[lbo-talk] Terms of Debate was Terrain of Struggle was O'Reilly vs Churchill

[jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net]

> The problem here is when people replace reasoned argument for or
> against a claim with imputations about the speaker's motives.  In
> my view, this is a social problem (I'm serious): if
> somebody claims X, a very common response in our society is
> "X can't be true, because the speaker has motive Z".  This is--
> put bluntly--illogical reasoning, because the motive of the
> speaker cannot validate nor undermine the claim.
> 
> Perhaps I'm sensitized to this because I hear it a lot in
> my courses: if an eyewitness is confident that he accurately
> remembers the details of a crime, and he is not motivated by
> hatred or racial prejudice, then, students typically assume,
> when can trust his testimony.  This tends to happen even
> after we spend a week in class going over research that
> illustrates how easily memory is reconstructed, revised and
> unintentionally fabricated!
> 
> In short: research on motives is a valid scientific research
> topic, but imputing motives to evaluate a claim is a waste of
> time.
> 
> Miles

Nobody said to replace reasoned argument with such claims but in many instances it 
can shed light on research and cannot always be considered "a waste of time" as you 
say. 

Take the debate over anthropomorphic climate change research. Most people cannot be 
assumed to have the necessary background information to know which researchers may 
have more valid or less valid claims to support their projections. If we look at the 
motivation for their research and find that without exception all deniers of climate 
change have their research paid for by extractive polluting industries who seek to 
forestall legislation and the research that supports the claims of climate change have no 
similar agenda we can use this information to help guide us. Research by 
pharmaceutical companies is facing a similar issue today. The motivation behind the 
researcher has an effect on their conclusions and pretending otherwise is dangerous. 

You cannot always just objectively look at facts because you may not have the 
necessary background to fully understand subtle distinctions within a given area of 
study. No one can be an expert on everything and people cannot necessarily be 
expected to attain the level of expertise necessary to make a decision based solely on 
data presented by a researcher. However imperfect we have to use the tools we have at 
our disposal and this is one of them. An admittedly misused tool frequently but that fact 
hardly invalidates its application everywhere. Real world decisions are made under 
messier circumstances than one finds in a lab.

John Thornton