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.
N.a.v. an unexpected substantive comment in a misjudged place (a post about the above program) I got the full brunt: 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. A person's 'role in the media' is therefore not judged on his position and argumentation, but on who he is and the image you have formed of him.
Nice for roddelooms
Nu kan ik over Maurice de Hond ook wel een boekje opendoen. Ik heb hem een beetje gevolgd sinds ik een paar jaar voor hem heb gewerkt bij Inter/View, dat in de krant meestal werd aangeduid als "het marktonderzoekbureau van Maurice de Hond" (wat niet zo was trouwens maar dat terzijde).
Unfortunately, I lack the gene to want to talk extensively about people, especially when it comes to something as basic as finding the truth. 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 for a positive when assessing their musical performance. Scientists are not always amiable, which makes it difficult to continue to think scientifically. This requires an 'academic level of thinking'. Even alumni sometimes have difficulty with this, let alone people who have never had any education in this area.
It's easy for me, I just have no 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 above all the originality of ideas, the logic of concepts and the absorptive capacity of knowledge that matter. How rich someone is or what blunders he has committed before... if it has no direct connection with the subject matter, I find it less interesting.
Even if Jaap van Dissel claims something, I do not immediately dismiss it on the basis of the stupidities he has previously stated. 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 review the sources to the nth degree. If it seems like an important statement or something that is 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 face because of our stupidities.)
If the claims of Jaap or Maurice cannot be reconciled with recent scientific discourse, there are all kinds of options as to why this could be the case. You can think of simply missing or insufficiently keeping track of relevant fields, which is hardly blameworthy, so quickly and so much is published; you can think of incompetence, for example due to early dementia, or of conflicts of interest, overconfidence, of malice, tunnel vision/crowd formation... Does it matter much for finding the truth? Actually no, if it's right, then it's right. But of course it does matter to gossipers and conspiracy theorists. They are 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.
With a scientific journal it becomes more difficult. They actually cannot afford such a practical attitude. Yet they have to. The risk is that, for example, an article claiming that food in a vacuum-sealed plastic box lasts longer will be rejected. This could be because the author had previously tried to be published with discoveries that bananas remain yellow longer under a pyramid covered with tinfoil, later even that grated cheese does not mold under a napkin folded into a pyramid, that water becomes energy-rich under the same pyramid napkin, that the error 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.
Ik wilde eigenlijk ergens anders naar toe met dit blogje maar ja, zo gaat het soms. Ik denk dat ik ben begonnen uit verontwaardiging over de schaamteloze ad hominems en karaktermoorden die we overal zien in grote en opiniebepalende media. Sterker nog: in gesprekken met voorstanders van het overheidsbeleid blijkt regelmatig dat ze het een gerechtvaardigde methode vinden. Ze beschouwen het als een argument: "Het gerechtvaardigde ad hominem" - dat bestaat niet (en ja, daarvoor heb ik doorgeleerd, dat zeg ik erbij want dat vinden ze dan belangrijk).
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.
