Guest post: This is not testable science
Originally a comment by Sastra on Confused stan.
“If you identify as a woman, you ARE a woman” is a “scientific consensus?” I don’t think so.
The late great Skepdoc Harriet Hall noted a common practice in pseudoscience and came up with an apt analogy and descriptive term: Tooth Fairy Science.
It’s perfectly possible for scientists to do studies on how much money the ToothFairy leaves in different countries, and whether she values front teeth more than molars or pillows more than bedside tables. Elaborate surveys measuring the satisfaction level of the children who receive a visit vs those who don’t could be sent out and results put in tables and diagrams. A substantial body of Tooth Fairy Science could thus exist, and be proudly pointed to when Tooth Fairy skeptics raise objections. The scientific consensus is that there’s a Tooth Fairy.
Except there isn’t because the critical initial step was skipped. Does the Tooth Fairy exist? Without first establishing the primary claim, the scientific studies may be accurate on one level, but nevertheless fundamentally unscientific and misleading. Tooth Fairy Science is particularly common in Alternative medicine. It’s pointless to take careful notes on how a manipulated human energy field changes patient-reported pain levels if the laws of physics rule them out: it’s placebo.
I think the difference between the Tooth Fairy and the assertion that “If you identify as a woman, you are a woman” is that it’s easier to come up with what constitutes disproof of the former. That makes the Tooth Fairy a more scientific style of hypothesis. I would love to ask Walz Stan “ if identifying as a woman DOESN’T make someone a woman, what would therefore change your mind?” I imagine it would have to be good evidence that males who identify as transgender have now started to insist they’re not women. This is not testable science.
Tooth Fairy Science as described here reminds me of how the “Science-based Medicine” crowd describe “Evidence-based Medicine”, when it does RCTs on things like “healing touch (or “manipulating the human energy field”). Apparently, they can’t recognize the same phenomenon when it presents itself in different garb.
My supervisor back in my linguistics days had this wonderful expression (badly translated by me) “building in the altitude while the ground floor is missing”. It’s easy for a non-expert to be intimidated by techno-babble about “intersex” conditions, the relative importance of chromosomes and exposure to hormones in the uterus, alleged similarities between trans people and their “target sex” (←defined how exactly?) on the level of the brain etc. etc. But you don’t have to understand the specifics of embryology (the altitude) to know things like circular definitions, tautologies, equivocations, logical inconsistencies etc when you see it (nor, for that matter, do you have to be an expert on neuroscience to notice when people get ultra-defensive, abandon dispassionate analysis, intellectual honesty, and good faith, misrepresent the views of opponents etc). If that’s what holding up all those top floors, all the techno-babble in the world is not going to keep them from crashing down.
@Bjarte
Ironically, PZ Myers coined the term “the courtier’s reply” for the kind of argument where theists say “oh, it is all so complex and inefffable and if you are not a total expert on theology you cannot evaluate claims about God.”
Oh, yes. I remember. Seems like a completely different universe now, doesn’t it…
Indeed. Back then, I thought him to be a smart person who critically tests his assumptions.
But as we now know, smart people are not better in avoiding motivated reasoning, they are just better in rationalizing their reasoning.
Exactly. It’s all smokescreen and obfuscation designed to distract people from weaknesses in the “argument” they’re trying to make.
“Sex is complex!” Yes, but it is immutable and binary.
“Intersex!!” There are still only two in humans. Sex is not a spectrum.
“Clownfish!!!” Humans are not fish; no mammal can change sex.
Unless they are mindlessly parroting these points after hearing them elsewhere, you can assume that anyone making these “arguments” is not arguing in good faith, because the points are completely irrelevant to “trans” claims. They are just shit being thrown to confuse the issue rather than clarify it. They are like the octopus’s ink, a cover and decoy designed to preoccupy a predator long enough for the octopus to escape, leaving it with nothing but a mouth-full of ink, but nothing of substance.
one of my favorite responses to “ but the science” is the reality that “scientists” in the 19th century were busily measuring skulls to prove “white” superiority to other races???
And Lysenkoism was promoted as scientific as well?