Weird discussion about credentialism, expertise, and appeals to authority coming out of @ComicDaveSmith debate with @DouglasKMurray with @GadSaad weighing in and Sam Harris comments on @MakingSenseHQ about platforming those that do historical revisionism, cherry picking, confirmation bias storytelling, narrative weaving without challenge. I absolutely believe any one can have an opinion about any topic. As well as free speech to make their unsupported claims. They can also do their own research and come to their own conclusions. They can challenge common thought. But they can't make up their own facts, create fiction, or not do any research or have a base understanding of the foundational theories or science of a field of study and then try to convince massive populations their version of events, history, or interpretations/findings. They can and should have their research methods, thinking, biases, logic, conclusions, causation assertions - challenged. For my field of study - war, warfare, strategy, urban warfare - anyone and everyone could use any of like ten research methods. And yes, traveling to a war zone or piece of terrain does greatly assist (like gathering first hand reports, analyzing the complexity of the terrain, observing military units in operations) some but not all of these methods: 1. Scientific Method 2. Case Study Method 3. Ethnographic Research 4. Grounded Theory 5. Mixed Methods -Combines quantitative and qualitative approaches 6. Historical and Archival Research 7. Strategic Theory / Normative Analysis 8. Operations Research (OR) / Systems Analysis 9. Comparative Method 10. Content and Discourse Analysis 11. Action Research / Practitioner-Based Inquiry 12. Simulation and Modeling Pick one. Defend your assertions with facts, logic, reason, evidence and have your research methods or thinking questioned. And like every researcher or student knows, correlation does not imply causation. It is not a free speech issues or appeal to authority to ask someone "how did you come to that conclusion." People can have their own opinions, but not their own facts.
See Tweet