“Someone without bias” is indeed obvious, and therefore unhelpful. Can you be more specific? Who, precisely, doesn’t have a dog in the climate change fight?
How specific am I supposed to be, do you want names, resumes, potential investors?
Not my problem to solve.
However, I no longer accept published reports at face value, unless I check who the authors are, and who funds them. They even have a Cruchbase page, it's easy to check for yourself.
> How specific am I supposed to be, do you want names, resumes, potential investors?
Names would be good, for a start. If you can’t name a single person, group, or entity whose opinion would satisfy you, it’s likely that no amount of evidence would change your mind. Which means that you’re not discussing this topic in good faith.
All human endeavors have human bias, in one direction or the other. If you’re waiting for a bias-free source of information, you’ll be waiting a long time.
> Your argument that I should accept one source blindly
Others may have made that argument, but show me where I’ve done that. So far, all I’ve done is ask you who you’d accept as a valid authority, or what evidence you’d accept. And you can’t even do that.
A claim has been made that air quality in Paris has improved, and evidence has been provided to back that claim up, in the form of AQI readings provided by (in your words) “an NGO run by environmentalists and funded by the EU”. In turn, you have made a 2nd claim that this evidence is flawed, but so far you’ve provided no evidence to back your claim up. Claims which are made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
I simply questioned the independence of the source of the evidence, is such critical thinking not allowed?
Your attempt to somehow make me responsible to provide an alternative source of evidence is classic deflection. That is not my responsibility. Do your own research etc.
This isn’t critical thinking. Your complete inability to even vaguely hint or suggest at someone who might be better equipped to either perform this analysis or fund it makes that clear.
“Someone without bias” is a cop out. Everyone has bias, and literally anyone performing or funding air quality measurements is going to have some sort of interest in their outcome. There is no sterile room of blind and deaf eunuchs performing these services and you know that.
This comment was made in bad faith on your part, all I did was make that fact obvious.
Sigh, I already addressed this demand that I MUST name an alternative in this thread. It's deflection pure and simple, I'm not going over that again...
If you don’t think the current people doing this work or funding it are appropriate, you should be able to give at least a vague idea of an entity you think is better suited for either.
The only qualification you managed to put out there is that they don’t have bias. This is literally unachievable and you know it, which is why you won’t even attempt to even hint at a better party.
If even “an NGO run by environmentalists and funded by the EU” is beyond the pale for you, then there is no such thing as a source which will meet the standard of “independence” that you’re applying. Which again, means you’re not discussing in good faith. Good day.
> However, I no longer accept published reports at face value, unless I check who the authors are, and who funds them.
No, you use this as a cop out to deny results. In this case you have done this check and you have decided you do not want to believe the outcome so you wave around a vague charge of bias in a lame attempt to discredit it.
Please show me one single scientific report or conclusion you’ve accepted that passed this same “bias test”. Neither the authors nor their funding source may have a particular interest in the outcome. Any such example will do.
Since this thread has already established that bias is inherent in all human endeavors, why don't you try addressing the quality of the evidence itself, instead of its source?
More important than the quality of the evidence itself? People you disagree with can still be right from time to time, even if they are "biased" as you suggest.
Right, right, you never said you disagreed. You’re “just asking questions”.
The messenger matters less than the data, the collection methods, and the approach to analysis. Bias can be a reason to more carefully examine a conclusion and the methods, particularly if a source has had quality issues in the past.
But simply throwing out accusations of bias in the absence of literally any other reason to doubt a pretty straightforward conclusion (removing sources of NO2 makes NO2 go down, shocking!) is not a meaningful contribution to a discussion. Every researcher is biased. Every source of funding is biased. Hell, you haven’t even shown that they’re significantly biased, the only thing you’ve pointed out is that apparently some of their grant funding came from the EU, as if that’s some sort of smoking gun.
Did their bias lead them to an invalid conclusion? Do you believe it did? Do you have a reason to believe it did? If so, state it. If not, what was the point in making your comment other than to sow doubt?
What, exactly, were you hoping to learn by accusing Airparif and the EU of bias?
All this time I’ve been asking questions of you, hoping to learn about your thought process: Who should be performing these measurements? Who should be funding them? Who is someone without bias in the outcome of this process? What is an example of any result on any topic you accept as having been produced by an unbiased party with unbiased funding sources? What do you think are deficiencies in this research caused by the authors’ biases?
Not only won’t you even attempt to answer these excruciatingly simple questions, but you make it obvious that you have no desire to. So it seems more than just a little disingenuous to suddenly hold up “just asking questions” as a virtue when you have zero interest in answering any yourself.
This is ridiculous. The standard isn’t “are they unbiased” because it is utterly unachievable. You know this and you cling to it anyway. What matters is whether their bias materially influenced their conclusions.
They have provided analysis and data backing that analysis. It is now up to you as a skeptic to find fault in that. “They are biased” is lazy, intellectually dishonest, and utterly unconvincing. It is a canned response that can be given to literally every conclusion ever reached and so can (and has been) dismissed out of hand.
Of course I'd be skeptical. Skepticism is healthy, especially in your example. In that case, the most productive conversation to have would be examining (and either refuting or accepting) their evidence. So far you've refused to do either one here. Instead, you repeatedly engage in the genetic fallacy I linked to above, or insisting that we should consult some impossibly impartial oracle of objective truth instead.
That's your right of course. No one can force you to avoid using logical fallacies. But the longer you do that, the more it starts to look like you're avoiding or even conceding the real debate. It's up to you whether that matters to you.
But I have looked at their evidence in the article. I then done a web search to learn more about Airparif, who leads them (and their resumes), who funds them etc. because I never heard of them (I am not French).
I have literally done my own research, and came away questioning their independence.
Nobody on this thread has given me any evidence that they are fully independent, best I got was a comment with a link to the Airparif website.
Instead I got attacked for even daring to ask the question. Go HN.
