this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 2 months ago (4 children)

To be clear, sometimes authority bias is good and proper. For instance, valuing the opinion of a climate scientist who has been studying climate chaos for thirty years more than your Aunt who saw Rush Limbaugh say climate change is a hoax in the 1990s is normal and rational.

Basically, authority bias as a reasoning flaw stems from misidentifying who is authoritative on a subject.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

In a vacuum, appealing to authority is fallacious. An idea must stand up on its own merits.

IRL, things get fuzzy. No one has the expertise and time to derive everything from first principles and redo every experiment ever performed. Thus we sadly have to have some level of trust in people.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

As long as the paper has the experiment well documented and it's double blind, you don't need to appeal to authority.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Counterpoint: the replication crisis

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

not all bias is made equal or always something negative. Sometimes it's good to be biased towards the opinion of a scientist over the opinion of your aunt.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Well most people will choose a politician or actor instead of unknown Nobel prize winner. That's how we got here.