TEDx talks aren't science, they're popularization. Whereas investigating new and untried ideas scientifically is important, promulgating them to laymen isn't.
When Galileo made his discoveries he didn't start handing out pamphlets in the city square, he worked to persuade other astronomers first.
It isn't as if scientific discourse is off limits to non-professionals. Many journals are free, and you can probably get most at a good public library. But if you find journals to be too hard to read, then you don't know enough about the field to usefully have an opinion on heterodox viewpoints in it.
When Galileo made his discoveries he didn't start handing out pamphlets in the city square, he worked to persuade other astronomers first.
And when he failed at that, he did the equivalent of handing out pamphlets in the city square - he wrote a popular book. That is what he got punished for.
I don't even think they are popularization to be honest. As that would involve an effort to educate or inform about the state of the art. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an effective popularizer (but not a very good one); Richard Feynman excelled as a popularizer.
TEDx seems to be more about entertaining than informing a certain audience that attends because they want to feel part of the brand. It's like how Reader's Digest and Book-of-the-Month clubs formulated middlebrow culture and profited from middle class desire.
It could be argued that TEDx is the contemporary equivalent of salon culture that flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries. [0]
The thing that makes TED(x) interesting is the broad range of topics, new ideas and unknown facts being presented, even if they are on the fringe of science. It's supposed to provoke thought, questioning and insights. If instead it becomes just another platform for established, proven ideas, what makes it different from a guest speaker round in a local school?
Now granted, I'm still in (probably) the first third of my life, but one thing I've come to realize is that there is too much stuff for me to learn. Even if all I ever did was sit in a room and learn stuff, I would never learn it all. Not just that, but if I sat in a room and learned only the interesting stuff, I'd still probably croak from natural causes before finishing. And even if that was all I did, why would I want to just sit in a room learning stuff if I never had time to apply it and build interesting things?
Maybe you learn faster than me. So be it. But, given all that--that I don't even have enough time in my life to learn all the interesting, no, fascinating, things that are so boring as to be considered the current scientific consensus--why should I want to waste my time listening to things that are likely to be bullshit? I don't. I don't have time for bullshit, and neither should you. But the thing is this: Just because you exclude the bullshit it doesn't follow that you can't have talks that cover the cutting edge of research in science and the humanities.
First, there's a continuum here, with perpetual motion and crystals on one end, and "bacteria cause ulcers" on the other. We aren't required to toss out all judgment just because some bits of the line may be true. I myself have some beliefs that I would currently put around "bacteria cause ulcers" on the line, but that doesn't mean I have to believe in crystal healing.
Second, this is not a scientific forum. It's an educational one. It is not particularly obligated to give equal airing to any ideas. The ones in the "bacteria cause cancer" area can make for very interesting talks, especially if the presenter passes the test mentioned in the article (secure enough to acknowledge doubts), but if they choose to close the door on those so they can avoid crystal healing, that's a fine and valid choice.
Agreed, and I'd go further than you in saying that TEDx has a duty not to try to lead scientific discussion or research by presenting cutting edge information. They rightly identify that they have a role as a credible purveyor of science, but lack the domain expertise to do more than popularize the scientific consensus.
Which is fine: If they do nothing more than make the current consensus more easily available to everyone, that's a worthwhile activity in itself.
It's basically impossible for people outside the scientific community related to a specific field to independently test or verify extremely progressive science in that field; if scientists working in that field are unable or unwilling to validate extremely progressive theories that is a separate problem from the fact that, to the layman, those theories are entirely indistinguishable from pseudo-science.
I can understand why an organisation like TED would prefer to err on the side of false positives over true negatives when it comes to their bullshit detector.
"It's basically impossible for people outside the scientific community related to a specific field to independently test or verify extremely progressive science in that field..."
That's not necessarily true. For example, a statistician may not know anything about biology or medicine, but she could prove that a paper in a biomedical research journal was worthless by showing that the authors didn't get statistically significant results or made errors in their statistical computations.
Or someone with no knowledge of the field at all could notice that a paper that was cited as a supporting reference for a claim had been later withdrawn by its authors after being busted for scientific misconduct.
99.9999% of scientific discovery is incremental progress. Even general relativity didn't throw out Newton's work - it just added an entire new dimension to it (so to speak).
Good science isn't identical to the truth. Rather, science is a social process whereby large groups of imperfect humans with their various vanities and weaknesses can eventually converge on the truth. Someone might come up with an idea that happens to be true, but until it's tested it isn't good science - and we have easy way to know it's true.
For a popularizer of science, sticking to current consensus is fine, and a good way to avoid promoting pseudoscience. No one's claiming TEDx is the last word on these topics, or on science in general, and if they accomplish nothing more than making mainstream science more accessible, that's pretty good by itself.
Right. It's a tricky line to walk. But the TedX name grants a certain level of mainstream acceptance to ideas. And it seems like they're trying to prevent people from taking advantage of that to pimp their latest miracle, effort free, libido enhancing, hair increasing, bicep growing treatment.
An earlier comment mentioned that it's a question of what's the right forum to debate new ideas. Going to direct to the public is probably not the right one. Another hallmark of these hoaxes tends to be the notion that "main stream scientists don't want you to know" etc... It's trash.
I wish the letter had ended by admitting that it's tough to exactly define bad science but it's a lot like porn, you know it when you see it.
Yes, but all legitimate sciences (a) put forth falsifiable theories, and (b) abandon those theories that fail comparison with reality.
The fact that cosmologists don't perform laboratory experiments with miniature black holes doesn't reduce the scientific standing of cosmology, as long as there are equally persuasive sources of evidence to support the theories.
Um... that's not very progressive science. So, the sun revolves around us, right?