How to debate BS successfully

[Perspicuo]

Answering Cancer Quackery: The Sophisticated Approach to True Believers
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.or...icated-approach-to-true-believers/#more-37845

Nice approach

 

[BH]

It won't let me see the link.

 

[fromderinside]

Answering Cancer Quackery: The Sophisticated Approach to True Believers
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.or...icated-approach-to-true-believers/#more-37845

Nice approach

Let's take his model and compare it with one I know works.

Apparently similar to the Author.

Boghossian uses this series of questions in the classroom:

1. Is it possible that some people misconstrue reality?
2. Do some people misconstrue reality?
3. If one wants to know reality, is one process just as good as any other? (Flipping a coin? Interpreting a dream? Doing a scientific experiment?)
4. So then are some processes worse and some better?
5. Is there a way we can figure out which processes are good and which are not?

Most students quickly figure out that processes that rely on reason and evidence are more reliable than other processes.

Similar to how I implemented methodology I used throughout my scientific career.

A linearized, pragmatic scheme of the four points above is sometimes offered as a guideline for proceeding:^[68]

1. Define a question
2. Gather information and resources (observe)
3. Form an explanatory hypothesis
4. Test the hypothesis by performing an experiment and collecting data in a reproducible manner
5. Analyze the data
6. Interpret the data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis
7. Publish results
8. Retest (frequently done by other scientists)

The iterative cycle inherent in this step-by-step method goes from point 3 to 6 back to 3 again.
While this schema outlines a typical hypothesis/testing method,^[69] it should also be noted that a number of philosophers, historians and sociologists of science (perhaps most notably Paul Feyerabend) claim that such descriptions of scientific method have little relation to the ways that science is actually practiced.
The "operational" paradigm combines the concepts of operational definition, instrumentalism, and utility:
The essential elements of scientific method are operations, observations, models, and a utility function for evaluating models.^{[70][not in citation given]}

• Operation – Some action done to the system being investigated
• Observation – What happens when the operation is done to the system
• Model – A fact, hypothesis, theory, or the phenomenon itself at a certain moment
• Utility Function – A measure of the usefulness of the model to explain, predict, and control, and of the cost of use of it. One of the elements of any scientific utility function is the refutability of the model. Another is its simplicity, on thePrinciple of Parsimony more commonly known as Occam's Razor.

I'm pretty sure 'rational' comes up short.