UNCOMFORTABLE KNOWLEDGE IN MONOTHEISTIC SOCIETIES IN SEARCH FOR UNIVERSAL TRUTHS
The title may seem odd but the interested reader will learn why I used those words and terms.
To the more action-seeking reader, who loves twitter-style - but hates Trump for it, I promise to open his eyes for a battle going on, a battle for hegemony, no less!
So fasten the seat belts for a very slow, but uncomfortable ride. Hopefully, the reading will be painful, as we know that cognitive dissonance triggers reactions in the brain that remind us of real pain
Ignorance is bliss! Without ignorance, storytelling would be hard. Something needs to be left out to tell a catchy story.
From Steve Raynor (2012), “Uncomfortable knowledge: the social construction of ignorance in science and environmental policy discourses” in Economy and Society:
“Sense-making is possible only through processes of exclusion. Storytelling is possible only because of the mass of detail that we leave out. Knowledge is possible only through the systematic ‘social construction of ignorance’ (Ravetz, 1986; Rayner, 1986), a phrase which draws on Berger and Luckmann’s 1966 classic The social construction of reality, and which aims to highlight the ways that ignorance is a socially produced and maintained phenomenon, and the ways that knowing and not knowing are interdependent.” ‘Uncomfortable knowledge is “that knowledge which is in tension or outright contradiction with those versions [and] must be expunged””.
From Bent Flyvbjerg (2013), “How planners deal with uncomfortable knowledge: The dubious ethics of the American Planning Association” in Cities:
“In organizational theory, uncomfortable knowledge is knowledge that is disagreeable or intolerable to an organization. Rayner (2011: 5-7) identifies four strategies in increasing order of sophistication for how organizations typically deal with uncomfortable knowledge:
1. Denial represents a refusal to acknowledge or engage with information.
2. Dismissal acknowledges that information exists, and may involve some minimal
engagement up to the point of rejecting it as faulty or irrelevant.
3. Diversion involves the creation of an activity that distracts attention away from an
uncomfortable issue.
4. Displacement occurs when an organization engages with an issue, but substitutes
management of a representation of a problem for management of the problem itself”.
Another synthetization of Rayner (2012), by Andrea Saltelli:
“Denial: “There isn’t a problem”
Dismissal: “It’s a minor problem”
Diversion: “Yes I am working on it” (In fact I am working on something that is only
apparently related to the problem)
Displacement: “Yes and the model we have developed tells us that real progress is
being achieved” (The focus in now the model not the problem)”.
So at the one hand people need ignorance to be told a story that catches, but sometimes at the expense of suppressing knowledge.
Here’s an example of denial, possibly dismissal, after I introduced a critique of
@amirm ’s use of “gold standard” to promote a certain research program.
@Xulonn wrote:
“Rejecting the dictionary definition of a phrase and attempting to create controversy by mentioning a debate about its meaning in some obscure corner of academia is not useful in this discussion of audio science. Such localized controversy might be of academic interest to you, but I am sure that most here, like me, could care less about it, and find it irrelevant to the audio aspects of this thread”.
Key words are “obscure”, “localized controversy”, “academic interest”, “irrelevant”.
After my initital critique of “gold standard” on ASR (
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-for-discourse-on-asr.8212/page-4#post-205468) I referred to a short essay on the origin and usage of the term (
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-for-discourse-on-asr.8212/page-4#post-205601).
A longer treatise on the subject is Jones and Podolosky (2015), “The history and fate of the gold standard” in Lancet (
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736(15)60742-5).
Interestingly, the Lancet article doesn’t only deal with the term “gold standard” in science - a discussion that
@Xulonn found “obscure”, “localized”, “academic” and “irrelevant” - it also deals with a research program that resembles what
@amirm described as a gold standard in audio. The research program under scrutiny in the Lancet article, is so called RCTs, Randomized Controlled Trials. It’s quite an interesting read. Recommended!
On CRTs, Wikipedia wrote: “A well-blinded RCT is often considered the gold standard for clinical trials” (
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_controlled_trial).
Sounds familiar? Remember,
@amirm wrote:
“Sound evaluation by ear is the gold standard in audio science as long as it is controlled. You know, a proper blind AB comparison with levels matched”.
Let’s look at some quotes from the Lancet article:
“It was, ironically, in this setting—of the final abandonment of the financial gold standard in the USA—that the phrase began to appear in The Lancet and NEJM as something valuable, not merely as a standard of exchange but as the definitive exemplar of quality and reliability. A 1975 Lancet review of new diagnostic criteria described how they set the “gold standard”, providing a new “esperanto of liver disease””.
In other words, it was first after the original gold standard died that the gold standard as a term entered science. Does everybody see the irony, how the need to tell a powerful story comes at the expense of knowing the full history? There cannot be a gold standard, can it, if it goes away at will to be replaced by a newer standard. Something reeks of cult making here, where one uses rhetorical tricks to win a scientific debate, right?
To cast light on the somewhat religious message in the usage of “gold standard” in science (I have bolded and underlined certain passages from the Lancet article):
“But many of its uses in relation to RCTs were critiques, reflecting a legacy of the controversies that had long ensnared those who would claim the
epistemic hegemony of RCTs. The debates about RCTs, and about the notion of a medical “gold standard” more generally, often took on
religious overtones. Angry about cardiologists’ demands that coronary artery bypass grafting be subjected to RCTs, Lawrence Bonchek encouraged surgeons in 1979 to “resist the almost religious fervor of those who would
sanctify randomized studies as the only means of learning the truth”. Writing in 1992, P Finbarr Duggan complained that the phrase “gold standard” itself “
smacks of dogma” and should be abandoned”.
Let’s see what happened when I used a smiliar language in posts on ASR:
@simbloke wrote: “...@svart-hvitt your continued use of the words 'cult' and 'gospel' does nothing to advance your argument and is actually quite insulting” (
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-and-smooth-off-axis.8090/page-15#post-200957)
@Xulonn wrote: “Your snide remark about ASR regulars and "gospel" is a bit weird - and that was what prompted me to respond. Perhaps there is a language barrier issue...” (
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-and-smooth-off-axis.8090/page-13#post-200608).
It seems like journals of medicine have thicker skinned readers than ASR.
Let me quote more from The Lancet:
“Allegiance to a single approach provides a focus around which communities can organise and rally. But critics have pointed to the dangers of such medical monotheism. As pioneering cardiac surgeon René Favaloro wrote in 1998, reflecting on three decades of debate about bypass grafting, “Randomized trials have developed such high scientific stature and acceptance that they are accorded an almost religious sanctification...If relied on exclusively they may be dangerous””.
And the article concludes (my bolding and underlining):
“The past several years have seen increasing calls for an
ecumenical approach to clinical research, with more
flexible standards for what counts as acceptable study designs. Physicians have developed new methods to extract robust analyses from patient registries and from the ever-growing databases provided by electronic medical records. Will this erode the status of RCTs as a gold standard?
The rise of personalised medicine, meanwhile, might make it more difficult to defend gold standards in diagnostic and therapeutic practice. Personalised medicine refocuses clinical attention
away from the “typical” patients analysed by RCTs and onto the
idiosyncrasies, genetic or otherwise, of
individual patients. Has the phrase outlived its usefulness in medicine? It is too soon to tell. Yet even as some physicians turn away from their commitment to medical gold standards, some politicians, newly wary about global financial turbulence, talk of restoring the financial gold standard. Gold standards, whether actual or figurative, represent structures of exchange and aspirations toward stability, despite developments that threaten both”.
I hope readers had a déjà vu all over again experience when reading this. Can ASR also be viewed as an attempt to establish an “epistemic hegemony”, to push the belief of “randomized studies as the only means of learning the truth”? Have we, on the other hand, seen evidence on ASR for wishes to implement an “ecumenical approach to (...) research”, calls for “more flexible standards for what counts as acceptable study designs”? I guess no, right?
What about attempts to review “personalised [audio reproduction]”, to draw the attention “away from the ‘typical’ [consumer]” and into “idiosyncrasies...of individual [consumers]”?
Isn’t it obvious that the Harman method reminds one of RCTs, where the individual is replaced by an average, as if a randomized patient? Is it coincidence that Harman is dogmatically against room correction (above transition area/Schroeder), for isn’t room correction an attempt to “[refocus] attention away from the ‘typical’ patients analysed by RCTs and onto the idiosyncrasies, genetic or owherwise, of individual patients”?
And have in mind that Harman’s only study of room correction software a decade ago concluded that some room correction software had benefits. The strongest Harman voice on room correction since then, is
@Floyd Toole , who wrote an article in JAES recently (
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...keting-story-theory-without-measurement.7127/) where he called such software “an enticing marketing story”, despite the fact that his conclusion did not rest on the equivalent of CRTs, the gold standard, which is blind testing in audio research. Is this an example of selective use of “the gold” standard?
Have in mind too, that a recent debate on ASR was about the Harman method in headphones research. Even if there is good reason to use an individual’s unique head related transfer function (HRTF), Harman insists on averaging HRTFs for a randomized customer. There was, again, little support for a debate that “refocuses clinical attention away from the “typical” patients analysed by RCTs and onto the idiosyncrasies, genetic or otherwise, of individual patients”.
When one raises epistemic questions on ASR, readers react with denial, dismissal and diversion. As predicted by Rayner (2012). The uncomfortable knowledge is the fact that on ASR, as in other research fields, there is a fight to preserve a certain “epistemic hegemony”. And this hegemony is sometimes called “the gold standard of audio science”. Has ASR anything to learn from the debate on gold standard in other fields? Is Lancet too “obscure”, a place for “localized controversy”, “irrelevant”?
What happened when
@amirm read my question of gold standard? Take a look at this answer:
“No. I used the term generically as people do in conversation. For
@svart-hvitt to run with that word is beyond pedantic”.
Source:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-for-discourse-on-asr.8212/page-4#post-205602
Full dismissal, right? As predicted by Rayner (2012).
ASR has a promising start. This post is written in good spirit. However, why not learn about epistemology from other fields to avoid making the same mistakes over again? How come the need to form ASR in the “monotheistic traditions”, “...with a commitment to universal truths, unitary paradigms, and a “single-minded approach to illness and care””?
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REFERENCE OF SPECIAL IMPORTANCE:
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736(15)60742-5
