Bret Weinstein published a paper in 2002 with a discovery about telomeres that he claims he never received appropriate recognition for (thanks to the DISC or Distributed Idea Suppression Complex). Bret claimed his discovery implies that we should be much much more cautious when evaluating the safety of new drugs.
Bret Weinstein published a paper in 2002 with a discovery about telomeres that he claims he never received appropriate recognition for (thanks to the DISC or Distributed Idea Suppression Complex). Bret claimed his discovery implies that we should be much much more cautious when evaluating the safety of new drugs.
Bret consistently acts like he's a knowledgable expert in fields outside of evolutionary biology like virology, sociology, leftist debates about race and identity, or American politics. He doesn't seriously read works by other people, he just says what he thinks and blames the establishment in scientific academia for not taking him more seriously.
I think this is human nature, especially when you feel like you've made a groundbreaking discovery but people never gave you appropriate credit. There are scientists who really believe smoking doesn't cause cancer who aren't grifters getting paid by tobacco companies.
You see this on the left with extremely marginalized figures like Angela Davis in the 1960s and 1970s. Davis adopted "conspiracy-theory-like" beliefs to justify support for the USSR and the Peoples' Temple. Her support was totally unjustified and caused a great deal of harm because it led to some people taking atrocity reports less seriously when there were viable options to help people other than going to war, like countering prejudice against Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees.
Yes, Bret's another case where the grievance itself may be valid for all I know (I've looked into it a bit), but the grievance seems to have had some bad effects on how he sees the world.
I've had a couple of days to ruminate on this and I think I've spotted a variant of attribution bias. I like Bret Weinstein and Robert Malone and so I am inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt regarding possibly cranky or crazy behavior. From my situational perspective, they are regularly insulted and censored in public and thus it is not surprising if they are occasionally rude or share an unfiltered thought which seems crazy. From your dispositional perspective, anti-authoritarian behavior and/or anger is part of their personalities, possibly resulting from a retribution impulse stemming from a perceived wrong suffered in the past.
An analogy can be made to your attitude toward the foreign policy establishment. A critic could show dispositional bias due to your resentment toward Jeffrey Goldberg and his tribe. You are cranky and perhaps conspiratorial because you are angry that he got promoted even though you were right about the Iraq War in 2003. Of course, that would be horribly wrong and instead you should be given more credibility because you were right back then and have a lot of experience dealing more accurately with these types of issues.
Also, the vested financial and reputational interests of the various parties should be considered. Motive and possible resultant bias is important, but should be considered proportionately. It is in no way reasonable to equate your possible retribution motive with that of a public figure whose career and income is provided by the military complex.
I once lost out on some issue, then got blamed for my subsequent opinions based on the fact that I hadn't gotten my way on the previous issue. That felt really bad -- like adding insult to injury.
If you've got a problem with Bret's current position on something, it's perverse to question his motivation based upon some harm possibly having been done to him in the past. This is so inconsistent with your warnings about biases.
Not exactly. I think Bret was right about some stuff in the past despite being a non-perfect person, then he started being wrong about a lot of stuff. Or he, shall we say, went off the deep end.
I honestly have no idea why he takes the stances he currently takes. I just notice a consistency in that he likes to act like he's an expert in fields outside of evolutionary biology (to be fair, I'm not an expert either, but I hope I don't come off as one). If you dig into some of the claims he makes, you find out he actually knows very little.
Also I should apologize to Bob if my post and this thread is a little off-topic.
While Bret was at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 90s, he wrote a letter to the school newspaper condemning sexual harassment of strippers at a frat party. The retaliatory harassment he got was so bad that he transferred to UC Santa Cruz.
For all I know, he made important discoveries as a graduate student and didn't get the recognition he deserves.
My feeling is that there's general agreement on the left that he was unfairly targeted by student activists at Evergreen for what amounts to writing a strongly-worded letter disagreeing with campus Diversity Equity Inclusion policies (and even then, part of me wonders whether he actually read the Douglas Turner Ward play and considered whether it's closer to colorblind left-liberalism or closer to James Baldwin). Every criticism after that is pretty much a fair response to what he's said on the DarkHorse podcast. This Willamette Week article is good: https://www.wweek.com/news/2021/09/15/a-progressive-biologist-from-portland-is-one-of-the-nations-leading-advocates-for-ivermectin/
I think Nancy Koppelman is trustworthy. Bret seems very smart and good at acting like he's read books or articles that he's only skimmed. He's good at tapping into people's natural skepticism and creativity but he has not done the actual work necessary to create skeptical commentary on a topic like COVID, mRNA vaccines, or even anarchists and BLM in Portland. I think he might have good reasons to be more skeptical based on his life experiences but he hasn't done the actual work necessary to co e up wiuth something like Ben Goldacre's books.
Bret Weinstein published a paper in 2002 with a discovery about telomeres that he claims he never received appropriate recognition for (thanks to the DISC or Distributed Idea Suppression Complex). Bret claimed his discovery implies that we should be much much more cautious when evaluating the safety of new drugs.
Bret consistently acts like he's a knowledgable expert in fields outside of evolutionary biology like virology, sociology, leftist debates about race and identity, or American politics. He doesn't seriously read works by other people, he just says what he thinks and blames the establishment in scientific academia for not taking him more seriously.
I think this is human nature, especially when you feel like you've made a groundbreaking discovery but people never gave you appropriate credit. There are scientists who really believe smoking doesn't cause cancer who aren't grifters getting paid by tobacco companies.
You see this on the left with extremely marginalized figures like Angela Davis in the 1960s and 1970s. Davis adopted "conspiracy-theory-like" beliefs to justify support for the USSR and the Peoples' Temple. Her support was totally unjustified and caused a great deal of harm because it led to some people taking atrocity reports less seriously when there were viable options to help people other than going to war, like countering prejudice against Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees.
Yes, Bret's another case where the grievance itself may be valid for all I know (I've looked into it a bit), but the grievance seems to have had some bad effects on how he sees the world.
I've had a couple of days to ruminate on this and I think I've spotted a variant of attribution bias. I like Bret Weinstein and Robert Malone and so I am inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt regarding possibly cranky or crazy behavior. From my situational perspective, they are regularly insulted and censored in public and thus it is not surprising if they are occasionally rude or share an unfiltered thought which seems crazy. From your dispositional perspective, anti-authoritarian behavior and/or anger is part of their personalities, possibly resulting from a retribution impulse stemming from a perceived wrong suffered in the past.
An analogy can be made to your attitude toward the foreign policy establishment. A critic could show dispositional bias due to your resentment toward Jeffrey Goldberg and his tribe. You are cranky and perhaps conspiratorial because you are angry that he got promoted even though you were right about the Iraq War in 2003. Of course, that would be horribly wrong and instead you should be given more credibility because you were right back then and have a lot of experience dealing more accurately with these types of issues.
Also, the vested financial and reputational interests of the various parties should be considered. Motive and possible resultant bias is important, but should be considered proportionately. It is in no way reasonable to equate your possible retribution motive with that of a public figure whose career and income is provided by the military complex.
Good analogy.
I once lost out on some issue, then got blamed for my subsequent opinions based on the fact that I hadn't gotten my way on the previous issue. That felt really bad -- like adding insult to injury.
If you've got a problem with Bret's current position on something, it's perverse to question his motivation based upon some harm possibly having been done to him in the past. This is so inconsistent with your warnings about biases.
Not exactly. I think Bret was right about some stuff in the past despite being a non-perfect person, then he started being wrong about a lot of stuff. Or he, shall we say, went off the deep end.
I honestly have no idea why he takes the stances he currently takes. I just notice a consistency in that he likes to act like he's an expert in fields outside of evolutionary biology (to be fair, I'm not an expert either, but I hope I don't come off as one). If you dig into some of the claims he makes, you find out he actually knows very little.
Also I should apologize to Bob if my post and this thread is a little off-topic.
While Bret was at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 90s, he wrote a letter to the school newspaper condemning sexual harassment of strippers at a frat party. The retaliatory harassment he got was so bad that he transferred to UC Santa Cruz.
For all I know, he made important discoveries as a graduate student and didn't get the recognition he deserves.
My feeling is that there's general agreement on the left that he was unfairly targeted by student activists at Evergreen for what amounts to writing a strongly-worded letter disagreeing with campus Diversity Equity Inclusion policies (and even then, part of me wonders whether he actually read the Douglas Turner Ward play and considered whether it's closer to colorblind left-liberalism or closer to James Baldwin). Every criticism after that is pretty much a fair response to what he's said on the DarkHorse podcast. This Willamette Week article is good: https://www.wweek.com/news/2021/09/15/a-progressive-biologist-from-portland-is-one-of-the-nations-leading-advocates-for-ivermectin/
I think Nancy Koppelman is trustworthy. Bret seems very smart and good at acting like he's read books or articles that he's only skimmed. He's good at tapping into people's natural skepticism and creativity but he has not done the actual work necessary to create skeptical commentary on a topic like COVID, mRNA vaccines, or even anarchists and BLM in Portland. I think he might have good reasons to be more skeptical based on his life experiences but he hasn't done the actual work necessary to co e up wiuth something like Ben Goldacre's books.