On Balance (by an unbalanced twat)

Balance very much seems to be something people strive for - or at least pay lip service to striving for - whether in their personal lives, where people stress themselves out trying to get their perfect stress-free life, or in their viewpoints; when talking about journalism or weighing up evidence there's sure to be some mention of balance somewhere, even if the people involved are rabid polemicists who would sooner run away from any kind of balance than ever temper their opinions. (Yeah, I don't like polemicists. Bite me.)

I personally seek truth, not polemics, rhetoric or verbal fireworks - and thus I appreciate balance. No, I don't just appreciate balance - I get incredibly pissed off if I can't find this balance because some stupid, lazy, ignorant, agenda-driven person doesn't want to give me other sides of the argument. Even if I agree with them - say if it's an article about how evolution is right - I'll still get pissed off.

Now can you see why I don't have many friends and I'm near-perpetually cranky?

Another way in which balance gets twisted, and one which I'm going to rant about at length, is false balance - presenting arguments as equivalent when they are not. Other people, most of them the proper science bloggers and sceptics that I look up to (literally as well as figuratively - I'm stupidly short), have done this post before and they've done it better than me, but it's a free internet and false balance is getting on my tits so here goes!

I know I'm a fiercely irrational person - as most people are. I work every day to curb this irrationality; most days I fail, but that's life for you. It's a load of shit, mostly, but it has its good bits. Anyway, to try and curb this irrationality I like to look at all the evidence - and given time and free access to scientific journals (damn you, paywalls, and damn you, not being at university), I will. Given only the time, I'll find enough blog posts somewhere to get by on.

Now, as someone who's not too horrible at finding and weighing up evidence, I'm half-decent at telling what's bollocks from what isn't - particularly when the bollocks requires everything we think we know about the universe to be wrong and is unsupported in numerous studies. (That said, if it started to be supported I would just trash my former model of the universe.) And having looked at this evidence, I have little problem separating something plausible from something more at home in a bad fantasy series.

What I don't understand is why looking at the evidence and daring to say that the flaky hypothesis that is utter shite is, in fact, a flaky load of utter shite, somehow counts as me being biased. What I don't understand is why complete bollocks should be put on the same level as theories supported by the data. That's not being balanced, that's giving too much attention to hogwash on the grounds that it's just as valid as a model that actually works.

Balance works by actually looking at the data fully and then making a decision. False balance works by assuming that every viewpoint is equal regardless of its attitude to the evidence - and as an evidence nut, I'm sick of it. It promotes the attitude that data really isn't all that important compares to attitudes, and it encourages people to believe that any quack who can make money has just as valid an opinion as an actual scientist whose day job is looking at evidence.

I am tired of hearing time, money and precious oxygen wasted on agenda-driven nonsense that wouldn't know data if it got bitten in the arse by a scientific study in the name of "balance". You want actual balance? Stop giving undue time to quacks and start giving the public free access to scientific papers so we can make informed decisions about things. Maybe then we wouldn't feel quite such a need to assume that hypotheses which violate the laws of nature are just as valid as evidence-backed theory.