Philosophical Vegan Forum

So, guys, what do you think is the correct response to the criticism such as "How can you tell me what most of the scientists believe if you are not a scientist yourself?"? Just saying "That's not how science works, science isn't based on authority." doesn't work, here is an example from an Internet forum in which I argued for vegetarianism (I thought I had better chance convincing someone just to go vegetarian than to go vegan).

Someone else wrote:

Me wrote:If you do some research, you will quickly find out that most of the nutritionists agree that vegetarianism is healthier.

What makes you think that you are qualified to do research? Do you have a bachelor degree in any STEM area?

Me wrote:

Someone else wrote:What makes you think that you are qualified to do research? Do you have a bachelor degree in any STEM area?

My friend, that is precisely not how science works.
Science isn't based on authority.
Science works partly because it accepts ideas from everywhere. You can publish scientific papers and research papers regardless of whether you have a degree or not, as long as they pass the peer-review.
I know that, because I published three papers about linguistics as a high-school student, two completely and one partly having to do with my alternative interpretation of the Croatian toponyms. My ideas appear to have been taken rather seriously, though the greatest experts on the subject today don't think I am right. Regardless, we don't have enough data to prove or disprove either the mainstream interpretation or my interpretation. Perhaps, some day, we will have.
See, that's how science works: you get an idea, share it with other people who have done some research on the subject, and then see what happens. It isn't (or at least shouldn't be) a discussion about who has a greater authority.

Someone else wrote:

Me wrote:Science isn't based on authority.

I didn't mean the science was based on authority, I simply meant you probably won't use the scientific method properly unless you are educated to do it. You probably don't understand, for example, the probability theory enough to make conclusions about statistics. You also might not even be able to read the academic papers properly.

Me wrote:You can publish scientific papers and research papers regardless of whether you have a degree or not, as long as they pass the peer-review.
I know that, because I published three papers about linguistics as a high-school student, two completely and one partly having to do with my alternative interpretation of the Croatian toponyms.

Peer review doesn't mean much if your "peers" are incompetent, and they most likely are.

So, what do you think, how could I have done better?

Okay, I don't have too much time to respond to this (I'm sure brimstone will be much more concise), but I'll give you a start.

Since you're arguing with a moron, try using his own logic against him. Ask him if he himself is a scientist who has authority to speak on the issue. By this guy's logic, you can't accept any science until you've studied it.

Scientists spend 4-8 years researching, studying, and learning about their desired field (and you haven't yet, though the guy you're debating with will never be), it's a very safe bet to follow mainstream scientific opinion, since they contain people who are adept in their fields and try to avoid biases. If 90% of nutritionists say veganism is healthier, you can say the same with 90% certainty.

Brimstone went over this with you in the flat earth thread several times, I suggest you go back and reread it.

I am pretty ignorant on the food argument, but any time I research food science, I only find dissenting opinions. How would you back up the claim that most nutritionists agree on *anything*.

ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Mon Sep 17, 2018 1:29 pm I am pretty ignorant on the food argument, but any time I research food science, I only find dissenting opinions. How would you back up the claim that most nutritionists agree on *anything*.

There's not that much disagreement in nutrition, it's more a distinction between pop nutrition and more established nutrition (which is much less interesting to report on).

This is a helpful read:

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine/m ... ally-back/
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritions ... -not-back/

The very authors of the studies used by the media to claim "butter is back" don't even agree that butter is back.

For the most part there is agreement that certain dietary patterns lower in meat and processed sugars and higher in fruits and vegetables are healthier, and there's pretty good epidemiological evidence of that (Mediterranean diet, Okinawan diet, Adventist vegetarian diet).
Beyond that, there's mechanistic evidence for reducing saturated fat in the diet and replacing it with polyunsaturated fats (which mainly come from plants), and at least red and processed meats are recognized carcinogens.

Consensus among most dietetic organizations is that a properly planned vegan diet is healthy (and that means adding B-12 of course, and paying attention to nutrient consumption) and may offer health benefits.
Do the benefits come from not consuming animal products, or from consuming more fruits and veggies and otherwise eating healthier (whole wheat instead of white, etc.)? That's a little less clear, which is why some people like to focus on "dietary patterns" rather than "nutrients" or "particular foods", but the trend in dietary patterns is toward fewer animal products and particularly less meat from land animals.
Fish, low fat dairy, and egg whites are more debatable.

Hm interesting, while I would push a little to say "those that were interviewed are not all nutritionists", I wouldn't push too hard. But, it does drive me crazy that food science is always changing its mind. It get the sense that there is a heavy agreement on unnatural sugars and high sodium are bad for you and that veggies are good for you, it seems there was an agreement that fish were also good.

In fact, the only consensus I saw was that *processed meats* were bad. I guess the rest is in flux or debate among nutritionists.

ShadowStarshine wrote: ↑Mon Sep 17, 2018 6:53 pm It get the sense that there is a heavy agreement on unnatural sugars and high sodium are bad for you and that veggies are good for you, it seems there was an agreement that fish were also good.

In fact, the only consensus I saw was that *processed meats* were bad. I guess the rest is in flux or debate among nutritionists.

It's a spectrum of agreement.

Processed sugars you probably see 99% agreement, processed meats are probably similar.
After that you'd see agreement from probably 95% or so of experts that anything high in saturated fat is bad (like non-lean cuts of land animal meat, or butter, or whole milk)

Once you get to lean meats, skinless chicken breast, fat free dairy, etc. that number drops quite a bit, but there's still usually a message of moderating, partially to make more room for vegetables on the plate.
Most people wouldn't call those things "bad" so much as vegetables are "good", and if they're taking up too much room on the plate then that's a bad thing because there's no room for veggies.

Good and bad are always relative, though.

If you're adding cake to a diet that was otherwise dominated by pure sugar candies (displacing some of those candies), then that cake is a health food by comparison and is a good addition.

Compared to other meats, fish is amazing so when most people incorporate fish and that's pushing out other meat, it's a health food for them.
However, if your fish is pushing broccoli off your plate, then it's a different story.

Nutrition is complicated by it being relative to what people would have otherwise eaten, which makes it hard to give absolute "good" or "bad" determinations on food that people want. The simple narrative is just too simple. No food is good or bad, but only relative to what you would have eaten otherwise. Some food is also conditionally medicinal, which complicates things even more. If you eat a lot of meat, then eating some fish will give you DHA and lower your risk of heart attack by reducing the risk from the meat... but if you eat only veggies, adding fish will probably raise your risk because there's no bad fat for it to "counteract" (crude explanation).

Like I said, really complicated, and it's hard to figure out how to turn that into a public message people can understand and act on. So the simplistic message of fish=good is going to work for 90% of people and that's the kind of approach governments and health authorities look for.

Same with salt. Salt isn't bad, but most people eat too much of it so a reduction message is usually good... but at the same time, vegetables taste bad without salt and an anti-salt message could push people to sugar instead, making it a bad message.

teo123 wrote: ↑Mon Sep 17, 2018 5:00 am"How can you tell me what most of the scientists believe if you are not a scientist yourself?"

There are actually research papers that merely analyze prior research to draw a conclusion, so maybe this would be an example of what you were distinguishing there: Meta-analysis, or Secondary research, which is involved in writing textbooks on scientific matters. You don't have to be a scientist to be an analyst. All scientists are analysts though (more or less).

Sorry for not responding for so long, I've had real-life problems, and the school was also quite demanding these days.

By this guy's logic, you can't accept any science until you've studied it.

Well, a lot of people seem to believe that. For instance, about global warming, people who deny global warming often use that "You haven't really studied climate science, did you?" rhetoric (as if they themselves had).
The problem with that, I think, is that it assumes you can tell whether something is pseudoscience just by studying it for long enough. I don't think that's the case, there are people who study astrology their entire lives and not realizing it's pseudoscience.

Brimstone went over this with you in the flat earth thread several times, I suggest you go back and reread it.

I don't that Flat-Earthism is a right analogy here. Flat-Earthers generally know that the science is not on their side, they just think it's impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the Earth is round, and that the Earth being flat is somehow a simpler explanation. Meat-eaters generally think most of the scientists are on their side, that vegetarianism and veganism are rejection of science. It's incredibly hard to fight that, a few sentences can't counter years of that kind of indoctrination.

You don't have to be a scientist to be an analyst. All scientists are analysts though (more or less).

A good point. Though I'd imagine he would respond with something like "You are missing the point. If you don't have a degree in any STEM area, you are likely to misread the academic papers. Besides, secondary sources are considered less reliable than primary sources.".


I suppose I might also run into the argument against using science in philosophy (including ethics) such that the science may be reliable in giving scientifically correct answers, but that it is not reliable in giving philosophically correct answers.
That was brought up a few times by Richard Feynman in "The Feynman Lectures on Physics", as in "Finally, and most interesting, philosophically we are completely wrong with the approximate law.". Though I don't really understand the examples he used, I think there is some truth to it.
That can easily be seen in historical linguistics. Consider, for instance, the rule for the development of the /i/ sound in ancient Croatian toponyms. The correct explanation (as far as I am aware) goes like this:

Classical Latin short /i/ merges with long /e/ in Vulgar Latin. In the early borrowings from Vulgar Latin into Old Croatian, the Vulgar Latin /i/ sound gets borrowed as short /i/ in pre-stressed and stressed syllables, and as a long /i/ in the syllables after the stress. Vulgar Latin /e/ before the stress also gets borrowed as short /i/, while it gets borrowed as a yat (turning into /ie/, /e/, or /i/, depending on the dialect) in stressed and post-stress syllables. Later in Old Croatian, short /i/ turns into the front yer (which, by the Havlik's Law, either disappears or turns to /a/ in Modern Croatian). In the later borrowings from Vulgar Latin into Croatian, the /i/ and /e/ remain unchanged.

This explanation is obviously complicated, so someone who studies the Croatian toponyms may, before arriving to that rule, suppose some simpler, but less correct, explanations. Consider two such explanations:

1)Latin /i/ usually gets preserved in Croatian, but it sometimes randomly changes to /a/ or /e/.

2)Classical Latin long /i/ gets borrowed as front yer in Croatian (disappearing or turning into /a/, in accordance to the Havlik's Law), while Classical Latin short /i/ gets borrowed as a yat (turning into /ie/, /e/, or /i/, depending on the dialect). That is due to the long and short vowels having different qualities in Vulgar Latin.

Which one is more correct? Now, the first hypothesis will correctly predict the development of the /i/ sound in more words than the second one will, so it is scientifically more correct. However, the second hypothesis is, although it will make incorrect predictions, way more in line with how languages actually work. The first hypothesis ignores the regularity of sound changes, which is the core assumption of historical linguistics. Sounds do not change randomly, but the sound changes are often conditioned by the prosody. Therefore, the second hypothesis is, although it is scientifically less correct, philosophically way more correct.
So, what do you think, why should we trust science when it comes to ethics, when it is clear that science, at least sometimes, favors philosophically less correct hypotheses over the philosophically more correct ones?

teo123 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 29, 2018 4:44 pm The problem with that, I think, is that it assumes you can tell whether something is pseudoscience just by studying it for long enough.

You'd also have to know what science is. In most cases, pseudoscience is pretty clear with a few minutes of examination because it follows certain unscientific patterns of unfalsifiability and manipulation.

teo123 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 29, 2018 4:44 pmI don't think that's the case, there are people who study astrology their entire lives and not realizing it's pseudoscience.

That's more of an issue of them not knowing what science is. The same accusation can be made against some published researchers ( https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/20 ... or-science ), but the difference is that in science that's a scandal, in pseudoscience it's not just accepted but a celebrated cornerstone of the pseudoscientific method.

Astrology is a vague belief and doesn't qualify as a valid hypothesis, and when they do make claims they have exceptions for everything and make ad hoc excuses for failure to be statistically significant.
For example, if the predictions are wrong they will keep looking and discover such and such planet is in this alignment which explained everything after the fact therefore the predictions of astrology were right after all and they just missed something, if they're lucky and astrological predictions are right in the first place then they don't keep looking to show them false even if the same method used to make them right when they're wrong would have shown them false here).
It's kind of "P-hacking" as the accepted status quo with a series of rules for how to do it to always get the answer you want rather than an unethical corruption of method as it is in actual science.

Actual science must follow from a valid hypothesis: that is something that can be clearly shown true or false by certain established metrics, that is with preexisting criteria to do so (including an understanding of what you're looking for including ALL variables being analyzed and what statistical significance is).

Science can be hard. It's a difficult concept for people to understand sometimes since it involves statistics (much like some people just won't get calculus), but that doesn't mean it's subjective or that there's not a clear way to differentiate science from pseudoscience.

People need to have studied a subject to give credible takes on it, but they also need the prerequisite understanding of what science is and why we use the methods we do. The situation we find ourselves in is as if the majority of the population (though of course not the majority of experts) thought that 2+2 equaled 3. Without an underlying understanding of basic mathematics, lay people could surely "study" 2+2=3 for years and find more ways to convince themselves it's right if they're motivated enough. Both the underlying understanding of the nature of science AND knowledge of the subject matter are needed, and these critics unfortunately have neither.