Dude, how old are you? The cartoon is about chuds thinking they can research shit on infowars or Russian disinformation sites.
I guess the point is, yes, a lot of people stupidly think they’ve sussed out some great mystery based on limited knowledge and nonsense, against experts who have been patiently and carefully studying the matter; but the principle of investigating lines of thought that the - even expert - consensus has ruled out, is still an important one.
But it has to be done by experts who have full knowledge of the consensus. Not some backwater racist builder from Flyover, USA.
It doesn’t have to be done by experts.
All it needs is an individual who can keep to the scientific method, which some rednecks can do.
It is just that most people don’t understand it, so their method of researching is flawed and will come to flawed conclusions. It is why we have Flat Earthers
This is very much a known concept in the philosophy of science, especially under Feyerabend who mentions ‘counterinduction’ often as a tool to prevent scientific thought from stagnating into a dogma because it might turn into a system where every fact that might prove it wrong is discarded right away. Like how the heliocentric system was opposed to almost every fact given by science at the time.
But this is a method (for a lack of a better word; ironically, Feyerabend’s whole point is that there is no strict and rational method) of actual scientific research by competent researchers. Someone with no more than the most basic understanding of biology, ecology and climate rejecting the consensus with no findings of their own to provide makes them a conspiracy theorist. ‘The Earth moves around the sun because xyz, and you can prove it’ in a geocentric society is a counterinductive questioning of the consensus. ‘Vaccines don’t work’, ‘Masks don’t work’, ‘CO2 isn’t making the planet warmer’ is 100% of the time a conclusion found on the internet with at most one or two shallow arguments disproved decades ago (see Paul Hoyningen-Huene’s: “Systematicity is necessary but not sufficient: on the problem of facsimile science”)
Someone with no more than the most basic understanding of biology, ecology and climate rejecting the consensus with no findings of their own to provide makes them a conspiracy theorist.
Eh, perhaps we can be careful with the term ‘conspiracy theorist’. A conspiracy theory is that others have conspired to hide the truth. No need to think about conspiracies yet. Someone who looks at the ocean and says, meh, that’s flat, is just doing science at the most basic of levels. Somebody who heard vaccines increased autism is just someone who believes someone. It’s an academic survey at the most basic of levels.
Thus I’d like to coin the term, negligible science.
And if I’m considering my family’s health, or how to sail to India, I’d better trust the non-negligible science.
Of course, the global consensus that Australia exists is a deliberate lie sustained by powerful conspirators; so that’s a conspiracy theory: on top of the negligible science wherein I haven’t seen Australia recently so it doesn’t exist. (That one time was just a placebo Australia. You can tell because the kangaroos looked like people in suits.)
Oh shit you’re right, I now remember Feyerabend talking about banned.video and 4chan/pol as being worthwhile sources of counterinduction!