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+--- Thread: Shit is happening (/thread-28165.html)
RE: Shit is happening - PatientZero - 07-10-2016
Uh, that's all pretty basic stuff, do I actually have to explain the difference between tabloid style news articles and scientific studies, peer reviewed papers, and information coming from publicly funded and impartial organizations?
No, I fully admit I haven't watched all of his videos, and that I have no intention to do so, I'm actually not taking a particularly hard stance against a Youtuber I don't care about and have very little reason to even acknowledge, there's dozens of people you could have mentioned to get the same reaction.
And becoming "equipped to understand", is also pretty basic stuff, there are literally courses on critical thinking. And social science, weirdly, is a science.
I can break it down for you if you like, there's no magic tricks involved or anything.
Let's use analyzing an article as a simple example, you read it and take away the intended message. Then you check the figures or data being given objectively, first, to see if they're true, and secondly to see if the way it's being presented is self-evident or could be interpreted another way.
This is also the time to check for false premises, and causal relationships. You know, A = B and B = C, therefore A = C.
Or perhaps put more simply, Jack likes John, and John likes Frank, therefore Jack like Frank. This is obviously a very simple illustration, but it's amazingly common. You know those "scientists say chocolate cures cancer" articles? This is what they're doing, they'll find a study that says enzymes extracted from coco beans potentially delays the spread of cancerous cells and just run wild with it.
As for causal relationships, say we did a study of 1000 people, and discovered that 90% of them them hate ice cream, we posit from this that only 10% of the population likes ice cream.
Oh, we did that study at a clinic for dairy allergies in a country that only has liver flavoured ice cream by the way, but the data is still clear.
After you've done that you look for information from alternative sources for comparison to weed out anomalous findings, then you've got raw data on your hands.
This is a simple example, obviously, we're talking numbers and statistics, if we're going into sociology, psychology and other such territory, you need to have the academic knowledge to back yourself up with.