Controversy Threshold

By Deane Barker •

Also known as: Bullshit Asymmetry Principle

Just because a minority of people hold a contrary opinion about something doesn’t mean there’s a wider, legitimate controversy that makes us unable to know the truth of that subject. It’s easier to generate fake controversy about something than it is to debunk those claims, and people will use this to claim there’s legitimate controversy on a subject, when there really isn’t and the subject is settled fact.

Comments

You also have to beware of “amplified” controversy here. In many cases, it seems like controversy is swirling around and issue, then it’s really a variation of The 1% Rule – most of the controversy comes from a very small group people, and is just amplified by the rest. Most of people have no firsthand knowledge of the subject, but they’re just repeating what they heard because it fulfills some Confirmation Bias they have.

The original idea that vaccines cause autism was “proven” by one study by a British researcher in the 1990s. This study was debunked, retracted, and he was actually prosecuted for scientific fraud. Most all of the other controversy about vaccines has simply been amplified from this one report.

Examples

Intellectual Denail of Service Attacks

A blog post opining that all a group has to do to bury a true fact is swarm the internet with so much argument that they generate what others might perceive as “controversy” and thus doubt the fact.

Fundamentalist Christians have often attempted to have creationism taught in school science classes, claiming that evolution is “just a theory.” And while it’s true that some people – even in the sciences – question evolution, the level of this “controversy” likely doesn’t rise high enough to consider evolution a mere “theory,” or even that it’s doubted by the scientific community.

While climate change deniers exist, they are dwarfed by those who believe climate change is real. At what point does society decide that this “controversy” is so low as to be ignored?

A meme said “9 out of 10 dentists recommend flossing.”

The second frame had Joe Rogan captioned with “That 10th dentist must be onto something. Let’s get him on the show.”