I’m crowdsourcing here, to ensure that I don’t say anything more stupid than usual.
I’m writing a piece for a forthcoming book on antiscience, edited by Massimo Pigliucci. I want to consider the heuristics of antiscientific thinking, but, not being a psychologist or cognitive researcher, may be missing some obvious sources. Can people indicate what I should be aware of before I hang myself in public? I want to look good on the gallows.
It seems to me that little work has been done specifically on how people make decisions about science that leads to antiscientific conclusions. I suspect there is a general tendency of thought style – a difference between practical, problem-based thinking and theoretical, comprehensive thinking – that leads in extreme cases and the right circumstances to antiscience. That is to say, that this otherwise ordinary aspect of human cognition and heuristics can result in opposing knowledge for entirely rational reasons. I have already argued this for creationists in my Synthese paper [manuscript version here].
I would love to hear of any work on this, especially in book format that doesn’t show up on the usual searches.
On the anti-vaccination issue, I think we need to be careful in ascribing anti-science.
Yes, the liars who say vaccines cause autism are anti-science or perhaps wanting to make money of others credulity and need to be publicly smacked down.
However, if you have a parent who knows the science then it becomes a little bit more difficult.
Say that science shows that 1 in 30,000 people vaccinated will suffer a serious ill effect, science also shows that 85% vaccination confers herd immunity and that if 85% are vaccinated the chance of being infected is 1 in 100,000. A parent might make a rational, albeit very selfish, decision not to have their child vaccinated assuming that the other parents will take the pain on their behalf.
This becomes even more likely if the vaccination is given not to protect you or your child but an unborn child/foetus, especially so if you don’t consider an unborn child/foetus to be human or to have any rights.
Individual choices v overall benefit to society
Irrespective of the reason, I would be strongly tempted to ban such a child mixing with other children and to punish the parent in some way. Sadly ostracising requires that the parents’ friends/neighbours understand the danger she is subjecting them to.
John,
You may want to check out this blog posting on Judith Curry’s site Climate Etc.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/18/epistemology-of-disagreement/#more-2435
In which she discusses the work Princeton philosopher Thomas Kelly
I suspect that most of what you call “anti-science” originates as non-science. Non-science that finds itself under attack by science, and chooses to go onto the counter-offensive. So, if there is a “heuristic” involved, I would guess that it is something simple like “hit back”.
Check out these references (if you haven’t already):
• Childhood Origins of Adult Resistance to Science
By Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg
Science 18 May 2007: Vol. 316 no. 5827 pp. 996-997
[I can email pdf of this paper]
• “Supersense: Why we Believe in the Unbelievable”
By Professor Bruce Hood
About Bruce Hood
http://brucemhood.wordpress.com/
“I am currently the Director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre in the Experimental Psychology Department at the University of Bristol. I have been a research fellow at Cambridge University and University College London, a visiting scientist at MIT and a faculty professor at Harvard. I have been awarded an Alfred Sloan Fellowship in neuroscience, the Young Investigator Award from the International Society of Infancy Researchers, the Robert Fantz memorial award and recently voted to Fellowship status by the society of American Psychological Science. . . .”
• “From Molecule to Metaphor: A Neural Theory of Language”
By Jerome A. Feldman
http://www.amazon.com/Molecule-Metaphor-Neural-Language-Bradford/dp/0262062534
• On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not
By Robert Burton, M.D.
http://www.rburton.com/
Heh. I know Deena. I should ask her for advice too…
Joyce Stoller, Bruce Hood might want to reconsider that blerb from Marc Hauser on his book and website. Apparently people who believe in the keystone of Hausers research believe in the unbelievable. A number of the people endorsing his book believe in things that are somewhat less than believable.
Marc Hauser’s reputation has suffered lately due to allegations about scholarship misconduct related to some recent papers. But he is still considered an important researcher in the study of morality, animal intelligence, etc. and was respected as a scientist by most scholars when Supersense first came out.
Everyone has their pet peeves and distaste for certain thinkers or approaches. However, Bruce Hood has been doing excellent empirical research for years on how children and adults develop a sense of meaning and create false beliefs — and should not be judged based on blurbs used to market his book. The same goes for Paul Bloom.
The fields of neuromorality and neurotheology are still in an early stage of development— thousands of studies still need to be synthesized and incorporated into a conceptual framework and many more studies conducted. It would be nice to keep a “heuristic” attitude ["heuristic" used in the philosophical sense of "openness to new evidence based on what is actually known or not" — not in the sense of using "heuristic shortcuts" to create categories that may increase cognitive bias.]
It would also be nice if we could avoid the tedious type of polarization that dominated the “nature” or “nurture” debate for so many decades (actually centuries.]
Emerging findings on: the limits of rationality; the interconnected nature of emotion and cognition; the neurodevelopmental basis for healthy moral decision-making, etc. is very exciting: I feel we all need to be a bit humble to fully appreciate how little we know and yet how far we have come.
Joyce Stoller, Marc Hauser’s fraud wasn’t merely alleged, it was clear and obvious, even to some of those who were working under him, and the irresponsibility of those who passed on his work without really reviewing it are just as obvious. The system of review is clearly not working.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/marc-hauser-academic-fraud
I’ll pass on any direct comment on Bruce Hood’s product, not having looked at it but the field of cognitive science seems to be replicating most if not all of the intellectual follies that psychology has, with pictures, this time.
I mean, have you ever actually looked at Susan Blackmore’s Phd work? And memes. Really.
Ok, I haven’t kept up with the Hauser situation, and I am happy to look at evidence. Either way, it is sad when this happens.
I have known too many scholars who have changed (or become sloppy or corrupted) over the years (which is a pretty common social psychology phenomenon from being in the limelight as well as a possible sign of “fossilization” due to cognitive changes during aging.)
But you are making a pretty broad statement about a vast multidisciplinary realm—how much do you know about these fields? Perhaps, you are responding to the “Voodoo science” controversy about the misuse of functional scans in social neuroscience? That was an important issue—however, it is being addressed by improved technology and advances in computational neuroscience. The human tendency for bias is seen in every field: but emerging neuroscience is at least allowing us to explore the mechanisms of these biases in new ways.
One of the most common fallacies found in science journalism: whittling down an area of research to focus on polarized controversies and knee-jerk generalizations.
I suggest you do a search on Pub Med or Google Scholar on Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience (SCAN); cultural neuroscience; and/or developmental neuroscience.
Read at least 100 peer-reviewed papers (or read a Graduate School-level textbook) and then see if you can produce a one-line sentence that encapsulates and discounts every aspect of this research— otherwise, please be a little more cautious.
And please get my name right. My name is not Joyce.
[If I have offended you with my tone, I am sorry, but I really do not like simplistic across-the-board generalizations and it is especially ironic, given the topic being discussed in this post. I do not want to keep this type of discussion going. I really just wanted to share some interesting resources with John and I trust that he will use his discretion to evaluate their worth.]
I appreciate all these references. I will use my own perverse judgement in using and choosing them.
Last point: what does the debunked subject of “memes” have to do with advances in neuroscience?
Joycelyn Stoller, bringing up Blackmore’s blerb on Bruce Hood’s website , and I assume his book, subtitled, “Why we believe in the unbelievable”, citing her book “The Meme Machine” as a credential, was to point out that it was supremely ironic. Several of the others in that list of endorsements could be pointed to as well. The belief in, let’s say, far less than rigorous science is endemic to psychology and cognitive science. It has been since the beginning of psychology and has remained a feature of psychology for its entire history. Looking to it for answers in this area might lead someone aware of that history to take the asserted answers with more than casual skepticism.
. . . still got my name wrong.
When I pick up a new book, I also may initially question the credibility of an author based on blurbs— but then look more deeply, if the subject matter appears interesting and the references and index appear respectable. When it comes to the value of a book, we should take blurbs with a grain of salt — as anyone trying to survive in the highly competitive publishing industry can attest.
I’ll tell you what: let us do a study to see if we can correlate the standards and accuracy of authors and scientists based on the endorsements that marketing departments in publishing houses decide will sell more books. [smiley face] Perhaps we can start by inspecting the blurbs found on the sleeve of your favorite authors’ books.
I have read many actual studies and papers produced by Bruce Hood and his colleagues. So I put forth, in my educated opinion, that there is no obvious correlation between the quality, rigor and clarity of the work of Professor Hood’s research lab with the silliness of some of the well-known, but more suspect, blurbers.
Supersense is a good book for the educated lay public who are entering this realm of inquiry.
So is:
Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World
By Christopher Frith
http://www.amazon.com/Making-Mind-Brain-Creates-Mental/dp/1405160225
Chris, and his wife Uta, are highly-respected scientists who avoid making absolutist claims or drawing premature conclusions.
[Scott Atran, too, of course!]
J. S. I didn’t say anything about Bruce Hood’s product, which I haven’t read. In a forum in which the topic is “anti-science” pointing out that the disgraced Marc Hauser and the compromised Susan Blackmore, not to mention a couple of others on that list, are thought to add credence to a book about “why we believe the unbelievable” is certainly a specimen of how anti-science is alive and well on the fringes of what is supposed to be taken as scientifically reliable. Pointing that out is certainly germane to the topic at hand. The self-appointed guardians of science, especially in the popular science world, are as prone to accepting junk science as any other sector, if it agrees with their ideology. I’m prepared to bet that a large part of that comes exactly from psychology and the behavioral and cognitive sciences, from which many if not most of the most ardent self-declared foes of “anti-science” find their professional homes and from which their often flashed credentials are gained.
What is and isn’t called “anti-science” is a far more complex and nuanced problem than the usual recourse to an index of prohibited ideas that are there merely because they’re just too strange to be allowed.
To John:
In relation to why we are not natural scientists, I shyly put forth my working premises based on my understanding of the current state of the knowledge base:
Reality is not what it seems
• Perception is mainly inference (not a mirroring of reality)
• The brain creates a best-guess hypothesis about the outside world
• The brain creates a schema of reality from raw and rudimentary data
• Scattered perceptual data is reconstructed into a meaningful story in our brains
• The story-telling brain constantly tries to fill in any blanks (as in confabulation)
• The brain generates meaningful connections—and will search for patterns
• The sensations we take for granted are correlated to brain modules or complex neural networks that can be damaged: (Sense of time passing, being in our body, being situated in space, owning our body parts, etc.)
• Memory is not an archive and is constantly reinvented by new learning
• Memory is slightly modified each time it is recalled or brought to conscious awareness
Self and Identity are illusory
• A stable, coherent, consistent “sense of self” is an illusion
• A cherished “personality” can drastically change through accident, injury, trauma, etc.
“Free will” and “will power” are not really free (or powerful)
• Volition exists, but it is not “free” and it can be impaired
• Decisions are made fractions of a second before we are aware of them
• Motivation and incentive are not signs of “character”, but developmental functions
• Everyone’s stress threshold is unique: we cannot always handle the challenges that life gives us
• Self-regulation and impulse-control take years to wire
• The positive-thinking approach can be immature and promote Calvinistic guilt and shame
• Thought can affect our response to “reality” but does not create reality
Rationality is not always logical
• Humans can reason, but we are not very “rational” or objective
• Emotion and somatic awareness are essential for normal cognition
• Much of our decision-making and initial thinking occurs on an unconscious level
• Our prefrontal cortex creates justifications for our opinions after we have formed them
• We have problems estimating probabilities and big numbers
• It takes a long time to learn critical thinking and abstract thought
• Syllogistic fallacies are only the surface layer of irrationality
• Science is often counterintuitive
• Most of our false assumptions are petty beliefs and biases about mundane factors in life
• Dogmatic skepticism can activate the same brain pathways as dogmatic religion and ideology
Certainty is not proof of knowledge
• “Certainty” is a sensation—not evidence of having knowledge or of being correct
• A sense of knowing is the last thing we should trust (without other verification)
• Adamant convictions can be a sign of rigid thinking and brain impairment, not “character”
• Intuition can reflect implicit knowledge, but can also be based on delusion or false beliefs
• The “know-it-all” left hemisphere automatically rationalizes any cognitive discrepancies
Self-insight can be distorted by inherent cognitive biases and misperceptions
• Bias, blind spots, and denial are ubiquitous human attributes
• We tend to overestimate our level of expertise as well as our competence.
• We can see other’s blind spots, but not our own (the “blind spot bias”)
• Those who place the greatest trust in rigid convictions are particularly prone to self-deception
Independent thought is not . . .so . . .
• Beliefs and values are deeply influenced by unconscious social forces
• People are easily manipulated by persuasion techniques
• People continue to maintain their impartiality and are offended when told they are biased
• Indoctrination and mind control programming are real phenomena
Conformity and individuality are not what they seem
• Social structures can change behavior
• The image of the “rugged individual” is mainly a myth
• No one is immune from group influence or situational context
• Stigma and status are powerful imperatives that influence most social behavior
• “Us and them” is a ubiquitous categorical mechanism
• People have to develop special skills in order to counteract group influence
Sense of Existence
• We can find our own deaths to be unfathomable and inconceivable
• It is almost impossible to imagine our own nonexistence
• Personal (and psychological) continuity after death is a normal and innate belief
• Children have complex natural beliefs about identity and existence
Good and Evil
• Morality is a developmental process, and needs to be wired over a long period
• Religious instruction and ethical codes give us context, but are not what determines our capacity for caring or conscience
• Empathy is the basis for genuine conscience
• Nurturing and parental modeling of healthy behavior are essential for emotional growth
• Normal people can be influenced to act against their values
• People tend to compartmentalize brutal behavior
• Authoritarian upbringings impair the capacity for compassion and flexibility
Mystical experiences are brain-based
• Sense of ineffability, feelings of oneness, sense of having mission are linked to temporal lobe, etc.
• Out-of body experiences are linked to the parietal lobe, right insula, etc.
• The brain searches for homeostatic balance between pleasure, familiarity and novelty (with individual variants)
• Most early cultures experimented with altered states (using plants and trance states, etc.)
• We have contrasting needs for belonging and to be special— both are powerful drives
• If all religions were abolished, new spiritual systems would immediately spring up
• Culture is influenced by the brain and also changes the brain
This list is the outline of a book I am writing called “12 Things We Don’t Want To Know.” You are the first person to see this . . .so be kind.
This is intriguing, but to discuss it would take more time and energy than I can presently commit. However, the following random comments:
Reality is what it seems much of the time, but not all. If it were never what it seems, we would be stuck in Kant’s dilemma of only ever knowing the noumena, and the only rational solution would be Berkeleyan idealism. I think we can say that we may be misled by sensory error and reconstruct poor memories, but we have ways to error correct in both cases. It ain’t perfect, and we must have a fallibilist epistemology, but we aren’t totally adrift in a conceptual sea. Certainty is a myth, I am sure of it.
Religion is not, I think, a default state for humans, but as intentional agents something very like it is going to be. I have said before I think religion, as a social phenomenon, is a result of social dominance. Anthropomorphism is also in play. However, calling this “spiritual” is salting the mine.
I concur that we are innately social, and hence moral. I like to say, “Of course we are moral agents. We are apes, and that’s what apes do!”
Reality is not what it seems JS
How does “reality” and its evaluation enter into science? What does “reality” consist of in an individual and social context that makes it part of science.
If reality is not what it seems outside of science, how does science, right down to its most basic foundations, escape that impeaching of our collective judgment? People don’t use a second mind they keep somewhere to do science, they use the same mind which this ideological effort tells us is unreliable.
I’m impressed at the huge percentage of behavior and cog-sci are dedicated to convincing people with no diagnosed pathology that their minds don’t work or aren’t what their experience tells them it is and their most basic sense of self is an illusion. It’s far more than just a coincidence based on following up research that has stood any kind of test of time. People within these professions are a part of a professional culture and to an attempt to induct them into that professional culture. Why shouldn’t their professional development make their orthodox findings suspect in the way they advance the idea that other ideas and experience is suspect? I’d like to see a list of published studies that DON’T support that ideological position.
Democracy is dependent on the belief that people’s informed choices can be more beneficially efficacious in the world than other forms of government. Of course, for it to be beneficial, those choices have to have motives other than crude self-interest, which is also undermined by the predominant ideology within behavior and cog-sci. If people in large numbers are led to believe that “science proves that people are selfish machines that can’t exercise free choice” or some other construction, democracy will be undermined. I trust the experience of history on that far, far more than I do these would-be sciences. History shows that there is a real difference in assuming that people are able to make effective choices for the common good and anti-democratic determinism. That history is far more impressive in its reality than the list of current beliefs in cog-sci.
“Perplexed in Peoria | February 28, 2011 at 7:11 am | Reply
I suspect that most of what you call “anti-science” originates as non-science. Non-science that finds itself under attack by science, and chooses to go onto the counter-offensive. So, if there is a “heuristic” involved, I would guess that it is something simple like “hit back”.”
I think this hits the ail on the head. One weakness in cog-sci explanations is that they overlook social and economic affects that vary amongst groups, such as in the example above. Interesting comments from Anthony McCarthy and others. I especially agree that the medical issues belong in a separate category. There are valid reasons to not blindly follow the current medical trends.
sorry, Nail on the head…
Read George Lakoff’s “The Political Mind.”
He directly addresses the social and economic effects of not understanding how our minds work and the damage caused by the shame-based judgments of people in power who believe that everyone can just “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”, etc.
I am certainly not promoting the concept of “people are selfish machines that can’t exercise free choice”
If you are responding to my premises then you did not read them very carefully or more likely inferred my position based on the first section and then assumed that I have a particular stance (?)
Read this section again and then see if I am actually saying anything like that:
. . .Good and Evil
• Morality is a developmental process, and needs to be wired over a long period
• Religious instruction and ethical codes give us context, but are not what determines our capacity for caring or conscience
• Empathy is the basis for genuine conscience
• Nurturing and parental modeling of healthy behavior are essential for emotional growth
• Normal people can be influenced to act against their values
• People tend to compartmentalize brutal behavior
• Authoritarian upbringings impair the capacity for compassion and flexibility . . .
Also, instead of simply playing devil’s advocate, it would be nice if someone asked questions about the research itself or asked for more elaboration on what the premises may signify or what I think the problems and misinterpretations are that can arise from these findings.
These are not based on a simplistic reductionist model. These are difficult counterintuitive findings that have emerged over decades of research and they can be used to support policies that invest in healthy development of our children or be misused by people threatened by their implications.
Wow. Thank you all. This has been a very useful discussion and most eye-opening.
Now that I have inspired you all to make such substantive and useful comments, allow me to refine my claim, based partly on what you have all said here.
My target question is why educated people believe nonscience. In particular those who are educated in scientific fields or what I call parascientific fields like medicine or engineering. What heuristics that they employ, and what circumstances they employ them in, leads them to adopt a nonscientific view, when they are grounded in science in their professional or intellectual life?
Examples: Antivaccination among educated professionals. Acceptance of “complementary medicine” by medical professionals. Acceptance of antievolutionary views by, say, mathematicians. Opposition to anthropogenic climate change by statisticians like Lomborg.
Now often this may be because of vested interests, corruption, or simple religious or social prejudice, but that doesn’t explain it all, or if it does, I want to know why people will allow the tradeoff between a search of knowledge via science and views that are clearly not knowledge based.
By the way, I will not enter into, or permit, arguments about whether these are scientific or not, not in this thread. I take it for granted that they are, because they are the consensus views among specialists, and there is no higher epistemic standard to evaluate these things. When sciences do actually have contention on topics, then that is a totally different matter, and often the majority view really is just what happened to take a discipline or field over at a time. But this must be within-science contention. Political or religious interference does not count as an epistemic challenge.
Cultural neuroscience, cultural neurolinguistics, cross-cultural psychology and other subfields of behavioral/neuroscience are earnestly addressing the differences in groups and underscoring the need for having respect and dignity for those unique cultural and social differences –as well as deepening our understanding of the needs, capacities and qualities that cross all cultures.
The research is full of surprising findings that have overturned earlier assumptions and have shed light on anthropological and other cross-cultural research as well.
I can give a sampling of abstracts for papers on any of these points and you can make up your own minds as to their validity . . .but so far, I don’t understand some of the broad statements being made about “cog sci.” Are you sure we are even talking about the same thing?