I think scientific citation is good when done cluefully and in good faith. However, there are levels of knowledge that don’t interact well with casual citations in an online forum and this is difficult to communicate. For literatures, I think truth/expertise can be orthogonal to agreement with some literatures, because knowledge is often thin, experts are wrong or the papers represent a surprisingly small number of experts with different viewpoints[1].
I don’t know what you mean, and to the extent that I do understand, I think I disagree. If you are making an empirical claim, you should back it up with clear arguments and evidence. If there’s a relevant expert field/literature, you should cite it and if you differ from its distribution of consensus, you should signal that and argue for why. For example, I think your second comment is much better in this regard than your first. The tendency to skimp on this is detrimental to the discourse, I think.
If you just want to say “This is what I reckon” then fair enough, it’s only an internet forum. But this should be signalled. And it would lead me to put near-zero weight on the content.
I agree, there’s lots of cases where there isn’t robust empirical literature or trustworthy expert views. But the relationship between factory farms and zoonotic spillover doesn’t seem like such a case, such that casual speculation without citing evidence is not very useful.
No I didn’t. I had some vague sense of your background being in software engineering from looking at your profile a few months ago, and some sense of your views from seeing many of your comments over time. Why do you ask?
Does ‘figure out who I am’ mean ‘Charles He’ is a pseudonym? If so I wasn’t aware.
Edit: although I seem to remember seeing something about software, I may be mis-remembering and guessing due to the tagged subscription under your name, which is probably a new thing/maybe misleading.
I don’t know what you mean, and to the extent that I do understand, I think I disagree. If you are making an empirical claim, you should back it up with clear arguments and evidence. If there’s a relevant expert field/literature, you should cite it and if you differ from its distribution of consensus, you should signal that and argue for why. For example, I think your second comment is much better in this regard than your first. The tendency to skimp on this is detrimental to the discourse, I think.
If you just want to say “This is what I reckon” then fair enough, it’s only an internet forum. But this should be signalled. And it would lead me to put near-zero weight on the content.
Might be related: Reality is often underpowered
(I skimmed bits of this discussion, so I might be off! Unfortunately, I don’t have time to engage properly.)
I agree, there’s lots of cases where there isn’t robust empirical literature or trustworthy expert views. But the relationship between factory farms and zoonotic spillover doesn’t seem like such a case, such that casual speculation without citing evidence is not very useful.
Your comment is really interesting for a lot of reasons. Just curious, did you click on my profile or try to figure out who I am?
No I didn’t. I had some vague sense of your background being in software engineering from looking at your profile a few months ago, and some sense of your views from seeing many of your comments over time. Why do you ask?
Does ‘figure out who I am’ mean ‘Charles He’ is a pseudonym? If so I wasn’t aware.
Edit: although I seem to remember seeing something about software, I may be mis-remembering and guessing due to the tagged subscription under your name, which is probably a new thing/maybe misleading.
Ok, thanks, this makes sense. (As a digression, yes, the software tag is misleading.)