The Weaponization of Doubt - Lee McIntyreWinston's Weekly...

The Weaponization of Doubt - Lee McIntyre

Winston's Weekly CrisiScience Collaborative ~  with Steve Winston

November 11, 2021

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From Steve's Abstract:

...Scientific knowledge is getting bludgeoned from all sides—not just from the political right wing, from every wing.  Unverified hearsay is ricocheting around the internet masquerading as scientific fact—bogus “scientific studies” are proliferating in “pre-release” journals.  Coincidence is being interpreted as correlation; correlation is being interpreted as cause.  Absence of data is being interpreted as absence of effect.  There’s a whole lot riding on getting stuff right—our world, like it or not, is linked every which way by technology and technology depends on sound science.  Countenancing false premises creates hidden vulnerabilities that can be nefariously exploited by those who fully realize what’s real but loudly proclaim the opposite.  It’s in everyone’s interest to tread cautiously through this baffling thicket of preposterousness to actively seek reliable information, to critically assess it against verifiable standards, to draw inferences that derive from the evidence, and to illuminate and sustain the nuggets of truth...

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Dr. Lee McIntyre of Boston University & Harvard Extension School 
speaking on 
The Weaponization of Doubt

Lee McIntyre
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The Weaponization of Doubt

Lee McIntyre 

The denial of scientific facts is the scourge of our age. From climate change to GMOs to vaccines many now seem to embrace a toxic form of doubt. Why? For the most part it's because they have been led to this. There is an important distinction between misinformation and disinformation. The former is a mistake, but the latter is deliberately manipulative. Science denial is not an accident, it is a lie... In recent years, doubt has been weaponized to sow distrust in numerous institutions—among them the scientific enterprise as a whole. The good news? Empirical research now validates the effectiveness of several countermeasures, among them prebunking, debunking, mind-inoculation, content rebuttal, technique rebuttal, and trust-building through personal engagement. CIRCE is working on various programs to apply these strategies at scale and defeat the “great infodemic” of our times.

Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and a Lecturer in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. He is the author of Post-Truth (2018), The Scientific Attitude (2019), and How to Talk to a Science Denier (2021), all from MIT Press. His popular essays have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun, Nature, Newsweek, Scientific American, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He has appeared on CNN, PBS, BBC, NPR, and has spoken at the United Nations, the Aspen Institute, and the Vatican.

Dr. Andy Norman of Carnegie Mellon & CIRCE will guest-facilitate this session of the CrisiScience Collaborative.
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In a nutshell, Lee's key points on:
The 5 steps (or tropes) of Science Denial:
Cherry-picking evidence (Steve notes...a real danger in clinical trials; p-hacking, etc.)Belief in Conspiracy TheoriesIllogical ReasoningReliance on fake experts ...& distrust of real expertsThey think: Science has to be perfect (e.g.: Let's wait for more evidence?) (they thus feel, they're being `good skeptics'...)

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& The Zoom-chat text & links:
04:30:17 From  Andy Norman  to  Everyone: Check out what Betsch & Schmidt have to say on the subject: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31235861/
04:41:56 From  Steve McQuarrie  to  Everyone: Don’t Be A Sucker link: https://archive.org/details/DontBeaS1947
04:49:06 From  Steve McQuarrie  to  Everyone: Invisible Force link: https://threatcasting.asu.edu/sites/d... 2020-06/Invisible_Force_%5BWEB%5D_0.pdf
04:51:12 From  Velikovsky of Newcastle  to  Everyone: Re: Lee's `5 tropes of Science Denial' - a great panel-session podcast @ the World Science Festival (Australia) 2021: `Is trust in science growing?' https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/is-trust-in-science-growing/13594732
04:52:58 From  Steven Gilbert, Ph.D., ABPP  to  Everyone: Doubt becomes “virtue signaling” to others in one’s social group, so it is a method of securing status and belonging.
05:08:16 From  Andy Norman  to  Everyone: Lee’s How to Talk to your Relatives @ Thanksgiving About Covid video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrDnKD_44BU
05:11:42 From  Andy Norman  to  Everyone: Andy’s Scientific American piece: “America, You’ve Been Played” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-cause-of-americas-post-truth-predicament/
05:25:41 From  Steven Gilbert, Ph.D., ABPP  to  Everyone: See Jonathan Rauch’s excellent new book “The Constitution of Knowledge: In Defense of Truth”
05:35:48 From  Velikovsky of Newcastle  to  Everyone: To Steve's point, the 5 tropes of manufacturing consent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent#Propaganda_model_of_communication
05:36:36 From  Andy Norman  to  Everyone: Lee’s op-ed with Jonathan Rauch: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/25/war-truth-is-raging-not-everyone-recognizes-were-it/
05:44:34 From  Velikovsky of Newcastle  to  Everyone: Mia Jankowicz article: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/what-its-like-to-go-door-door-promoting-vaccine-alabama-2021-9?op=1&r=US&IR=T
05:57:08 From  Velikovsky of Newcastle  to  Everyone: To Kevin's great point, on high school education: Australia's Chief Scientist (in 2017) on the need to teach science (via science fiction) - to the young: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/science-fiction-as-a-guide-for-the-future-seg/8956204

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Some of Lee's books:

McIntyre, L. C. (2018). Post-truth. The MIT Press. 
McIntyre, L. C. (2019). The Scientific Attitude: Defending science from denial, fraud, and pseudoscience. MIT Press. 
McIntyre, L. C. (2021). How to talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason. MIT Press. 

For more, see: 

Author, Lee McIntyre

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& more about, Andy Norman's CIRCE

https://cognitiveimmunology.net/

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& see also:

`IMMUNITY CORPS'

or

`DISINFORMATION MITIGATION: There's a Science for that!'

Synopsis:

Dr. Andy Norman of Carnegie Mellon, author of Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think, addresses strategies for dealing with misinformation and disinformation... [see link above for full synopsis]

 

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THE END /
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