What this article will discuss:
The idea that we should seek out multiple opinions and judge them on their merit and why the opposite might actually be true.
Why you should read it:
Science shows that we are inherently bad at judging the validity of competing arguments; understanding how this impacts our decision making is essential for making objective decisions.
You’ve probably heard of Joe Rogan and the controversy regarding the spread of misinformation on his hugely popular podcast. Defenders of Mr Rogan are quick to point out that he is simply a seeker a truth who is open to hearing opinions from both sides.
What could possibly be wrong with listening to both sides, doing your own research and forming your own opinion, surely that's a sensible approach in the age of misinformation?
To assess the validity of such an argument we need to examine a few established scientific theories, all backed by decades and in some cases, millennia of credible research:
Through asking questions the socratic method draws out an individuals unexamined assumptions and then challenges those assumptions. This method is useful as it can be adapted to teach any topic that relies on critical reasoning, but it’s success depends on the teacher employing it.
Aristotle built upon the Socratic method by recognising that just asking questions is not sufficient, we need experiments to test our theories. If you’d like to understand more about the scientific method I’d recommend this video.
Key for this discussion is that once a theory is established, we immediately begin trying to disprove that theory until we either A) disprove it and replace it with a new theory or B) run out of ideas to disprove it and start trying to build upon it. Additionally, theories based on observation should be considered accurate until they are refuted by other observations (we cannot reject a theory based on empirical evidence without producing new empirical evidence to disprove it).
Basically, established scientific theories are ‘established’ because we have been repeatedly trying to disprove them and have failed to do so; not because science protects the existing consensus as is sometimes suggested.
If you have empirical evidence that disproves an existing theory, you can publish that theory, have your paper subjected to scrutiny by other experts (peer-review) and if your evidence stands up to that scrutiny, the consensus will shift and start trying to disprove your new superior theory.
If you are not publishing your evidence in peer-review journals, you do not have evidence, you have an untested hypothesis.
Groupthink occurs when a group of individuals reach a consensus without critically evaluating alternatives. Groupthink can lead to individuals who disagree with the current consensus remaining silent, or having their opinion dismissed without exploration by the group.
Group decisions often outperform the decisions of individuals through the ‘wisdom of crowds’. The most cited explanation of this phenomena is the jelly bean experiment; if you ask one person to estimate the number of jelly beans in a jar their guess is very unlikely to be accurate, but ask enough people and the average is remarkably accurate.
However, the wisdom of crowds rarely outperforms its best member, is undermined by the social influence our in-group exerts on us, and surprisingly diminishes significantly when individuals are given limited information to aid their estimates.
We tend to believe that everyone deserves their fair say. This is known as “Equality Bias”; the idea that everyone’s opinion is roughly equal. This seemingly innocuous assumption severely damages our decision-making ability. Opinions are not equal, and basing our judgement purely on the persuasiveness of argument in front of us can be dangerous.
Individuals who perform the worst in tests of competency, are the most likely to overestimate their performance. This is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, and is one of the most replicable findings in psychology.
Additionally, we frequently over-estimate our own abilities, making it harder for us to accept that we may not be qualified to evaluate the validity of an argument.
At this point it would be remiss of me to not point out that what I have done above is not research. I have not conducted controlled studies, undertaken several rounds of peer-review and published in a respected journal – what I have done is use Google Scholar to find the work of people who have.
Now we’ve established a scientific basis for our discussion let’s re-examine our premise using a thought experiment;
Is listening to both sides, doing your own research and forming an opinion based on what you find a sensible approach?
Imagine we are observing two individuals arguing over a topic about which we have no expertise. They both make compelling arguments which seem perfectly reasonable based on our limited knowledge. How should we decide who to believe?
If our starting point is be open-minded and treat every opinion is equal, science suggests we will allow the confidence of the individual to dictate our choice, but disconcertingly those with the least expertise will exhibit the most confidence, and as a result we are likely to under value the knowledge of the more competent party leading to impaired decision making.
Even armed with this knowledge, we are still not equipped to make such a decision since we do not possess the required expertise to evaluate the validity of either argument. Incidentally this effect is made worse if we have a small amount of knowledge, an effect that is amplified by the fact that we assign greater weight to opinions that are consistent with our own existing ideas, due to an inherent overestimating of our own competence.
The evidence suggests we will probably favour whoever was the most confident in their argument regardless of their expertise.
Conveniently, science also provides a framework for avoiding these pitfalls; trusting the judgement of experts, which leads to 'optimal decision' making, more often than making your own decision.
To adopt a scientifically backed approach to decision making, you need simply to identify which of the two individuals has the most expertise, and trust their judgement. This will not always lead to the perfect decision, but decades of scientific research demonstrates that it will lead to fewer bad ones.
Mr Rogan uses his platform to examine (using the socratic method) a wide range of views in an effort to counteract groupthink which arise from ignoring new information; a commendable goal.
If you are adopting the scientific approach to decision making laid out above, when Mr Rogan introduces Dr Robert Malone as “one of the most qualified people in the world to talk about vaccines” you should trust his judgement. Dr Malone is a persuasive speaker who appears ‘balanced, measured and objective’ to listeners. So when he introduces ‘mass formation psychosis’ as if it is a recognised psychological phenomenon why would we question him? If Mr Rogan is a credible judge of expertise then the optimal decision is to trust his expertise, let's examine whether that is true.
A background check on Dr Malone finds that he presents himself as the inventor of the mRNA vaccine on the front page of his own website:
Incidentally if Dr Malone would like some advice on improving his poorly designed website he is welcome to reach out.
And twitter bio:
And anywhere he appears:
Despite the fact that this is clearly a misrepresentation from a bitter individual, who has held a grudge since he was an egotistical undergrad who’s work on the subject was never actually published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Misrepresenting their qualifications on your own website and twitter bio should be sufficient to disqualify an individual as a credible source. If we explore further, (simply searching “Dr Robert Malone Fact Check”) we find that Dr Malone is not one of the most qualified people in the world to talk about vaccines, in fact he has a well-documented history of misinformation which can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
I will be the first to admit that some the afore mentioned sources are opinion pieces with less than ideal credibility, but I believe it is necessary to demonstrate the wealth of evidence that existed that Dr Malone was not a credible source BEFORE Joe Rogan decided to book him on the podcast.
This is where what originally sounded like a very reasonable argument falls down. If neither of the individuals in our thought experiment has sufficient expertise to have a qualified opinion on the subject, we are unable to make a sound decision regardless of how scientific our approach is to evaluating their arguments.
We simply cannot be confident of the credibility of anything that will be discussed between Mr Rogan and Dr Malone in regards to vaccines. Yet, the science overwhelmingly tells us that if we listen to this discussion, no matter how interrogative Mr Rogan is, we are likely to be swayed by Dr Malone’s confidence in the subject. Due to the impact of both Equality Bias and the Dunning-Kruger effect on Mr Rogan, it’s likely he will be swayed by Dr Malone also.
For the record, it’s clear Mr Rogan had already made up his mind that Dr Malone is credible prior to the interview as he repeatedly states this to be the case in the introduction, before Dr Malone even starts outlining his opinions.
Mr Rogan goes as far as to suggest that the reason Dr Malone was removed from twitter was for “not going along with the tech narrative, because tech clearly has a censorship agenda” before describing him as “one of the most qualified people in the world to talk about vaccines”; which we of course now know to be untrue.
At this stage there is only one logical solution; to avoid the opinions of those lacking credibility altogether. Science has proved time and time again that humans are not rational beings. We are very poor at judging the validity of someone’s opinion, and once the seed of an opinion has been planted, we are very bad at changing our minds.
Nobody is an expert in everything, most of us are unqualified to determine if Dr Malone’s arguments are valid. However, we are capable of using the resources available to us to assess his credibility before allowing him to misinform us. These resources show Dr Malone to not be a trustworthy source, and definitely not an expert; so we are better served avoiding his opinion completely, to prevent it shaping our reaction to information gathered from credible experts in the future.
To his credit Mr Rogan recognises that he needs to do more to limit the spread of misinformation in his ‘apology’ posted on Spotify. However, the solutions he offers are a long way from sufficient.
Mr Rogan suggested having “people with different opinions on right afterwards” as a solution to counter this misinformation. But as we have discussed above, presenting both sides of an argument is insufficient when the audience lacks the expertise to judge each opinion on it's merit, and not treat them as equal.
As we have explored above presenting a single opinion that differs from Dr Malone's will not help, since we will be unqualified to evaluate which argument is valid. To present a fair and balanced view of the situation Mr Rogan would need to offset his 3 hours with Dr Malone, with at least 270 hours of discussion with vaccine scientists who are more qualified than Dr Malone, and disagree with his point of view. I doubt this is what he has in mind.
Likewise, following Jordan Peterson’s recent appearance to discuss climate change, Mr Rogan would need to have 97 climate scientists on to fairly represent both sides of the argument. A point brilliantly illustrated by John Oliver in this clip:
The other solution Mr Rogan has offered, is doing his ‘best to research these topics’ and consistently advocates for individuals to do their own research. Unfortunately, until Mr Rogan is publishing studies on these topics in respected peer-reviewed scientific journals, then he is not conducting research. I do not suggest that Mr Rogan, nor any of us outside academia should be held to the same standards as those that are conducting the research. What I am advocating for is trusting the findings of those who are.
We come back to evaluating source credibility in advance, and ignoring sources which have been shown to lack credibility. We have established that Dr Malone has misrepresented the facts too often to be a credible source, and so the logical solution is to skip this episode.
However, this is not an isolated incident; Mr Rogan has a history of hosting low credibility sources with controversial opinions such as Peter McCullough, Graham Hancock, Jordan Peterson, Alex Jones, Ben Shapiro, Alex Berenson, Bob Lazar and Paul Stamets. This suggests the Mr Rogan is at best failing his listeners by providing a platform to low credibility sources and allowing them to present themselves as being experts, and at worst knowingly profiting off the controversy this causes.
Mr Rogan himself has a history of directly spreading misinformation. In fact, just 24 hours after issuing an “apology” that was itself riddled with falsehoods, Mr Rogan was straight back on the misinformation bandwagon by sharing an already corrected story about Ivermectin.
I genuinely began this exercise with the intention of writing a (much shorter) article about why it’s important to check the credibility of sources, and avoid unreliable sources before allowing them to misinform you. I was expecting my conclusion to be that you should fact check the sources on The Joe Rogan Experience before listening to each episode; using a simple exercise like searching for the guests name alongside the words "fact check".
However, in light of the overwhelming evidence of misinformation spewing from the platform I found, the only logical conclusion is that if you truly are in search of the truth, The Joe Rogan Experience should be avoided at all costs.
We can apply the same standards for evaluating sources in our personal lives to sources in our professional lives. If you adopt Mr Rogan’s “open minded” quest to evaluate dissenting opinions instead of trusting the experts in front of you, science shows that you will make worse professional decisions on average. It is easier to identify the experts in your place of work, so take advantage of that fact and follow the golden rule for decision making!