Russ Roberts and Gary Taubes on confirmation bias [podcast]
Here is the link. The context is nutritional science and epidemiology, but confirmation bias is the primary theme pumping throughout the discussion. Gary Taubes has gained a reputation for contrarianism.* According to Taubes, the current nutritional paradigm (fat is bad, exercise is good, carbs are OK) does not deserve high credibility.
Roberts brings up the role of identity in perpetuating confirmation bias—a hypothesis has become part of you, so it has become that much harder to countenance contrary evidence. In this context they also talk about theism (Roberts is Jewish, while Taubes is an atheist). And, the program being EconTalk, Roberts draws analogies with economics.
*Sometime between 45 and 50 minutes in, Roberts points out that given this reputation, Taubes is susceptible to belief distortion as well:
What’s your evidence that you are not just falling prey to the Ancel Keys and other folks who have made the same mistake?
I do not think Taubes gives a direct answer.
I’m on a dialup connection and not really interested in watching podcasts anyway, I just wanted to comment on “Gary Taubes has gained a reputation for contrarianism.”
In Good Calories, Bad Calories I think he did a good job in debunking a lot of current nutritional beliefs, but I also think he went further than the evidence supports in his positive statements, that is in his anti-carb, pro-meat claims. In many of the short pieces I have seen since, he has seemed to be spending a lot of time defending those statements rather than reinforcing the more likely factual parts of the book. (Which is where the confirmation bias seems to be coming in.)
But in his earlier book, Bad Science, about the cold fusion debacle, he is purely in the mainstream. I have read four books on the cold fusion incident and his is the most complete, and the most massive, of them; he had the benefit though of being much later in print, so more evidence was available by the time he wrote it.
Summary: So, you’re saying (1) Taubes is indeed prone to confirmation bias, as he pushes his Big Idea too far; and (2) Taubes isn’t a contrarian when it comes to cold fusion?
Disagreement: While Taubes may have been seduced by his Big Idea (as I wrote in the OP), I’m not sure the data you’ve cited are strong evidence of that. You’ve cited his “spending a lot of time defending those statements rather than reinforcing the more likely factual parts.” But perhaps the “more likely factual parts” don’t need so vigorous a defense because many people find them plausible already. Thus he spends more time on the parts many people find implausible.
This is evidence of confirmation bias, but I don’t think it’s very strong.
Have I understood your point correctly?