Why Do There Always Seem To Be Completely Contradictory Facts On Any Particular Topic?
This is a question I have wondered basically from the second I became a more political and overall "philosophical" person. Whatever the issue, you can site a source or a fact, and no matter how rooted in science it is supposed to be, someone somewhere always has another fact proving the complete polar opposite. People always said it was "interpretation" but the facts did not have to rely on "interpretation" for anyone to notice the obvious difference between them. So how did these "facts" that are supposed to be rooted in science become so divergent?
Just recently I attended my first Psychology class at UAA. After my third class we were given this assignment and in it we had to watch a video and read some pages of our textbook. It was then I found an answer to at least 80% of why my above question occurs. The answer is as follows:
There are two kinds of reasoning, deductive and inductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning relies on using someone's ideas to test and experiment it on the real world to prove the idea right or wrong. Inductive reasoning relies on forming ideas from the observable empirical world. As it seems, much of what leads to different outcomes of facts is that someone's predisposed ideas ends up affecting the evidence they get and its interpretation, whether consciously or unconsciously.
Yes, all ideas come from what someone is thought to have observed, but when ideas really matter is when they officially and scientifically start to be studied. Once you reach the field of science and people start studying it seriously, almost everything because deductive. Inductive reasoning occurs whether you are ready for it or not, and you might not even be a scientist, but when deductive reasoning occurs, you are conscious of your idea and you are able to determine if it is worth studying there on after. Almost all the time in the scientific and even political community, all "studies" and "facts" come from a predisposed idea and not just because someone "ran into it". That ONLY tends to occur before it becomes an issue or a topic of discussion. Sadly, this leads to the issue.
Everyone wants to be right, everyone wants their idea (especially in the political world) to be right, so they try to find or create facts to support it, they cherry pick observations or evidence, they forget to account for other variables because initially it seems unrelated to what is trying to be proven, so using this deductive reasoning can give people tunnel vision and make people ignore or miss what may be vital to one's idea or study. On the other hand, inductive reasoning will show up whether you are prepared or not, and will make you form an opinion from seeing the actual factual evidence first hand and not assume a fact from someone's idea.
Basically, what I am trying to say is that all of these political debates, scientific studies, etc, most have plausible ideas because they came from an actual empirical observation that doesn't discriminate. However the "proof" people try to give to support their idea afterwards come from other sources who also have the same opinion, and they scientific "proof" or study also came from someone with the same idea, so it leads to a vicious cycle of inductive, to deductive, to deductive,etc reasoning all over again. The solution?
Always account for all variables, be skeptical, if you ever read a research paper, hope they ran into something accidentally, because it broke the vicious cycle and started over from the inductive reasoning (empirical evidence leading to an idea). Also look into your indicators, maybe something looks good on paper but make sure the units and methodology is sound.
At the end of the day, if two facts are presented giving polar opposite conclusions, see what the origin or motivation behind those numbers where, and make sure the variables are sound, then from there determine which source is better.
