There does seem to be something going on with a lot of corners of academia where it’s not just about the science or evidence, which it should be, but also “playing the game” where you “pay your dues” by following roughly the same path as everyone else in the field and if you don’t, nothing you say or do will be taken seriously.
That doesn’t mean everyone outside the mainstream is right, of course, but it means that when I see academics so up in arms I suspect motivations that aren’t as purely about evidence as they claim.
Serious Academics are not much better in their use of conjecture and motivated reasoning.
Consider this article in the New York Times in which a Real Archaeologist dismisses the idea that there was any violence involved in a large group of men suddenly meeting their genetic end:
> But skeletal DNA from that period is striking and puzzling. Over all, Bronze Age Iberians traced 40 percent of their ancestry to the newcomers.
> DNA from the men, however, all traced back to the steppes. The Y chromosomes from the male farmers disappeared from the gene pool.
> To archaeologists, the shift is a puzzle.
> “I cannot say what it is,” said Roberto Risch, an archaeologist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, who was not involved in the new studies. But he ruled out wars or massacres as the cause. “It’s not a particularly violent time,” he said.
> Instead, Dr. Risch suspects “a political process” is the explanation. In their archaeological digs, Dr. Risch and his colleagues have found that Iberian farmers originally lived in egalitarian societies, storing their wealth together and burying their dead in group graves.
If there were a lot of men dying in wars, wouldn't there be a lot of damaged skeletons which would lead to the conclusion that it was a violent time? You're offhandedly dismissing a statement that could have a lot behind it.
There might be such skeletons. But even bones decompose, especially on these time scales.
That any time in history was not a violent time is itself an extraordinary claim. Additionally, thousands of men, 100% of a genetic line, opting to not reproduce would also be an extraordinary event. We've seen men turned eunuch by cults before, but I don't think ever at such a scale.
We have many historical examples of genocide, as well as invaders killing the local men and taking the women as their wives.
There are a lot of possibilities, but this archaeologist is discounting a very likely possibility with flimsy reasoning. I'm reminded of how virologists seemed to unite behind the idea that COVID couldn't possibly be a lab escape, but they had no real evidence to dismiss the possibility. They weren't following the evidence, but rather following the popular narrative.
I live in Boulder, so I see more junk pseudoscience than usual, and I think it's out of control.
It's worth noting that noted nonsense profiteer Gaia TV is based here, and I've had conversations with employees who make no apologies for what they're knowingly doing (and one who was uneasy about it, FWIW).
If you thoroughly understand a subject, you can perceive subtle differences between close arguments. You can understand where knowledge is solid enough to be used in distinction, and where it is not, and therefore conjecture and opinion are appropriate.
If you don’t thoroughly understand a subject, then you don’t perceive these subtle differences, many arguments look equally valid, and the complaints of experts seem like pointless gate keeping to you.
This is totally misinformed. When research is funded by corporations, we get ideas that are informed from the lunatic fringe that are based on nothing.
That doesn’t mean everyone outside the mainstream is right, of course, but it means that when I see academics so up in arms I suspect motivations that aren’t as purely about evidence as they claim.