User:Aaron Schulz/General Bullshit Defense

Often pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, and religious dogma are defended in similar ways. I've seen so many of the same tactics used to defend such nonsense that I call it the "General Bullshit Defense". Knowing these might aid in telling if something is a crock of shit.

Tactics to look out for:

• Claiming the skeptic is not "open minded" or is a "sheep".

  "Sadly, you confirm my analysis of most skeptics of homeopathy. You don't know much about the subject, you don't want to learn about it, and you are against it. Are people at this website supposed to model good scientific thinking?"

• Baiting laymen into arguments rather than mainstream experts on the topic. This increases the likelihood of either "winning" the argument or ending in a draw. In turn, this sets the stage for the ad logicam fallacy. Topics often include obvious issues already raised and addressed by scientists.

  See intelligent design, global warming denial, 9/11 conspiracy "physics", HIV denialism, vaccine/autism conspiracies.

• Equating "lack of believe" with positive disbelief.

  "But how do you know there is no God?"

  "He cites a study that solely looks at the relationship between thimerosal and autism (1 of 53 ingredients in vaccines) as PROOF that “vaccines do not cause autism.” This is a reckless over-generalization that has no basis in fact."

• Pointing out some grammar/spelling error, minor/irrelevant correction, or something inconsequential that the skeptic doesn't know, and making a huge deal about it. Using these to prove how "embarrassingly" "misinformed", "ignorant", or "uninformed" the skeptic is.
• Attacking something in mainstream science or about some adherents of the skeptical view that is not perfect (or at least claiming so).

  "Modern medicine uses the double-blind and placebo-controlled trial as the gold standard by which effectiveness of a treatment is determined. On the surface, this scientific method is very reasonable. However, serious problems in these studies are widely acknowledged by academics but remain unknown to the general public. Fundamental questions about the meaning of the word “efficacy” are rarely, if ever, raised."

  "Quackery is commonly defined as the use of unproven methods by practitioners who claim impressive results and who charge a lot of money. When you consider how much of conventional medicine is not evidence-based, and when you consider how much they wear the guise of “science” and how much they charge for their services (and drugs), we ARE living in the golden age of quackery…conventional medical quackery."

• Cherry picking studies and anecdotal evidence to construct the desired picture.

  Testimonials and personal stories fall under this category

  Example: if several small studies were done similarly, with mostly negative results, picking the positive ones out and ignoring the others

• Attacking the motives of the skeptic with some conspiracy theory.

  "There is big big money to be made in drug sales, and brilliant marketing has led too many of us to ignore or excuse this bully side of medicine."

• Citing of very old and/or outdated data to support a position. Also, using studies that did not hold up to further scrutiny.

  An example would be citing small/preliminary studious that are not statically significant and using them make extraordinary claims.

  Another example would be citing old studies of nuclear reactor waste and radiation leakage from the 1960s for an argument about modern reactors.

  A third example: citing a study that was later contradicted by future studies

• Citing studies/research that suggests or proves something topically related to the matter at hand, but prepositionally irrelevant to the actual claims in dispute.

  An example would be claiming that medication dilution to .01% is effective by citing a study that has a dilution of 10%.

• Using the "Defector's Fallacy" by "citing one of them".

  "Even a leading skeptic who wrote an editorial in this issue of the Lancet referred to this meta-analysis as “completely state of the art.” No other meta-analysis on homeopathy has been acclaimed by both sides of the fence."

• Making appeals to popularity.

  "Homeopathy was developed in the early 1800s by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann. It is a low-cost, non-toxic health care system now used by hundreds of millions of people around the world."

• Making appeals to celebrities and people of high status.

  "Some of the other famous physicians and scientists who were known to use and/or advocate for homeopathy include Sir William Osler (the “father of modern medicine”), Emil Adolf von Behring (the “father of immunology”), Charles Frederick Menninger (founder of the Menninger Clinic), August Bier (the “father of spinal anesthesia”), Royal S. Copeland (physician, homeopath, and U.S. Senator who wrote legislation that empowered the FDA), William J. Mayo and Charles H. Mayo (founders of the Mayo Clinic), C. Everett Koop (former Surgeon General of the US), Brian Josephson (Nobel Prize winner)."

• Attacking either straw man arguments or focusing on the weakest critical arguments by some random people rather than the obvious strong ones. Often straw man arguments take one's criticism of something (like a study), and generalize way beyond that (an entire journal).

  "Heck, there was just international news about it as a result of that Cochrane report…but heck, people here are antagonistic to “academic medicine,” to the BMJ, and now to the Cochrane."

  "I personally find it interesting how so many skeptics of homeopathy are so uninformed and misinformed on the subject and how "unscientific" their attitude is towards the subject. Typically, they say that homeopathy "cannot" work, and yet, ironically, they ignore the research. Whooops."

• Using an appeal to ridicule rather than a logical argument. Often used with the "straw man", as above.

  "I personally find it interesting how so many skeptics of homeopathy are so uninformed and misinformed on the subject and how "unscientific" their attitude is towards the subject."

  "Conventional medicine focuses on the relief of symptoms and rarely places emphasis on prevention or the treatment of the cause of a disorder. All alternative systems, on the other hand, strive to find and treat the cause of a disorder and frown on covering up the symptoms. Alternative therapies are also much more focused on prevention."

  "I have been astonished by the culture of arrogance and elitism that medical schools appear to breed in their doctors and scientists. The culture tends to produce an “us vs. them” mentality, where doctors collectively back each other up on controversial issues, typically without understanding the issue for themselves. Somehow, if you have a medical degree and you practice conventional medicine, you get it, and if you don’t, you don’t."

• Making appeals to the consequences of believing in some positive statement.

  "Without God and eternal life what is the point of our existence?"

• Trying to use the vocabulary of the critics against them, wrongly. A bad way of "stealing the thunder" so to speak.

  "Needless to say, those people who are interested in evidence-based medicine are confused that so many normally smart people maintain and even are seemingly proud of having such an unscientific (and embarrassingly uninformed) attitude towards homeopathy."

• Moving the goalpost, setting irrationally high standards of proof, or refuting normative claims via category errors.

  "Materialism has yet to disprove dualism, show how the brain works well enough to model it with a computer, or even predict your actions, yet its adherents already claim that the mind is just a physical machine!"

  "The idea that euthanasia is somehow justifiable as a function of quality of life is not the least scientific, without a shred of supporting evidence whatsoever."

• Claiming that because one continues to reject arguments and evidence in favor of a proposition, that they must be a biased ideologue. The problem with this idea is that if all the arguments and evidence were illogical/weak, it is perfectly reasonable to reject them all.
• Defending the status quo by pointing out a place/situation where the problem is even worse.

  A: "We don't do enough about poverty in the U.S."

  B: "The homeless don't have it that hard here...ask people in Somalia!"

• Any other sophistries, like these fallacies and these fallacies, as well as exploitations of cognitive biases.
• It is often impractically tedious to make arguments through formal, rudimentary, steps (e.g. "by modus ponens blah..."), so steps will be verbally/textually omitted. They can still logically follow, given generally accepted methodologies (e.g. "regressed analysis") or perhaps given information that wasn't mentioned. In general, non-obvious info and methods should be included in the argument, but this is something to be careful on. Labeling any skipping of basic steps can itself be a misleading half-truth.
• Last resort: going into some postmodern attack on science or rationality.

  "Historians commonly remark that whichever country wins a war or whichever worldview dominates another, the history is told through that country’s perspective or that dominant point of view. This is certainly true in the history of medicine."