zlacker

I'm always bothered by how doctor's word is always taken as gospel. Anyone who's gone through the medical merry-go-round knows that doctors opinions on the same set of symptoms can be all over the place, some even outright idiotic.

>>Workac+(OP)
Folks identified the dad as weird and in over his head, so untrustworthy and guilty. This isn't isolated, it's the norm. So, for 30 years or so the medical community had this voodoo DX to justify locking up social outcasts. And they seem completely OK with having done so. The DX sort of is not accepted anymore. But, the article describes a list of other voodoo sciences that demonstrate something remains very broken in the process for establishing facts, and we see time and time again that systems you'd think are driven by analytical rigor are really just a school popularity contests all grown up.

>>unytti+Q1
That could all be true, but folks also testified they personally witnessed him violently shaking at least one kid.

You can be against junk science, but entertain the likely possibility he also did it.

>>SV_Bub+z9
You can also entertain the possibility that he did it, while still wanting a justice system that insists on absolute proof of guilt before killing someone.

>>Workac+(OP)
Society has made a God out of science. Don't get me wrong, science is a fantastic invention and should be taken seriously. Anyone who dismisses science without thought or reason is crazy. But as you saw during the pandemic and through this, we've lost some sense of reason when a flawed human in a white coat says something. We need to take what they say seriously but with a grain of salt that they get things wrong.

>>Workac+(OP)
From my experience doctors do a lot of guessing. I spent two years, going through multiple doctors, for serious groin and abdominal pain that I knew had to be a hernia. But the doctors consistently tested and theorized about it being just about anything else. Ten thousand dollars worth of out of pocket tests later a urologist told me it was obviously a hernia and he could feel it.

>>brooks+Da
* The daughter was sick from birth with breathing apnea, with bouts causing her to collapse and stop breathing.

* Had severe undiagnosed pneumonia.

* Was prescribed an opioid medication that is no longer deemed safe for children.

* Had diarrhea and a fever of 104F for 5 days prior to her death.

How can you not entertain the possibility that her death had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that someone claims a dude shook a child one time?

>>Workac+(OP)
Always remember.

What do you call a med school graduate who had a straight-A average? "Doctor".

What do you call a med school graduate who had a C-minus average? "Doctor".

I've had to weed through a couple dunce doctors in my time.

>>rPlaye+If
“Science” is just the process of continuously evaluating and re-evaluating what you know using data and experiments, and changing what you “know” (or your mental model) to align with the new data.

What people deify is certain conclusions, for myriad reasons.

>>SV_Bub+z9
No, not really. Let's say the testimony was reliable, which it wasn't. What's the proper inference: that he kept going with bad parenting and escalated to murder? Or, that he recognized what he did was unhelpful and problematic so never did it again? How do you choose between inferences? In this way, the "evidence" comes back, again, to something alarmingly like a popularity contest which turns, quite unacceptably, on these people's presuppositions about a socially awkward dad trying to raise the child solo.

>>unytti+1k
> What's the proper inference: that he kept going with bad parenting and escalated to murder?

The path is this: he is known to have shook at least one kid before, so maybe that's that happened again with the kid who died in his care. Doesn't mean there was an intent. Just that he shook too hard or the wrong way. So you ask a doctor you check for signs. Doctor says yup, totally SBS. The end.

At no point did he need to "escalate to murder", so there is no leap needed. It's all very straightforward.

>>lotsof+oj
Enough of this no true scottsmanship.

"Scientific consensus" is taken as gospel by many people. Most on this very board. They don't care to learn how the consensus was reached (usually happens by just ignoring detractors). They just care to feel superior to people outside the consensus because "duh, science".

>>guraf+gt
Under the assumption that no one has the capacity to perform all the science experiments and analyze all the data themselves to model the world, individuals would have to rely on a proxy such as other people telling them the results of science experiments.

Given how complicated nature or whatever around and within us is, there will be many shades of gray. What is looked down upon is (usually) conclusions reached from methods outside of the scientific method, such as predictions of one’s personal life based on a deck of cards or medical interventions with no explanation of cause of action or experimental numbers to rule out random-ness.

>>rPlaye+If
The key term here is confidence. It was bad enough when it turned out that many people who really should understand p-values didnt. But this claiming overwhelming confidence to better manage patients is just despicable, how ever well meant it is. Its incredibly short sighted and ruins trust.

Stuff is just complicated.

>>InStea+Jh
And if I read the article correctly, those claims were made by the girls mother who 1) Lost or relinquished custody to Roberson in the first place 2) Was contradicted by her own sister who said she never observed that type of behavior and that the mother was prone to lying

In any case the conviction doesn't remotely approach the bar of "beyond a reasonable doubt"

>>guraf+gt
You want to think it's "taken as gospel", maybe because you have an ax to grind, but the reality is the scientific consensus on most topics is taken as "better than anything else I have access to, or any bullshit I'll make up in my own head". And when it comes time to make a personal decision - do I take the pill or not take the pill - we all have to use the best information we have, which almost all of the time will be the scientific consensus.

Though I'll agree there is a phenomenon that occurs when a vocal group starts criticizing a scientific consensus, usually for obvious political reasons, that causes many people to double-down and express too much rigid faith in that consensus. I don't like that either.

>>rPlaye+If
>Society has made a God out of science.

With conventional religion somewhat on the wane, science has become the new religion: a unquestioning belief in the experts, just like the way people rarely question the word of the priest/preacher in a traditional religion. There's something innately human which predisposes people to beliefs. One of them being just low IQ, An IQ of hundred does not go very far, for the complex lives that we need lead.

>>guraf+gt
The scientific method is limited by the historical method, unless you perform the experiment yourself.

Determining the correctness of somebody’s experiment is pointless if the underlying observations are intentionally incorrect.

Just as you should be cautious trusting Josephus to be critical of the Romans, you should be cautious trusting a researcher report observations contrary to the interests of their social institutions.