Appeal To Authority

Over the years, I’ve been codifying bits and pieces of (mostly liberal) human behavior into what I call “Berg’s Laws”.

I’m adding a new…well, not so much “law” as corollary to a law; an observation completely supported by the law.

The Law in question is Berg’s Fourteenth:

 The more strenuously a media organization identifies itself as “fact-checkers”, the more completely their “fact checking” will actually be checking statement for congruency with liberal conventional wisdom.

I’m adding the brand-new but utterly-sensible Maddow Corollary:

The same goes for science

I did it after reading this Glenn Reynolds piece in the NYPost, pointing out the facts behind the latest blitz of self-congratulatory articles by liberals lauding themselves for their greater supposed belief in science than conservatives.

These articles always trip the BS detector, naturally; they’re like the articles pointing out the”science” showing that liberals having higher IQ, or are less racist, or other such fripperies; bad science to reinforce a bad and – more importantly – meaningless conclusion.

Of course, as Reynolds points out, the whole tendency goes a solid level of illogic deeper.  He starts by noting that in 1974, a University of North Carolina sociologist Gordon Gauchat noted that in 1974, conservatives had a demonstrably higher likelihood to trust science than liberals.  I’m going to add some emphasis: 

Gauchat points out, correctly, that you can’t lay the blame at the feet of biblical creationists and anti-evolutionists, who were no less common in 1974. Nor is sheer ignorance responsible, as the decline in trust rose with education.

So wait – the more educated a conservative, the less likely he or she is to trust science?

Why, that suggest that this lack of trust isn’t just love of snake-handling, doesn’t it?

Why yes.  It does:

Instead, he suggests that it’s the increasing use of science as ammunition for big-government schemes that has led to more skepticism.
There’s probably something to that, but if you read the actual paper something else becomes clear. Despite the language in the coverage, it’s not science as a method that people are losing confidence in; it’s scientists and the institutions that purport to speak for them.

Reynolds does what everyone needs to do when they analyze polling information; looks at the original questions.

Gauchat’s paper was based on annual responses in the General Social Survey, which asks people: “I am going to name some institutions in this country. As far as the people running these institutions are concerned, would you say you have a great deal of confidence, only some confidence, or hardly any confidence at all in them?” One institution mentioned was “the scientific community.”
So when fewer people answered “a great deal” and more answered “hardly any” with regard to “the scientific community,” they were demonstrating more skepticism not toward science but toward the people running scientific institutions.
With this in mind, a rise in skepticism isn’t such a surprise.

Of course, people today have less faith in general in “institutions” than they used to.  Journalism, the police, the courts, the government, all are less trusted than they used to be.

So has…not “science”, as in the “scientific method”, but the institutions that run it, and especially the ones that use it toward their political ends.

“Science” – in the form of institutions – earned that distrust.  And that’s a good thing – because the root of science is skepticism.

And the push to jam down the beliefs of institutions, simply because they’re institutions, is unskeptical and, beyond that, illogical.  It is in fact a logical fallacy, the “appeal to authority“, which is also unskeptical and unscientific:

We accept arguments not because they come from people in authority but because they can be proven correct — in independent experiments by independent experimenters. If you make a claim that can’t be proven false in an independent experiment, you’re not really making a scientific claim at all.

And saying, “trust us,” while denouncing skeptics as — horror of horrors — “skeptics” doesn’t count as science, either, even if it comes from someone with a doctorate and a lab coat.
After a century of destructive and false scientific fads — ranging from eugenics to Paul Ehrlich’s “population bomb” scaremongering, among many others — the American public could probably do with more skepticism, not less.

Conservatives aren’t less scientific.  After a few years of “debating” liberals, it’s painfully clear we’re more logical.

We’re just less likely to trust someone with a PhD and a lab coat who’s come for our freedom, simply because he has a PhD and a lab coat.

23 thoughts on “Appeal To Authority

  1. Dee Gee’s Law: Conservatives, as a group, can be defined as people who consistently and chronically, believe things which are not true, and embrace others who believe in things that are not true (birthers, truthers, creationists, anthropogenic global warming deniers, new world order and illuminati conspiracies, etc.), preferably among the most extremist fringe, while repudiating and excluding moderates or anyone who argues against dangerous extremism.

    OTHER Examples – Polls prior to the 2012 election were skewed against Romney,, or Bruce Springsteen is really a conservative, and pretty much anything on Faux News, Rush Limbaugh, and the other radical right media.

    You trust idiots like Michele – Human-Papilloma-Virus-Vaccine-causes-Mental-Retaration-Bachmann, an believe utter nonsense like “Carbon is natural and there are no studies showing it to be harmful” which are not true.

    Conservatives consistently subvert reason to a failed ideology.

    But hey – happy Presidents’ Day, a day celebrating several presidents who belonged to liberal / progressive political parties and who self-identified as progressive. (Alabama celebrates Washington and Jefferson’s birthdays, even though Jefferson was born in April).

  2. DG: Given that every single comment you’ve ever left here (including, this one) has been not only shredded, but shredded in such a way as to strengthen my point (which you occasionally actually address), I’d call it “Dee Gee’s delusion”.

    Get a new act, DG.

    And if you think Washington and Jefferson – who both not only warned about the dangers of big, self-sustaining government to liberty, but wrote it into the Constitution and the Declaration – were “progressives” in the sense that we are plagued with today, you really have drunk the koolaid.

  3. The Liberal/Progressive will ignore scientific research that has been conducted by any scientist that has ever received compensation from for-profit industry even if that industry has no connection to the research that was done. Yet they have no issue with a government or not-for-profit compensated scientist who has a very real interest in presenting data that meets whatever criteria is necessary to continue collecting grants and research dollars.
    PJ O’Rourke once noted that the ultimate Liberal/Progressive/Socialist fantasy was a government so all powerful that it could control the weather. The fact that government agencies continue to fund only research that grows government power to regulate ‘climate’, goes a ways toward fulfilling this particular dream.

  4. Surprised to see Dog Gone has time to comment. Shouldn’t she be making her way to her fellow “Miss Ann” Phyllis Kahn’s DFL confab to check the ID’s of People of Color to make certain that only the ‘right’ People of Color are allowed in?

  5. “Faux News”
    Once again the infantilised baby talk of the progressive, DG if you ever wish to be treated with anything other than pity/contempt learn to speak like an adult around the other adults.
    Meanwhile why don’t you come back and sing the praises of that lion of progressivism President Wilson, that would amuse me greatly.

  6. kel, I would also like to add Teddy Roosevelt, a RINO with a progressive agenda.

    C’mon, Doggy! Regale us with your “knowledge” or crap that you get from Huffpo, Media Matters or your other sources of factless information!

  7. Now, now, people. Dog Gone nearly has a valid point: Washington and Jefferson were Classical Liberals. She got the Liberal part right, just forgot the modifier.

    In 1776, the world-wide norm was monarchy. A Conservative at that time would have been a Tory. Creating a system where the peasants held all powers except those few specifically granted to government was a Liberal idea. Washington proved he was a Classical Liberal when he specifically declined to be king because he didn’t think that much power should be invested in one person.

    Barack Obama, on the other hand, is a Modern Liberal. He acts as if he really is king, unrestrained by the feeble protestations of peasants, courts, nay-sayers and bitter clingers. He works to take power away from individual people by consolidating it at the federal level under the rubric of “uniformity.” That’s why you can’t buy a 100-watt incandescent light bulb anymore, for example.

    The rest of her post is the usual drivel, of course. But give credit where due.

  8. Hey!! I must have been busy and missed DG’s justifications/rationale for all her previous insane assertions …… did anyone review them?

  9. “Conservatives Don’t trust FACTCHECKERS
    Conservatives Don’t trust SCIENTISTS”

    “Mongrel Cur; “Prof” WB Gleason” Drops mic…walks off.

  10. BTW; off topic, but how about a round of applause for the Real Americans working at Volkswagen? They slapped the UAW down. to. the. floor. despite VDub’s under and over the table leg up for the unionthugs.

    Northerners trashed Nashville once; they ain’t about to let that happen again.

  11. It always amuses me what liberals will think about others without any rationality. I have worked in the science field for over 35 years, have accumulated 3 degrees in different fields, math, physis, and electrical eng, and work in a fourth. One thing you learn quickly is that like every human endeavor, its ruled by politics.

  12. Swiftee all anyone has to do is look at the wasteland the UAW made out of Detroit to realize that bringing in the UAW is a bad idea. Those southern folks aren’t as stupid as DG and her ilk make them out to be.

  13. utter nonsense like “Carbon is natural and there are no studies showing it to be harmful” which are not true.

    Carbon is not natural? and it is hazardous? Is there a limit to DG’s stupidity and moronity?

  14. Tha Bachmann quote:

    Carbon dioxide, Mister Speaker, is a natural byproduct of nature. Carbon dioxide is natural. It occurs in Earth. It is a part of the regular lifecycle of Earth. In fact, life on planet Earth can’t even exist without carbon dioxide. So necessary is it to human life, to animal life, to plant life, to the oceans, to the vegetation that’s on the Earth, to the, to the fowl that — that flies in the air, we need to have carbon dioxide as part of the fundamental lifecycle of Earth.

    Perhaps DG could point out the untruths in this statement?

  15. Perhaps DG could point out the untruths in this statement?

    DG loves strawmen. Straw has carbon in it. Strawmen must be defeated. QED.

  16. There are some very odd social dynamics on the left. The need to establish ideological conformity leads to a lot of signaling to other lefties that you are all in the same group. For example, saying the most outrageous things about whoever is the target of today’s two minutes of hate, in any context imaginable, is encouraged. So, during the Bush years, a general-interest article on, say, African safaris would include a snarky, slanderous remark about Dick Cheney. What editor would dare to strike it?
    I listened to Prairie Home Companion last night. It was broadcast from Austin Texas. From the beginning to the end, everything you think of as Texan was mocked and vilified in really stupid ways (hick accents, etc.). The audience of Texas liberals loved it.
    Maybe Ann Coulter is right, and liberalism is a mental disease.

  17. PM, during the 90’s diaspora a lot of California moonbats moved to Oregon & Washington for software jobs and to Austin to chase the Semi-conductor jobs that were leaving for greener pastures. There ain’t much Texas left in Austin.

    Same applies to Seattle and Portland.

    Liberalism is a mental disease that spreads like a virus.

  18. Look who’s ‘teh’ stupid’ now?
    http://hotair.com/archives/2014/02/17/study-democrats-more-likely-to-think-astrology-is-scientific-less-likely-to-know-earth-revolves-around-the-sun/
    And what was that about carbon being unnatural? It’s an element It’s on the Periodic Table of Elements, for Goddess’ Sake. People study it and get degrees in what is termed a “Hard Science”.
    Miss Ann? If you are going to get your FACTS! from the ClimateProgress division of ThinkProgress, at least read/cut/paste what Bachmann actually said.
    Oh and, Faux News! DRINK!

  19. DG- “Anthropogenic global warming deniers..” No warming for 17 years now, DG. Mother Nature must be a denier.

  20. AGW is a proven fact now, is it? The Globe is Warming, and Man is causing it, that’s been scientifically proven?

    Funny, the media hasn’t found out about it. They’re talking about Climate Change. Nobody doubts the Earth’s climate changes – just ask the dinosaurs who used to live in North Dakota – but is it getting warmer or colder, and whether Man is causing it rather than the Sun or Ocean Currents . . . that’s still the subject of intense debate.

    The fact that the models don’t work, that scientists have retroactively changed data points to eliminate the Medieval Warm period to make it look as if we’re warming now, that people like Mann can’t reproduce the work leading to the famous Hockey Stick graph, and Liberals are enforcing a Code of Silence to stifle any analysis of the theory; these are indications the science is not strong enough to withstand scrutiny, i.e., it’s wrong.

    Look, there’s a reason there are no Gravity Deniers: because it’s easily proven to be true, just drop this hammer on your foot and see for yourself. Until we get a reproducible technique to prove Man-Caused-Global-Warming is happening, people are going to doubt it, just as we doubted the science behind the Retrograde Motion explanation that proved the settled science that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
    .

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