Authority - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

AuthoritySlide2

Authority and expertsSlide3

Nullius in Verba

The Royal Society in London is the oldest scientific society in the world. It’s motto is “Nullius in

Verba

,” which translates to: “Take nobody’s word for it” or “Trust no one.”Slide4

Authority

That’s impossible: we all need to trust other people for knowledge about lots of things.

I’m not a climate scientist, I don’t have stations that collect and analyze data about global temperatures, so I can’t determine myself whether global warming is happening. I have to trust an authority to tell me if it is.Slide5

Appeal to Authority

Sometimes you’ll hear about the “fallacy of appealing to authority.” But basing your views off on appeals to authority is not always fallacious. Your authority needs to be:

An expert, or better, an agreeing group of experts, on the subject in question.

A proven truth-teller on the subject.Slide6

Conflicting Reports

However, sometimes there are conflicting reports between two seeming experts or two groups of seeming experts. How do we reconcile such conflict? How do we know what to believe?Slide7

Appeal to Motive

It’s tempting to argue that one side is wrong because it has a motive for its position. Sometimes climate change deniers argue that scientists are lying about global warming because that brings in research dollars. Sometimes people who are pro-evolution argue that creationists are lying about the facts because they want to indoctrinate people into their religion.Slide8

Appeal to Motive

It may be true that people have motives to lie and that they are acting on those motives and not the evidence.

But we need to evaluate the arguments themselves. It is not enough to point out that someone has a motive to lie. That doesn’t mean what they are saying is

actually untrue.Slide9

credentialsSlide10

Credentials

One way society has of distinguishing genuine authorities from other people is via credentials.

A person’s authority can be certified by their having certain degrees, like s PhD or MD (doctor of medicine) or even a BA. A person’s ideas can have their authority certified by being published in a top peer-reviewed scientific journal.Slide11

Academic Degrees

Of course, having

a

degree doesn’t make you an expert on everything, only on what your degree is in. Slide12

“Expert”: Dr. Algund

Eenboom

Dr.

Algund

Eenboom is a doctor. A doctor of

dentistry

. He is not a scientist or a historian.

He is described in the program as “Author of

Aircraft of the Pharaohs

” Slide13

“Expert”: Giorgio Tsoukalos

Giorgio

Tsoukalos

has a BA degree in “Sports

Information and Communication” from Ithaca College

. Worked as a bodybuilding promoter until 2005.

He is not a scientist, anthropologist, sociologist, or historian.Slide14

David Childress

A

ttended

the University of Montana for one

year.

From his personal website: “a recognized expert not only on ancient civilizations and technology, but also on free energy, anti-gravity and UFOs

.”Slide15

Expert: Neil Degrasse

Tyson

Neil

Degrasse

Tyson, real

astonomer.

Q: What do you think about Ancient Aliens:

“It’s

what people say when they can’t figure out how ancient humans accomplished something

.”Slide16

Expert: Neil Degrasse

Tyson

“Rather than say, ‘I’m too stupid to figure this one out on my own,’ they say, ‘I am smarter than these ancient humans, and since I can’t figure out what’s going on here, they must have had help from aliens.’”Slide17

The Oregon Petition

For a more serious

example, global warming skeptics have made a big deal about the Oregon Petition, a petition to have the U.S. government

not

base its policies on the supposition that global warming is happening.Slide18

The Oregon Petition

Supporters of the petition point out that it is signed by over 31,000 people.

However, only about 9,000 of them have PhD’s.

Furthermore, only about 1,400 of the PhD holders have PhD’s in climate science and related fields.Slide19

The Oregon Petition

The journal

Scientific American

polled the 1,400 who worked in climate science and found that many of them hadn’t ever heard of the petition, or said that though they had signed it, they would not sign a similar statement today.

Scientific American

estimated that the petition represented only about 200 genuine authorities.Slide20

The Climate Science Consensus: 97.4%Slide21

Worthless Credentials

Some “PhDs” aren’t real degrees awarded by serious institutions. Real universities are “accredited” meaning that an independent body has judged that they meet widely held academic standards.

Many people try to acquire false authority by obtaining worthless credentials.Slide22

“Universities of Wild Chickens”

(

野鸡大学

)

Apparently there are fake universities in Beijing that have names that are very close to real university names, with offices located nearby, with photos of real universities on their websites. They sell degrees to people who can’t get into university.Slide23

“Dr.” Gillian McKieth

Gillian

McKeith

is a popular nutritionist in the UK. For a while she had a TV show where she represented herself as “Dr.

McKeith

,” and she also did this in books and on her website.Slide24

“Dr.” Gillian McKieth

Her “Dr.” credentials were on

the basis of her degree from the non-accredited correspondence college Clayton College of Natural Health.Slide25

“Dr.” Gillian McKieth

Claims: chlorophyll

“

oxygenates

your blood.”

Chlorophyll doesn’t contain oxygen, it makes it in

sunlight.

You

can’t absorb oxygen

in your stomach

(like in your lungs

).Slide26

Suspicious Claims

Ben

Goldacre

, a real medical doctor and science writer suspected that

McKeith’s

credentials were fake

.Slide27

Fake Credentials

It turns out Clayton College is not a real academic institution. It’s non-accredited, and it sells its degrees: HKD$52,700 for a PhD and a Master’s, $93,800 for two PhD’s and a Master’s. It’s a correspondence college, meaning

you never go to any classes

. Slide28

“Dr.” No More

McKeith

also trumpeted her membership in the American Association of Nutritional Consultants. To prove that this was not a real credential,

Goldacre

signed his

dead cat up for membership for $60.

After receiving complaints, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority required her to stop using the title “Dr.” because it was misleading.Slide29

Degree Mills

A “degree mill” is a university that is not accredited by official accrediting organizations. Many creationists have “doctorates” from degree mills.

For example, prominent creationist Kent

Hovind

has a PhD from Patriot University, a degree mill. Patriot University is accredited by an unofficial accreditation mill, which accredits any university for USD$100.Slide30

Expert claimsSlide31

Legal Context

The law obviously has to decide what counts as expert opinion.

If you’re on trial, you don’t want just anyone testifying that the evidence says you did it!Slide32

US Legal Standard

In the US, for expert testimony to be admissible, the methods used have to:

Have undergone peer review.

Be falsifiable.

Have been scientifically tested.

Be replicable/ has been replicated.

Have their error rates known.Slide33

Peer Review

Peer review is the accepted method of research approval among scientists and other academics.

If you write a scientific or academic article, typically you send it to a “peer reviewed journal.” Your submission is “blinded” so that no one can tell who wrote the article. The editor of the journal then sends the article to “peer reviewers”: other people who have expertise in the subject.Slide34

Peer Review

The reviewers read the article and write up criticism and a publication judgment (“yes it should be published,” or “no there are too many errors, not high enough quality,” etc.).

The editor then makes a judgment to publish or not based on the reviews. Peer reviewed articles in leading journals are the “gold standard” of academic achievement.Slide35

Climate Change Consensus

Lots of work has been published arguing that global warming is not happening. But what about the peer-reviewed literature?

A study by

Oreskes

(2004) of the previous 10 years (1993 to 2003) showed that of the 928 peer-reviewed studies that used the phrase “climate change” in the abstract, 0% of them said that global warming was not happening.Slide36

Oreskes 2004

75% of the papers either explicitly endorsed the consensus view that global warming was happening or implicitly endorsed it, by for example, making recommendations for how to slow down or stop warming trends.

The other 25% made no commitment, often because they were about climate change long ago, now climate change today.

0% disagreed with global warming

.Slide37

Non Peer-Reviewed Literature

The public often doesn’t understand the distinction between peer-reviewed scientific research and other types of publications. Climate skeptics use such misunderstandings to mislead and manipulate the public. There is scientific literature that is against global warming– but this literature is not peer-reviewed: it consists of editorials, letters, or reviews with no original research in them.Slide38

The Limits of Peer Review

Peer review isn’t perfect, however.

Academic journals can be poorly peer reviewed: the review process might not be “blind,” it might not involve real experts, and it might be “too easy.”Slide39

Bohannon’s Paper from Before

Submitted to 304 journals.

Journals were published by top publishers: Elsevier, Kluwer, Sage,

Wolters

Accepted by 157 (52%)

Rejected by 98 (32%)

No decision by 49 (16%)Slide40

http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/

S

tudents at MIT created a computer program that randomly generates nonsense Computer Science papers. Various people have used the program to submit nonsense papers to conferences and non-peer-reviewed journals. One group of students actually had a nonsense paper accepted at a peer reviewed conference in Wuhan, China.Slide41

Impact Factor

One way of distinguishing good peer-reviewed academic journals from lousy ones is by a measure called the “impact factor.”

Journals that publish papers that are cited by further scientific or academic research have higher impact factors. Impact factor is thus a measure of how much influence a journal has.Slide42

Tricking expertsSlide43

Sometimes the people promoting crazy views, instead of trying to fake credentials, trick people with real credentials into appearing to endorse their views.Slide44

Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment

JZ

Knight is a charlatan who claims to “channel” (i.e. speak for)

Ramtha

, a 35,000 year old spiritual entity from the fictional land of

Lemuria

who once conquered the fictional land of Atlantis.Slide45

Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment

She runs

Ramtha’s

School of Enlightenment, where rich stupid people pay thousands of dollars to hear new age spiritual nonsense married with quantum physics mumbo jumbo.Slide46

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QlZ5O8_bGk

Some of “

Ramtha’s

” views are outlined in the 2004 film “What the Bleep Do We Know?” a combination of interviews and a fictional story about a deaf woman using the power of positive thinking to influence the events in her life.

Several legitimate scholars show up in the film, including one of my former teachers, David Albert.Slide47

Creative Editing

Albert says, “I was edited in such a way as to completely suppress my actual views about the matters the movie discusses. I am, indeed, profoundly unsympathetic to attempts at linking quantum mechanics with

consciousness…”Slide48

Creative Editing

“Moreover

, I explained all that, at great length, on camera, to the producers of the film… Had I known that I would have been so radically misrepresented in the movie, I would certainly not have agreed to be filmed.” Slide49

Creative Editing

This is a common trick: you tell people you are working on a film about X, when really you are working on a different film about Y.

You

interview them for many hours, and then you edit the interview so it seems to be agreeing with you. Now you have expert testimony about Y. Slide50

“Expelled”

“

Expelled”

had many prominent scientists like Richard Dawkins in it.

Those

scientists were told that they were being interviewed for a pro-Darwin movie called “Crossroads,”Slide51

“Expelled”

The

movie was actually an anti-Darwin movie arguing that the scientific establishment “expelled” dissent, and didn’t allow criticism. At the movie’s screening, the producers actually threw out one of the scientists in the movie, because they knew he was critical of it!Slide52

Meta-analysesSlide53

Meta-Analysis

A meta-analysis is an analysis of analyses.

In clearer terms, it is a study that looks at lots of different experiments that have been conducted on the same problem, and tries to “put together” all of the findings.Slide54

Motivation & Example

Sometimes babies are born prematurely (like me).

Unfortunately, premature babies are more likely to suffer and die.Slide55

Steroids

In New Zealand, doctors had the idea that giving steroids to premature babies might improve their chances of survival.

They did seven separate studies over nine years. Two studies showed some benefit, but five of the studies were unable to reject the null hypothesis, that steroids did not help. As a result, doctors stopped using the treatment.Slide56

BlobbogramSlide57

Blobbogram

A

blobbogram

is a summary of a bunch of studies. Each study is represented by a line, so you can see the seven studies that were conducted on steroids in the previous slide. The line down the middle is the “no effect” line: if a study line crosses it, then that study can’t rule out the null hypothesis, that steroids are no better than placebo treatment.Slide58

Blobbogram

Lines to the left represent positive findings. Since two studies showed positive effects, we can see two lines that are completely to the left of the “no effect” line. The length of a study’s line represents its confidence: longer lines are more uncertain. Even though 5 studies touch the “no effect” line, there seems to be a trend here: the lines tend to be to the left, positive side.Slide59

Meta-Analysis

A meta-analysis is a way of “summing up” all the information contained in different studies of the same thing.

The blue diamond to the left of the “no effect” line represents the combined meaning of all the studies: steroids work to save the lives of premature babies.Slide60

Large Effect Size

In fact, the effect size is a reduction in the risk of death between 30% and 50%.

Here’s what this means in human terms. In the US, 4 million children are born each year. 12% or about half a million of them are premature. There are about 5,000 neonatal deaths (in the first month of life) due to premature birth and complications associated with it.Slide61

Probabilities

So the likelihood that a premature baby (in the US) will die is around 5,000 in 500,000 or 1 in 100 or 1%.

This of course is right now, after we learned to use steroids. So that 1% figure is a 30% to 50% reduction of the earlier figure, which should be 1.4% to 2%.Slide62

The Human Cost

That’s up to twice as many deaths. Between 2,150 and 5,000 babies

per year

died– in the US alone– because they weren’t given life-saving treatment.

This happened for

eight years after we had all the information to know that the treatment worked. No one had put that information together in a meta-analysis.Slide63

Meta-Analysis

Now I hope it’s clear why these things are important. Ben

Goldacre

called the idea of meta-analyses an idea “that has saved the lives of more people than you will ever meet.” And it’s true!

But what exactly is a meta-analysis and how does it work?