I had planned to watch the program in which the character assassination of Maurice de Hond was announced. You have to keep up a bit. I still haven't watched, not because I don't want to, but because I have to admit it doesn't interest me at all.
Following an unexpected substantive comment on a misjudged place (a post about the above program) I got the full blast: this was about Maurice and I shouldn't spoil the party with my off-topic trolling that he does have a point about virus transmission, whatever you may think about him. Someone's 'role in the media' is then not judged on his point of view and argumentation, but on who he is and the image you have formed of him.
Nice for roddelooms
Now I can also open a book about Maurice de Hond. I've been following him a bit since I worked for him for a few years at Inter/View, which was usually referred to in the newspaper as "Maurice de Hond's market research agency" (which was not the case, by the way, but that aside).
Unfortunately, I lack the gene to want to talk extensively about people, especially when it comes to something as elementary as truth-finding. For example, I also like to philosophize about music, but I usually can't listen to Leo Blok because he mainly talks about musicians while Matthijs thinks it's about music. A big difference: musicians can be jerks, murderers, junkies – but all of that is used in a positive way when judging their musical performance. Scientists are not always amiable either, so it is difficult to continue to think scientifically. This requires 'academic thinking level'. Even alumni sometimes have difficulty with this, let alone people who have never had any education in it.
For me it's easy, I just don't have any interest in gossip, that must be a kind of autism. People are who they are and I try to understand their vision; For me, it is mainly the originality of ideas, the logic of concepts and the absorption capacity of knowledge that matter. How rich someone is or what blunders he has committed before... If it has no direct connection to the subject matter, I find it less interesting.
Even if Jaap van Dissel claims something, I don't immediately dismiss it on the basis of the stupidities he has previously proclaimed. On the contrary, I do the same as when Maurice comes up with something again: I look at it critically and try to place it in the light of the current scientific state of affairs. I look at the sources up to the second degree. If it seems like an important statement or something completely unknown to me, I usually make time for it (I'm actually quite a nerd – never have been, but I have two children and they don't realize what they're going to get through because of our stupidities.)
If the claims of Jaap or Maurice cannot be reconciled with recent scientific discourse, then there are all kinds of options as to why that is. You can think of simply missing or insufficiently keeping up with relevant fields which is hardly culpable, so quickly and a lot is published; You can think of incompetence, for example due to early dementia, or conflicts of interest, overconfidence, malicious intent, tunnel vision/mass formation... Does it matter much for truth-finding? Actually not, if it's right, then it's right. But for gossipers and conspiracy theorists, of course, it does matter. It is the parameters in which they think. Mathematical logic and argumentation, the basis of scientific thinking, are losing out.
Permanent disqualification?
Are you never allowed to discriminate a priori on the basis of past performance? Not really, but sometimes you have to.
If you notice every time that there are bad and nonsensical articles in newspapers with a certain layout, you will recognize that layout in other editions and will no longer read the newspaper in question based on that.
If a newspaper editor has already received thirty letters from someone who is unjustly angry about something trivial, then probably no more time will be spent on the thirty-first letter. These are practical considerations: you try to spend your time efficiently.
It becomes more difficult with a scientific journal. They can't really afford such a practical attitude. Yet they have to. The risk is then that, for example, an article claiming that food in a vacuum-sucked plastic box will last longer will be rejected. This could be because the author has already tried to be published with discoveries that bananas stay yellow longer under a pyramid covered with silver paper, later even that grated cheese under a napkin folded into a pyramid does not mold, that water becomes energy-rich under that same pyramid napkin, that the mistake in the previous research was that the napkin had a triangular base but it had to be a square etc. etc.
At some point it stops. But if such a person comes up with a plastic box that can be vacuumed, I hope I will pick it up and defend his idea.
I actually wanted to go somewhere else with this blog but yes, that's how it goes sometimes. I think I started out of outrage at the shameless ad hominems and character assassinations that we see everywhere in major and opinion-forming media. In fact, in conversations with proponents of government policy, it regularly turns out that they think it is a justified method. They consider it an argument: "The justified ad hominem" – that doesn't exist (and yes, that's why I have studied, I say that because they think that's important).
Original purpose
When I graduated, I discussed with my professors whether I should continue an academic career. I found advertising more exciting. If that conversation were to take place now, I would go into the investigation.
What I would like to investigate: whether there is a difference in the use of pure argumentation, with ad hominems as a polluting element, between proponents and opponents of government policy. My hypothesis: the proponents argue less purely. Because of these errors of reasoning, they are more likely to get stuck in the prevailing doctrine, which by definition is based on authority.
