So if you go scrutinizing their papers, there’s a good chance you’ll find clear mistakes in their stats, and an even better chance you’ll find arguable ones.
Call it the statistician’s fallacy: thinking that finding a mistake in the statistics is sufficient grounds to dismiss a finding.
I’ve observed something similar in regard to conspiracies, specifically JFK and 9/11. There are, of course, mistakes in the official commission reports… because they are huge reports with tons of detailed stuff to potentially get wrong. Enter the Conspiracy Theorist, who will insist these mistakes are strong evidence that the official story is wrong. They often cite experts in physics, ballistics, aeronautics, acoustics, etc. who state some aspect of the official report is not supported by science. And it just snowballs into the strangest stuff...
I’d say this sort of “missing the forest for the trees” reasoning is very common, evidenced by the healthy percentage of people who believe in grand conspiracies surrounding these two events. I think there are psychological reasons people end up believing in conspiracies—and keep believing in them despite all the evidence—but It seems well-supported conclusions get discarded by lots of people due to some faulty reasoning based on some tiny mistake, and this is how conspiracy thinking might often get started.
I’ve observed something similar in regard to conspiracies, specifically JFK and 9/11. There are, of course, mistakes in the official commission reports… because they are huge reports with tons of detailed stuff to potentially get wrong. Enter the Conspiracy Theorist, who will insist these mistakes are strong evidence that the official story is wrong. They often cite experts in physics, ballistics, aeronautics, acoustics, etc. who state some aspect of the official report is not supported by science. And it just snowballs into the strangest stuff...
I’d say this sort of “missing the forest for the trees” reasoning is very common, evidenced by the healthy percentage of people who believe in grand conspiracies surrounding these two events. I think there are psychological reasons people end up believing in conspiracies—and keep believing in them despite all the evidence—but It seems well-supported conclusions get discarded by lots of people due to some faulty reasoning based on some tiny mistake, and this is how conspiracy thinking might often get started.