Open Mind

Today’s entry is by a guest blogger, my wife.

It all started with the Tesla Purple Energy Shield.

If you’ve not heard of this piece of crap phenomenon, oh boy you’re missing out. In essence, for just under $300 (including shipping), you get what looks like a purple sex toy of some kind on a key chain. It heals diseases, slows the aging process, saves you money on car insurance, and I don’t recall what else but I remember the word “tachyons” used. I happened upon this while reading a post on Blogspot (link). The blogger mentioned sending correspondence to the makers of this overpriced chunk of aluminum modern miracle suggesting they enter the James Randi Educational Foundation’s Challenge.

Now I’d only heard of this challenge in passing, so I decided to read up on it. James Randi, a magician who — like Houdini before him — devotes his time and energy to promoting critical thinking and debunking myth, is offering a cool million to anyone-anyone-who can prove, using a properly controlled testing environment, the existence of a supernatural or magical phenomenon. So far, at the time of this posting, no applicant has even made it to a final round of testing.

“What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes.” — Harry Houdini

Further perusal of the site, more specifically an article in a newsletter, brought to my attention an article on UFOs and people who testify beyond the shadow of a doubt that they’ve been visited, abducted, or otherwise contacted by aliens. The term used was Confirmed Believer Syndrome, also known as True Believer Syndrome. What that means is that some people are so enamored of a fantasy that they continue to believe it even in the face of sound evidence to the contrary. One particular case grabbed my attention:

At a videotaping some years ago by CBS-TV of a performance of Peter Popoff, the evangelist “healer” who I later effectively blew away on one of my Johnny Carson appearances, the video team approached a woman who had earlier been summoned out of a wheelchair by Popoff to be healed, and was now leaving the auditorium. She’d exhibited to the audience evidence of having been healed of arthritis by arising from the wheelchair at Popoff’s command, and walking straight across the stage waving her hands over her head.

Sounds pretty convincing, no? Well, continuing on:

…yet we now found the woman doubled over in pain, making her way out of the auditorium slowly and with great difficulty. We asked her if that had been her own wheelchair; she said that she’d never been in a wheelchair before, and that Popoff’s handlers had brought it to her before the show and told her to sit in it. We asked if her discomfort was gone, and she admitted that it was now even worse that it had been before; we attributed that to her holding herself in an unnatural erect position and walking during the show despite the agony she was experiencing. When she’d raised and waved her hands, she admitted, she was aware that it was no miracle at all; she’d always been able to do that.

All right, then, that’s pretty much what we’d expect to hear. Rather than reaching the logical conclusion that Popoff was a charlatan, however:

“But,” she firmly avowed, “I still believe that I’ve been healed!” and she laboriously shuffled to the exit of the building, head down, helped by a volunteer posted there.

That’s right; rather than accept that she was misled, rather than face the fact that Jesus did not materialize through the hands of an evangelist, rather than deal with the harsh reality that she’d probably suffer from arthritis for the rest of her life, she sincerely in her heart of heart believes the lie, because it’s easier.

The facts had became inconvenient and a threat to her delusion.

That has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Inconvenient facts. I bet they could make a book and a movie with a similar title. It was right around this point that my husband “Tamino” chimed in and said that this is the problem we face when it comes to educating people about global warming: there will always be people who believe, for no other reason than not wanting to believe otherwise, that global warming simply does not exist–even when presented with facts that prove the contrary.

Fingunt simul creduntque (They make (it) up, and at the same time they believe (it)). — Tacitus

I believe that many contrarians (that is, people who adamantly insist that global warming is a hoax) aren’t intentionally lying with malicious intent. They aren’t necessarily paid millions by the fossil fuel corporations. I think that maybe a lot of them are just people who want so desperately to be right that they will lie to themselves and manipulate the facts to suit their delusion. Perhaps that’s just me being optimistic about humankind in general and wishfully thinking. I don’t know.

What I do know is that people who are desperate to believe a lie are equally desperate to get other people to believe the same lie. This isn’t limited to contrarians, not by a long shot. From the old lady who has to believe that Jesus healed her, to the “UFOlogists” who have to believe that they’ve been contacted, to the mistress who has to believe that her lover will leave his wife and kids for her, just about every human being at some time or another has not only believed something false to be true, but also insisted that it is true, and tried to convince other people of the same.

When those who believe they are telling the truth (because they can’t accept otherwise) attempt to sway others to their belief, it can be hard to tell. It’s easier to tell when someone is flat-out lying, but when someone really believes what they’re saying is true, how can you tell if they’re lying to themselves (and you)? How can a regular Joe with no real scientific education (like me) sort the science from the pseudoscience?

In an article dated December of 2000, Dr. Steven Novella offers several signs to look for.

o Hostility toward scientific criticism. “They [pseudoscientists] tend to characterize criticism from mainstream scientists as supporting the status quo, hostility toward new or innovative ideas, or even a full-fledged conspiracy to suppress their ideas.”

Whoa, hey, that sounds a bit familiar! How many times have you heard someone claim that scientists are only saying global warming is real because their funding counts on it? (I get the mental image of Homer Simpson rolling around in diamonds announcing, “Woo hoo! Lookit me! I’m a scientist!”) If you ask someone to cite their sources and they lash out at you, accusing you of making claims you never made, speaking to you indignantly, or otherwise using ad hominem attacks, they might be full of it.

o Making a virtue out of ignorance.

Here is a favorite tactic of the pseudoscientist: to make actual scientists appear elitist and secretive, and make their own claims up to be “outside the box” and “revolutionary”. It’s one thing to say “we don’t have all the facts” or “I have no formal scientific training”, but another thing to gloat about it and make it up to be an advantage rather than a hindrance.

o Reliance upon testimony or anecdotal evidence rather than research. “Pseudoscientists…will tend to accept any testimony or anecdote that supports their desired belief. They will present large volumes of such evidence, implying that a large amount of poor quality evidence equates to high quality evidence, but this is not true…Such observations have a history, however, of being contradicted by later well-controlled and more reliable experiments. This is a lesson that good scientists have learned, and pseudoscientists deride.”

This is a big, bright red flag. A person might be using badly collected data, or worse, selectively using data (“cherry picking”). They might approach the James Randi Educational Foundation to enter their challenge, find that the Foundation’s testing method can’t agree with their anecdotal “evidence”, and thus proclaim that the odds were stacked against them, that Randi is a fraud and doesn’t have the money, that Randi’s only purpose is to slander them, etc.

o Claims often promise easy and simplistic solutions to complex problems or questions. “One of the primary reasons for the psychological appeal of pseudoscience is that they provide a putative easy answer to a complex problem.”

In other words, if someone says you can take a pill and lose weight without ever exercising or monitoring how you eat, or that a piece of purple aluminum can “advance the mind body and soul of mankind” just by dangling on your keychain, that should be registering on your bullshitometer. In fact, when I asked for help providing an example of how this principle is applied by contrarians, “Tamino” tried to give me an example of the complexities of climate physics before showing how a contrarian might oversimplify it. It made my head spin. Now, don’t confuse this with what you’ll see listed next here; “Tamino”’s explanation made some sense to me and anything I didn’t understand, he’d at least try to clarify for me. A sketchy argument will either oversimplify so that you get it in two sentences, or it will…

o Utilize scientific sounding, but ultimately meaningless language. “Pseudosciences often imitate real science by cloaking themselves in pseudojargon. The result, however, is the frequent use of scientific sounding terminology that lacks a precise definition (much like the technobabble in a typical episode of Star Trek).”

This one’s a tricky one. After all, if they’re using five-dollar words like “tachyons”, they must know what they’re talking about. I just mentioned in the previous paragraph that climate science is extraordinarily complex; in order to express concisely what needs to be communicated, a few five-dollar words are needed. But if someone is clearly using confusing language and making no attempt to explain what they mean (or worse, snorting at your ignorance if you ask for clarification), they might in fact be covering up the fact that they have no idea what they’re talking about.

o Use bold or absolute statements. “Pseudoscientists…make use of bold claims, superlative descriptions, and unrestrained self-serving accolades.”

Everything you have heard about global warming is false! Global warming is a big, fat hoax! I know this, because I’m a leading Harvard astronomer! Riiiiiight.

o Attempt to shift the burden of proof away from themselves. “It is generally accepted within the scientific community that anyone making a claim to any truth bears the burden of proving their claim… Pseudoscientists, often because they cannot prove their claims, frequently attempt to shift the burden of proof to those who are skeptical of their claims. In essence they maintain that their claim must be accepted as true because it has not been proven false. Sometimes the extraordinary claim in question cannot, even in theory, be proven false.”

That seems pretty self-explanatory, I think. Just you try and prove that this $300 purple keychain doesn’t harness the power of tachyons to heal the mind body and soul of the human race! You can’t, can you? HA!

o Vague reference to data. “Pseudoscientists…will often make vague references to allegedly supporting data with such phrases as ‘experts say,’ ’scientists have discovered,’ or ’studies show.’ Such claims, without a specific supporting reference, should be considered unreliable.”

This one seems like a no-brainer to me. Always always always check sources, and be extra wary if they can’t or won’t give them.

o Failure to consider all hypotheses. “Pseudoscientists, because they are invested in a desired conclusion, will only give perfunctory consideration to competing hypotheses. Often one or two token alternatives will be put forward and summarily shot down, leaving the desired belief as the only putative possibility.”

This is also called a “straw man” argument. One such example would be one used by “UFOlogists”: the lights aren’t an airplane or a star, so they must be alien spacecraft.

Now, do be aware that scientists are human beings too. And as card-carrying members of the human race, they too can be driven by a desperate desire to be right. The whole Piltdown Man hoax is one such example of this. If someone dedicates years and even decades of his life to proving his hypothesis, it surely must be crushing to face the reality that it just is not so. But true science moves forward by continuous studying, testing, doubting, retesting, referencing, researching, and re-retesting. It proves or disproves in spite of delusions or ego.

But try not to worry too much about those who may suddenly have bruised egos when they face the harsh (dare I say inconvenient?) truth instead of the lies they’ve been telling themselves. You could always get them a Tesla Purple Energy Shield for Christmas. Nothing cheers a person up like tachyons.