Tuesday, July 21, 2020

The Great Logic Fallacy of the Science Deniers



The current issue of Scientific American has a short but interesting article by Naomi Oreskes, The False Logic of Science Denial. Climate science deniers dislike her for trying to debunk climate science denial. She points out that logic fallacies are common and even scientists fall prey to them over things they really should know better than to fall prey to.[1] Oreskes writes:
"All this is to say that logical fallacies are everywhere and not always easily refuted. Truth, at least in science, is not self-evident. And this helps to explain why science denial is easy to generate and hard to slay. Today we live in a world where science denial, about everything from climate change to COVID-19, is rampant, informed by fallacies of all kinds. 
But there is a meta-fallacy—an über-fallacy if you will—that motivates these other, specific fallacies. It also explains why so many of the same people who reject the scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change also question the evidence related to COVID-19. 
Given how common it is, it is remarkable that philosophers have failed to give it a formal name. But I think we can view it as a variety of what sociologists call implicatory denial. I interpret implicatory denial as taking this form: If P, then Q. But I don't like Q! Therefore, P must be wrong. This is the logic (or illogic) that underlies most science rejection. 
Climate change: I reject the suggestion that the “magic of the market” has failed and that we need government intervention to remedy the market failure. Evolutionary theory: I am offended by the suggestion that life is random and meaningless and that there is no God. COVID-19: I resent staying home, losing income or being told by the government what do to."

So there it is. Implicatory denial is much of the explanation[2] for why climate science is deniable. Deniers don't like the idea of human-caused climate change and/or the idea of government doing anything about it. Therefore, there is no climate change for whatever reason(s) makes it believable.

The same flawed logic applies to denying vaccine usefulness, COVID-19, or whatever other accepted science gets rejected.


Footnotes:
1. Oreskes argues that a common and "vexing" fallacy a among scientists is this: If theory P is correct, then Q is predicted. An experiment to see if Q pops up, and it does. Therefore, theory P is true. This conclusion is based on a logic fallacy. Q could pop up for one or more reasons unrelated to P. The frequency of that fallacy led philosopher Karl Popper to argue that the method of science should be falsification. Popper's logic was a theory cannot be proved to be true, because not every every circumstance can be tested. A single counterexample proves a theory false.

Oreskes asserts that Popper's theory was based on logic flaw. Specifically an experiment can failed for reasons unrelated to the theory being tested. Reasons for failure include insufficiently sensitivity to detect the predicted effect or analysis software throws out real data points that are programmed to be rejected as spurious. She argues that here is no logical resolution to this. So scientists generally deal with it through consilience. That means looks to find or infer the explanation that is the most consistent with evidence from a variety of sources That approach looks at a problem from a variety of angles to see what holds up best.

2. The paper that Oreskes cites for implicatory denial, Sociological Explanations for Climate Change Denial, asserts that it is one of two common forms of science denial. The other is called interpretative denial, where facts are accepted, but the interpretation of what the facts logically lead to a different (flawed) conclusion from what unbiased people would usually come to.

Over the years, my personal experience has been that implicatory denial is more common than interpretative denial. But that's just anecdote, not solid data.



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