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
Doesn’t even have to be proper scientific method. People see patterns; patterns are science. A layman can spot something that was missed by experts: it happens sometimes.
Now, you don’t want to trust that layman’s findings against an expert, without proper investigation, preferably by those same experts! Step one is finding something; step two is verifying it in a way that other people can trust.
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.)
I did stop to think whether to use that term or not. I still chose to because (at least in my experience) the way such people explain away the consensus is by giving political/economical motives to the scientists that uphold it. ‘Global warming isn’t man-made, they are just paid to say that’, ‘Vaccines don’t work, they just say that to sell more of them’, ‘Scientists have to fit the woke agenda’ etc.
For that reasoning to work you would need a huge connected network of researchers all hiding the actual truth and spreading lies for nefarious gains, and that’s a conspiracy if I ever heard one. Ofc there are people who just think they’re smarter than all of the scientists combined, but I mostly encountered the former type.
Thus I’d like to coin the term, negligible science.
Paul Hoyningen-Huene calls it facsimile science in the paper I mentioned and gives an overview of their characteristics, it’s quite a nice read.
Oh shit you’re right, I now remember Feyerabend talking about banned.video and 4chan/pol as being worthwhile sources of counterinduction!
You didn’t read half of my comment, did you? I literally said that there is a huge distinction between knowledgable people giving a full account of alternative theories (like Copernicus arguing against the consensus of a geocentric system) and conspiracy theorists just saying ‘no’ to the consensus with nothing to back it up.