“Science advances one funeral at a time.” (Planck, 1947).
Ptolemaic solar system was settled science.
Uniformitarianism was exclusively settled science.
Newtonian physics was settled science.
And there are many more.
The danger that history shows us is that “settled science” is more ego, power, and politics than interest in the pursuit of greater understanding. As in the past, “settled science” is being used as a bludgeon thwarting anyone who steps out of the elitist defined lines.
It can be. My favorite recent example of this is the decades-long claim that stress causes ulcers. Everyone "knew this" until Barry Marshall came along and found, no, ulcers are caused by bacteria, and did not get the mainstream medical establishment until after he infected himself ... and kept records (fortunately for him, he also kept the relevant antibiotics on hand). He eventually received the Nobel in medicine for this work.
But with all due respect, I do not think the shape of the Earth, the heliocentric solar system, or the effectiveness of measles vaccines is up for debate, or, at least, there is no reason for anyone to take flat Earthers, geocentric solar system advocates, or measles vax deniers seriously. Don't get me wrong -- free speech means anyone can say pretty much anything they like, no matter how stupid, ignorant, misinformed or delusional.
And once in every 1000 blue moons or so, settled science does indeed get overturned -- but the other 999 moons, it does not.
This does not mean your political analysis is wrong. Scientists routinely *prematurely* try to act like some preferred claim of theirs is settled (lab leak, gender affirming care, catastrophic global warming is imminent) for political reasons. That Dr. Smith says X is settled is not the same as X being settled (Gould's standard and my corollary are pretty good guidelines, though not quite hard/fast rules for judging when something is/is not settled).
P.S. Newtonian physics is settled science -- when restricted to the Earth, it works just fine. It just was an incomplete story.
This post about an upcoming book looks at why moderate liberals have not (helped) create the intellectual pluralism the above post discusses, while producing thousands of studies on right wing populism and extremism:
Why Have Academics Failed To Study Social Justice Ideology?
It's depressing to realize that so many academics are unaware of the overwhelming left leaning hegemony in the academy. I mean, Buckley's God and Man at Yale was published in 1951! I can't imagine the professoriate was as skewed then as now.
Thanks for this timely essay and rejoinder to Siraganian. I share your concerns about the parlous state of academia in terms of (lack of) viewpoint diversity.
I am interested in your point about “epistemic trespassing”. As a retired doctor with a strong interest in bioethics, I’m deeply concerned about the practice of paediatric gender medicine. I’m obviously not an “expert” but I have read The Cass Review and The HHS Review, along with bioethics literature from both sides of the gender debate.
However, gender activists and clinicians use the idea of epistemic trespassing to assert that only gender clinicians working in the field of PGM have the knowledge and experience to be trusted to act in children’s best interests. Everyone with countervailing views is automatically assumed to be motivated by transphobia or fundamentalist religious beliefs.
But as far as I’m aware it’s impossible to be a gender clinician unless you buy into the “affirmation model” of gender identity. So the idea of epistemic trespassing creates a Catch 22 situation that makes it very difficult to critique PGM.
Yes, the situation is as you describe it. However, that is a power move by gender affirming care advocates. It is not at all clear that most medical professionals lack the expertise to have an informed opinion on gender affirming care. Furthermore, given that part of the argument is not against gender affirming care per se, but, instead, against GAC as the first response to someone presenting as transgender, and is, instead, that lots of other psychological conditions (depression, social anxiety, social maladjustment, etc) should be probed first and moving to GAC only after they are ruled out, it would seem that psychologists, too, have relevant expertise.
Moreover, I recommend reading the article on epistemic trespassing, which is linked. Ballantyne points out that weighing in on a field in which one starts off lacking expertise can be legitimate IF one first takes the time to obtain the relevant expertise. Any medical professional who takes the time to read through the literatures for and against GAC would seem to meet that standard.
Last, arguments are always most optimally dealt with on their (de)merits, rather than by the heuristic of only believing some set of experts. The epistemic trespassing concept is both a description of a social psychological phenomenon (people with expertise pontificating outside their expertise as if their irrelevant expertise in their home area gives them warrant to be taken seriously), and also a warning to consumers of said proclamations. That is, the presumptive position should be to view such proclamations with deep skepticism -- a skepticism that hypothetically could be overcome by developing the expertise necessary to evaluate their arguments, evaluating them, and concluding that they are, in fact, justified.
Every researcher, when they take on a new project in an area in which they previously lacked expertise, develops some by virtue of working on that new project.
Thanks for this fulsome response. I’ll read the Ballantyne article on epistemic trespassing. I do rely on systematic reviews of gender medicine research rather than primary research articles because, like many doctors, I lack in-depth knowledge of more complex statistical methods that pervade much of current primary research literature. So from that perspective I guess I’ll never be an expert.
What's fascinating to me is that the AAUP didn't seem to recognize a priori that the essay in question was probably going to do more harm to academia's case than anything Trump, Horowitz, or MAGA - all convenient boogeymen - could ever have done on their own. It's almost like someone snuck in and replaced their progressivism playbook with one aptly titled "How to keep shooting ourselves in the foot." I've seen some cases against viewpoint diversity (Paul Bloom recently wrote one) that are reasoned, but the essay in question - at AAUP's flagshit publication - reads like something out of a drug-induced conspiracy theory. It's a laughable argument, though I appreciate you takedown of it. Keep up the good work.
“Settled science”. Oxymoron.
“Science advances one funeral at a time.” (Planck, 1947).
Ptolemaic solar system was settled science.
Uniformitarianism was exclusively settled science.
Newtonian physics was settled science.
And there are many more.
The danger that history shows us is that “settled science” is more ego, power, and politics than interest in the pursuit of greater understanding. As in the past, “settled science” is being used as a bludgeon thwarting anyone who steps out of the elitist defined lines.
Hubris remains human’s greatest weakness.
It can be. My favorite recent example of this is the decades-long claim that stress causes ulcers. Everyone "knew this" until Barry Marshall came along and found, no, ulcers are caused by bacteria, and did not get the mainstream medical establishment until after he infected himself ... and kept records (fortunately for him, he also kept the relevant antibiotics on hand). He eventually received the Nobel in medicine for this work.
But with all due respect, I do not think the shape of the Earth, the heliocentric solar system, or the effectiveness of measles vaccines is up for debate, or, at least, there is no reason for anyone to take flat Earthers, geocentric solar system advocates, or measles vax deniers seriously. Don't get me wrong -- free speech means anyone can say pretty much anything they like, no matter how stupid, ignorant, misinformed or delusional.
And once in every 1000 blue moons or so, settled science does indeed get overturned -- but the other 999 moons, it does not.
This does not mean your political analysis is wrong. Scientists routinely *prematurely* try to act like some preferred claim of theirs is settled (lab leak, gender affirming care, catastrophic global warming is imminent) for political reasons. That Dr. Smith says X is settled is not the same as X being settled (Gould's standard and my corollary are pretty good guidelines, though not quite hard/fast rules for judging when something is/is not settled).
P.S. Newtonian physics is settled science -- when restricted to the Earth, it works just fine. It just was an incomplete story.
This post about an upcoming book looks at why moderate liberals have not (helped) create the intellectual pluralism the above post discusses, while producing thousands of studies on right wing populism and extremism:
Why Have Academics Failed To Study Social Justice Ideology?
Thomas Prosser and Edmund King
https://www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/why-have-academics-failed-to-study?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2203516&post_id=187548702&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=6mos7&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
It's depressing to realize that so many academics are unaware of the overwhelming left leaning hegemony in the academy. I mean, Buckley's God and Man at Yale was published in 1951! I can't imagine the professoriate was as skewed then as now.
Thanks for this timely essay and rejoinder to Siraganian. I share your concerns about the parlous state of academia in terms of (lack of) viewpoint diversity.
I am interested in your point about “epistemic trespassing”. As a retired doctor with a strong interest in bioethics, I’m deeply concerned about the practice of paediatric gender medicine. I’m obviously not an “expert” but I have read The Cass Review and The HHS Review, along with bioethics literature from both sides of the gender debate.
However, gender activists and clinicians use the idea of epistemic trespassing to assert that only gender clinicians working in the field of PGM have the knowledge and experience to be trusted to act in children’s best interests. Everyone with countervailing views is automatically assumed to be motivated by transphobia or fundamentalist religious beliefs.
But as far as I’m aware it’s impossible to be a gender clinician unless you buy into the “affirmation model” of gender identity. So the idea of epistemic trespassing creates a Catch 22 situation that makes it very difficult to critique PGM.
Yes, the situation is as you describe it. However, that is a power move by gender affirming care advocates. It is not at all clear that most medical professionals lack the expertise to have an informed opinion on gender affirming care. Furthermore, given that part of the argument is not against gender affirming care per se, but, instead, against GAC as the first response to someone presenting as transgender, and is, instead, that lots of other psychological conditions (depression, social anxiety, social maladjustment, etc) should be probed first and moving to GAC only after they are ruled out, it would seem that psychologists, too, have relevant expertise.
Moreover, I recommend reading the article on epistemic trespassing, which is linked. Ballantyne points out that weighing in on a field in which one starts off lacking expertise can be legitimate IF one first takes the time to obtain the relevant expertise. Any medical professional who takes the time to read through the literatures for and against GAC would seem to meet that standard.
Last, arguments are always most optimally dealt with on their (de)merits, rather than by the heuristic of only believing some set of experts. The epistemic trespassing concept is both a description of a social psychological phenomenon (people with expertise pontificating outside their expertise as if their irrelevant expertise in their home area gives them warrant to be taken seriously), and also a warning to consumers of said proclamations. That is, the presumptive position should be to view such proclamations with deep skepticism -- a skepticism that hypothetically could be overcome by developing the expertise necessary to evaluate their arguments, evaluating them, and concluding that they are, in fact, justified.
Every researcher, when they take on a new project in an area in which they previously lacked expertise, develops some by virtue of working on that new project.
Thanks for this fulsome response. I’ll read the Ballantyne article on epistemic trespassing. I do rely on systematic reviews of gender medicine research rather than primary research articles because, like many doctors, I lack in-depth knowledge of more complex statistical methods that pervade much of current primary research literature. So from that perspective I guess I’ll never be an expert.
What's fascinating to me is that the AAUP didn't seem to recognize a priori that the essay in question was probably going to do more harm to academia's case than anything Trump, Horowitz, or MAGA - all convenient boogeymen - could ever have done on their own. It's almost like someone snuck in and replaced their progressivism playbook with one aptly titled "How to keep shooting ourselves in the foot." I've seen some cases against viewpoint diversity (Paul Bloom recently wrote one) that are reasoned, but the essay in question - at AAUP's flagshit publication - reads like something out of a drug-induced conspiracy theory. It's a laughable argument, though I appreciate you takedown of it. Keep up the good work.
Yeah. Bloom made some good points (which we sorta tried to briefly encapsulate in the essay -- and acknowledged as good ones).