Can't Block or Sequester? No Problem - Obfuscate!

When a Knowledge Bully can’t block the acquisition of new data or sequester acquired data to use for their own purposes, what can they do in the face of data that might call out their bullying ways? Time Tested and Bully Approved - Obfuscate, Obfuscate, Obfuscate! There is AMPLE room to work in this realm, since the dissemination of scientific information must, by definition, take Epistemological Shortcuts. Each recipient of scientific information is not replicating the experiment that they are learning about. Proxy’s have to stand in for full individual replication and these proxies have inherent weaknesses, and these weaknesses can be attacked. The source of the data generation can be called into question. How was the research funded? What kind of institution funded the research? What kinds of interests might that institution have?

Of course, just because a researcher is looking for, or paid to look for, a certain answer, that doesn’t mean that they will find it. Or, if they do find it, it doesn’t mean that they are wrong. Aspersions cast on the producer of data, however, go a long way for The Obfuscater. Likewise, peer review is eminently critiquable, as

Defender

has recently done while also providing helpful remedies in “We Know How to Fix Peer Review”. Since contesting data is part and parcel of scientific work, obfuscation can easily pass as regular contestation, since the language of skepticism and questioning is built into the scientific process itself, and taken as proper procedure. It’s almost too easy for a Knowledge Bully, and their successes are legion.

On the Mount Rushmore of Data Obfuscation are the American cigarette companies. In 2006, they were found guilty of a decades long racketeering conspiracy to deceive the American public on, among other things, the scientific relation of smoking to lung cancer. They were found liable for hundreds of billions of dollars and recently forced to change the information that they disseminate to consumers.

https://www.tobaccofreekids.org/what-we-do/industry-watch/doj

Here is a deep dive into the Cigarette Papers

https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8489p25j;chunk.id=0;doc.view=print

That is perhaps the largest and best funded effort in history, but Data Obfuscation is everywhere - even your roommate does it!