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Here's something you might find interesting. (I think I wrote on this
elsewhere though.)
COMPLAINTS OF INTELLECTUAL SUPPRESSION ARE NOT "CONSPIRACY THEORIES."
Intellectual suppression in any community's publications certainly
exists,
since the beneficial purpose is "triage." Triage is there to prevent
idiotic troublemakers from wasting our time. For example, if I submit
rambling drunken poetry and nude photographs to the journal Nature,
they
will be discarded. That's intellectual suppression! And when we try
to
filter email lists so spammers can't fill them with advertising, that's
suppression of publication. Nothing wrong with it. And it's very, very
common.
Inappropriate suppression also exists in the form of nasty backroom
politics, when for example the governmental/industrial leaders try to
prevent whistleblowers from publicizing embarassing mistakes and
criminal
acts. In other words, intellectual suppression often means the same as
"coverup." Dr. Brian Martin maintains an entire website on the
problems
of political intellectual suppression in the sciences, see
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/
Intellectual suppression has a long history involving revolutionary
science. Researchers who later created entire new fields of science
discovered that they could not get their research published for years,
often for decades. They eventually succeeded, but only after a major
fight with suppression. No journal editors consipred to silence the
revolutionary researchers. They simply assumed that their papers were
misguided, or were outright crackpotism. Here's a small list:
Ridiculed, vindicated discoverers
http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html
There's no question that inappropriate intellectual suppression is a
real
problem, nor that appropriate suppression is essential.
In recent years I've noticed a strange group-think phenomenon among
skeptical scientists. In online forums, crackpots start discussing
topics
like antigravity, perpetual motion, psychic phenomenon, etc., and they
complain that science journals won't publish their research. The
crackpot's opponents then sneer, insisting that the crackpots
complaints
are nothing but a conspiracy theory.
Um. What?
Let's get this straight. Someone wants physics journals to publish
their
papers where they prove Einstein was wrong... the papers are rejected
everywhere... and if the crackpots complain about this, it means that
the
crackpots are CONSPIRACY THEORISTS? But... but... all the physics
journals REALLY DO reject those papers. The crackpots really are being
suppressed; their publications are being blocked from all legitimate
journals (obviously with good reason.)
I thought that the skeptics might be joking, but they're not. They
really
insist that anyone who complains about intellectual suppression is a
conspiracy theorist who should be ignored.
Over the years I've found that this strange reasoning is very
widespread
among the online scientific community. I find it ridiculous, and I
feel
embarassed when I try to point out the flaws to those making the
argument.
(And I feel very confused when my observations are rejected, and the
skeptics making these arguments continue to do so time and again.)
Just to make things perfectly clear once more: intellectual
suppression
is very real, and is a valid part of the science culture, so when an
author complains of suppression, he/she is complaining about something
genuine. Journal editors need not "conspire" together before
rejecting my
nude photographs, or rejecting papers about Bigfoot or UFO abductions
or
Cold Fusion. Those editors INDIVIDUALLY are disbelievers. That's why
they reject the articles out of hand.
Here's something that may shed light on the proceedings. In marriage
counsiling I found out about a very common human foible:
"Invalidation."
If someone doesn't want to deal with their spouse's complaints, they
can
choose to "not hear" those complaints via the process of
"invalidation,"
by declaring the complaints to be ingenuous (perhaps triggered by
vengence
or other low motives.) Rather than taking the complaints seriously,
the
ears are blocked and the complainer is essentially silenced.
When a skeptic declares a crackpot's complaints to be "conspiracy
theories", this is a clear example of invalidation: it's a
psychological
ploy whos most likely purpose is to excuse the skeptic from taking the
crackpot's complaints seriously (or from even hearing them at all.) We
need not even listen to conspiracy theorists, so declaring a noisy
crackpot to be a conspiracy theorist gives us even more reason not to
listen.
But when someone complains of suppression, their complaint is almost
always genuine. And note well: they never complained about any
conspiracy. It was the skeptic, the person supposedly in support of
reason and rational argument, who put those words in the crackpot's
mouth.
Hmmm. Since this phenomenon is so common, perhaps it needs its own
name.
"Suppression complaints are conspiracy theories" is a bit wordy. Which
class of logical fallacy does it fall under?