Forum analysis

[plodder]

science comms is hard. see it as advanced outreach.

[Ken McKenzie]

science comms is hard. see it as advanced outreach.

But I don't like to do difficult things, plodder.

[jimbob]

“I don’t want to have to link to my own research and then find that the papers can mean something other than I wanted them to” isn’t that convincing an argument tbh. I think you’re great Ken, but ivory towers and all that.

Seriously plodder, that wasn't the issue at all. The report he'd linked to was really very hard to interpret in the way Mr J had interpreted it because I'd explicitly written something different in it and he'd taken a pair of figures out of context, very obviously in the assumption I wouldn't be familiar with the report.


The issue was that it was hard for me to argue my own work in any way other than my own words, which I'd already done in the original report. Even someone like Mr J was likely to spot that.

And rather difficult to do whilst keeping some pseudo-anonymity because of working in a politically-contentious field. And even more so if it's work that is unpublished for many reasons.

[jimbob]

Thanks, Fishnut: an interesting and valuable OP.

There's a 'but' from my point of view. Well, maybe not as strong as 'but'.

When I post on topics in my particular areas of expertise, I can generally provide a reference for all the major statements in it. But that would take a lot of time, which is precious to me. Instead, I'd rather respond to a challenge or enquiry, and then provide the evidence. This is more economical from my point of view, but I'd be curious to hear what folks think the optimum strategy is in these kinds of circumstances.

I'm going to go further.

First, the number of links is irrelevant. I can post all the links you like but that doesn't necessarily make a post actually either good or rigorous. The quality of the links are what matters. Making an argument by - just to take an example entirely at random - posting a handful of newspaper articles and then by a notorious politically-connected of policy-based evidence is really of very little value.

Second, like other people here I'm an actual expert. Uncomfortably for me, I'm an expert in something that is politically live and on which a lot of people have Very Strong Opinions that are frequently very driven by political tribalism (and so not always amenable to evidenced argument). Like Allo, I can reference all my major statements, but it's very time-consuming. I have the additional issue that a lot of the references are likely to be to my own published research. As someone who would like to engage with the forum but would like to retain some veneer of anonymity in this adversarial age, then, candidly, there is decreasingly little incentive to take part in discussion. I can waste a lot of my time providing densely-argued expertise (for which I could, instead, be getting paid) only to be informed that because I haven't compromised my anonymity then I'm not Doing It Properly or I can just do one and let you squabble. Many people will be exposed to arguments that are just plain wrong without any real countervailing input but that will no longer be my problem. As someone who tries not to engage with arguments I don't properly understand, it is immensely frustrating that forum culture seems positively to encourage people to pontificate outside their expertise by lowering the social barriers to that.

Taking some of the rest of this to The Pit.

I don't mind the posts from an expert without references if the writing is clear enough so that I could google their claims in their posts anyway.

I'd like an expert analysis with links, but would prefer an expert analysis with claims that I can verify by googling, rather than no analysis.

But I'm lazy.

[Chris Preston]

I want to commend Fishnut for starting this thread.

I have had a habit of linking to news reports of research specifically because many readers would not have access to the research and even if they do have access, they may not be able to interpret a research paper and put it in the literature background. I have felt the news report with short commentary would be sufficient to start the conversation.

I am happy to include more links to papers, but I don't want to get to the position where every post turns into a mini review with citations for every statement I make.