

Your first and second answers are variants of the same cause. The ‘commands from on high or arbitrary conventions’ are accepted as ‘the entire framework for their thinking on those questions’. The only solution is to think at the next level deeper (more fundamental) it’s a perfect example of why we must apply the METHOD of science to the SUBJECT of philosophy.

“I see it as the consequence of a way of thinking”

Yes. That’s why I think the BEST strategy in these discussions is to pull back to the next most fundamental level of philosophy and challenge their thinking at that level (its also the direction of induction). For example a good reply to the AGW argument would be to show that that if AGW is correct, then the best SOLUTION to it is capitalism. This is actually true, just a little more difficult for most people to see. Also, go one level at a time since few people are going to respond to metaphysical axioms.

“My father, who had his PhD in botany, used to say that the process of education was to learn more and more about less and less until you finally knew everything about nothing.”

I’ve heard the similar quip that an expert knows more and more about less and less until he finally knew everything about nothing while a philosopher knows less and less about more and more until he finally knows nothing about everything.

Gus Van Horn said...

"Yes. That's why I think the BEST strategy in these discussions is to pull back to the next most fundamental level of philosophy and challenge their thinking at that level (its also the direction of induction). For example a good reply to the AGW argument would be to show that that if AGW is correct, then the best SOLUTION to it is capitalism. This is actually true, just a little more difficult for most people to see. Also, go one level at a time since few people are going to respond to metaphysical axioms."

Heh. Either you'll make headway with them, or you'll end up socratically exposing what your opponent is really advocating. There's value to be had in that, too, of course.