The heuristics of antiscience 25 Feb 2011 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. Creationism and Intelligent Design Epistemology General Science Philosophy Science Philosophy
Ecology and Biodiversity 12 Days to Species publication 3 Feb 2018 Due 15 February! Details here Read More
Evolution Rudiments and vestiges 23 Aug 2009 A new paper has just come out on the functionality of the human appendix, or cecum (caecum in British biology). The authors, following some work done on appendix function in 2006, have said that the caecum in humans has a role in repopulating gut flora. I was going to do… Read More
Evolution Notre Dame conference – the washup 3 Nov 2009 It’s been a great conference. Simon Conway Morris was fun (but wrong! It’s OK, he says I am too). Peter Bowler’s talk on “what-if history” – what if Darwin had drowned on the Beagle? was actually interesting and raised some nice points about both the nature of the theory of… Read More
Basically things like faux medicine, anti vaccination, anti-AGW, creationism, and intelligent design.
I think you do need to be clear in use of terms and their definition here. To me, ‘antiscience’ does not cover the views of many people who ascribe to views and practices such as those you mention here, even if it is a broader motivation for some. The danger is that the term could be unnecessarily antagonistic or, at least, will fail to capture those who may be perfectly accepting of most of what “the scientific consensus” says, either bar one area or with a sense that science can’t tell us about all human experience. People are concerned about vaccines because medical science has made mistakes in the past, but this doesn’t make them “anti-science” in general. I think we might call their conclusions unscientific, but not necessarily “anti”. Likewise, I think that lumping all these things in together can be dangerous. Again, it creates an illusion – and perhaps, therefore, a reality – of two hostile camps where it may not exist (it does not, at least, in the British context). I also think that it could obscure much of what you are trying to find out – why people make the decisions they do. I can’t see much in common in the motivations of a concerned parent avoiding MMR and a proponent of ID, or those of a believer in a holistic approach to healing and a AGW denier. I therefore would be suspicious of your idea that “a general tendency of thought style” could account for all these varied responses.
I’m not sure that this will help… but I’ve come around to the idea that a person’s temperament (i.e. innate predispositions) is more significant than generally realised. Gigantic oversimplification: Some people value conformity and respect for authority, and others value individuality and reason. What people value is more likely to be believed. What they don’t value is not salient. There appears to be *some* emerging evidence that peoples’ temperaments are linked to biological differences (heresy! heresy!), although there are many competing categorization methods around. It could certainly help explain why some people are so wedded to their beliefs that almost no contrary evidence can change their views. These unsettling ideas do however have some *pragmatic* validation, and some of the best known systems (Myers-Briggs, Keirsey Temperament Sorter) are used widely in industry even if their scientific basis is uncertain. I’ll recommend ‘Please Understand Me II’ by David Keirsey as just one book about one view of the subject. I’m not sure that you can necessarily predict who will have ‘anti-science’ views, but temperament could explain why they are held so strongly.
My sister just invited me to attend her church. This forced me to come out to her as a non-churchy person. It’s all up in the air right now. This is the same sister who once asked me my ideas about Intelligent Design. My Dad (also very religious, albeit in a small-a anglican way) worked out some kind of magnificent distraction to avoid a family conflict at the time. None of this is philosophical in the formal sense. But Holy Cow . . . . I’m almost 50 years old, and it’s all coming home to roost. Needless to say, I admire my sister and don’t want to hurt her with my noncomformist ideas. Which is my way of saying, Good luck in your researches. I’m kind of freaking out right now.
@Rebekah: I think you have a point, but “antiscience” is IMO still an accurate classification in that these groups tend to rely on arguments that call the scientific enterprise, as a social institution if not as a method, into question. From creationists to anti-vaxxers, postmodern-sounding arguments about power, money, bias, etc are the core. These movements can’t survive without attacking the scientific process and saying “science isn’t good enough to find truth. Since it’s no better than any ol philosophy, here, listen to my alternative interpretation, because it’s just as valid.”
The point Becky is trying to make is that many people are perfectly willing to accept and operate according to the scientific enterprise, as you call it, in most things but then are perfectly able to reject, ignore or call the scientific enterprise into question in one or more specific intance(s). Example I travel into town several morning a week with a young mother who has a masters degree in computer science and teachers computer science in one of the worlds leading technology companies, that is her world is very much part of the scientific enterprise. So I was very surprised the other day to discover that she is an anti-vaxxer (your expression). Contradictory but very human!
Much of what you are describing as “antiscience” sounds like group-thinking or mob psychology. The quantitative safety of “the group” reinforces the rewards of sloppy or irrational thinking. Seen from this perspective, writing on antiscience thought has been legion: sociologists like David Riesman and philosophers such as Kierkegaard have taken runs at writing about the weaknesses of group thinking. Even historical analyses exist (it may be somewhat non-academic, but Mackay’s “Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” is an enlightening series of accounts of how ridiculous whole populations can be when they conspire to get swept up by irrational premises (e.g., Tulips are really central and important to our society and self worth). This type of phenomenon is often seen (and I’m sure written about) in stock and commodity trading: pressure exists to make the same investments/trades that everyone else makes, no matter how ridiculous they may be (I refer you to the global finance markets). The more subtle and interesting cases may be the extent to which group thinking (impress the professor, get tenure, get more names on an article, etc…) exists within professional science itself. After all, science is a human institution.
Cold Water Tulips are really central and important to [Canadian] society See http://www.canadascapital.gc.ca/bins/ncc_web_content_page.asp? cid=16297-16298-10118&lang=1 Or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Tulip_Festival
This project seems to start from the false (well, I think it’s false!) premise that rational thinking is the norm. It ain’t. The wonder is that we manage to force a layer of rational argument on top of our animal brains, occasionally (though not often!) overriding our main decision processes, based on emotional reactions. Of course, it is sensible to ask why people hold perverse beliefs. But it is a category error to frame the problem in terms of rational thought.
Rationality need not be logical thinking. Animals often make very rational decisions, consistently (at least the not dead ones).
“Selected References on Professionalized Heterodox Health Systems in English-Speaking Countries” A selected bibliography http://www.jstor.org/pss/649035?searchUrl=/action/doBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DTowards%2Ban%2Bethnography%2Bof%2BIndian%2Bhomeopathy%2B%2B%26wc%3Don&Search=yes jstor also has The Ethics of Alternative Medicine Therapies by Peter A. Clark
Keith Stanovich is a psychologist and researcher who writes on the psychology of rationality. He might be worth looking into, but I haven’t yet read the one book I have of his, ‘What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought’, so I’m no help otherwise. He has another book called ‘Who Is Rational?: Studies of individual Differences in Reasoning’.
I suppose part of conservative Christian antiscience was instigated by scathing criticisms of the Christian faith. In the case of 18th century biblical archeology, many intellectuals implied that only idiots could believe in anything close to the Genesis accounts of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the Hittites. In the case of Darwinism, many intellectuals implied you’d need to be an idiot to believe that God could be providential in the origin of humans.
John, on anti-scientific medical ideas, I assume you’re familiar with Orac’s blog? Having been a Sciblogling as he still is? Whenever I see news about anti-vaxers, unproven medical treatments, etc, I always check what he’s saying.
I was introduced to Darwinian Literary Studies ( Literary Darwinism) in 2009 when I attended a talk by Joseph Carroll. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwinian_literary_studies and http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2009/02/literary-darwinism.html Carroll’s 2011 book – Reading Human Nature: Literary Darwinism in Theory and Practice – is available on Google books.
Perhaps I am being overly picky but I am concerned about your use of the term ‘heuristics’. It seems open to a problematic ambiguity. The first way of understanding your phrase “heuristics of antiscientific thinking” is as suggesting that antiscientific thinking is based on a set of cognitive mechanisms in some way separate from those that produce scientific thinking. In this way, it sounds a bit like the phrase ‘magical thinking’. Both are misleading, I would argue. This is because, if we can go on recent research in the area, antiscientific beliefs as well as magical beliefs are produced by normal cognitive processes. Just like scientific beliefs. The difference is largely due to the context (social and otherwise) in which those processes are functioning. The other way of understanding the phrase is as simply trying to indicate the general patterns that antiscientific thinking has in common. From the other things you say, this does seem to be what you mean. If that is the case, however, putting it in terms of the heuristics of antiscientific thinking may be less than optimal. Moving on to more useful comments, I would suggest “Immunizing strategies & epistemic defense mechanisms”, Boudry, Maarten & Braeckman, Johan, Philosophia (2010). Given that Maarten is the other coeditor of the volume with Massimo, that suggestion should come as no great surprise, however.
Dr. Wilkins – may I suggest that when you define “antiscience” as “Basically things like faux medicine, anti vaccination, anti-AGW, creationism, and intelligent design,” you are leaving out a sizable, thought less public, group of antiscience types. There is a strong antiscience (as well as anti-Enlightenment) trend in the academy, espoused by certain post-modernists, feminist theoreticians, and others (Sokal documents some of these people and their positions in “Beyond the Hoax”). Will you perhaps be looking into what drives scholars away from science: is it the belief in “other ways of knowing”? Lumping in science with the sins of the West? An affinity for abstraction over concreteness? I have had the opportunity to encounter such attitudes in my work in universities (as a sign language interpreter), and always find it a puzzling attitude.
I suspect that, for the vast majority of people who lack scientific training, which includes most educated people, thinking is dominated by narratives rather than analysis. They no more try to reconcile contradictory ideas than they do the plots of different novels. Science, to them, is an arbitrary assortment of facts and theories, so it isn’t particularly evident that doubts about vaccines or climate change are in conflict with well-understood biology or physics. The particular beliefs they hold owe more to group affiliation than independent thinking. They aren’t so much anti-scientific as non-scientific. Consider an example from a different domain: the performance of the American political commentariat before the invasion of Iraq. Nearly all of our public intellectuals lined up in support even after the evidence presented by Colin Powell in his speech to the U.N. was promptly refuted by Hans Blix and ElBaradei. Their positions were dictated by the consensus of their peers, and perhaps a cynical calculation that it was safer to side with a mistaken majority and so continue to be considered “serious” than to take a lonely, principled stand and risk being labeled partisan. Contrast that to the principled (and partisan) analysis of someone like Paul Krugman, who does feel free to think for himself.
The problem consists probably in so far unproved presupposition that “evolutionary biology” or better Darwinism which relies upon “natural selection” as its key mechanism is the real science. Every criticics of “natural selection” hypothesis are then wrongly labeled as “antiscientists”. But what is anti-scientific on opinions and reservations regarding effectiveness of “natural selection” as an evolutionary force? Look at this peer-reviewed paper on aposematism I have tried to discuss on Scientopia these days (the link was sent by a darwinist btw. as the evidence of the effectivenes of aposematism via natural selection!): http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/5/1/51.full Have a look at the picture 2: http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/5/1/51/F1.expansion.html Look better at the picture 2: (c) should be the clay model of aposematic yellow dorsal race of poisonous frog (a) used in experiment . Now the clay model (c) is not aposematic bright yellow dorsal but – greenish! They laid this greenish model on leaf litter, so it must have been in fact cryptic! This is field reseacrh that darwinists publish in peer reviewed and hail it as science? This is utterly antiscientific! Not to speak about peculiar maths in the paper: Of our 1260 models, 139 (11%) were attacked. Attacks attributable to mammals (primarily rodents) and unknown assailants (60 and 30, respectively) made up the vast majority of attacks. Twenty-nine attacks (21% of total) were attributable to visual (avian) predators. Phenotype was not a significant predictor of non-avian predation (G=2.42, p=0.299; figure 2). 60 + 30 + 29 = 119 , not 139. But let say it is typo peers missed.
Is it perhaps possible that there were some attacks by predators that were not mammals, not birds, and not unknown? Just a thought.
No. In the paper there is written: Attacks were categorized as bird, rodent or unknown. The latter category did not include those markings attributable to insects (e.g. ants or beetles). Models not recovered (10) were scored as missing and not included in analysis. To be correct I calculated G-tests for myself and they seem to be ok, numbers should be let say 80 and 30. The problem is broader one – that darwinists teach that behind mimicry and aposematism there is “natural selection” as their driving force and call this presupposition “science”. Their “science” was repeatedly challenged by people who performed field research on aposematism and mimicry – be it Franz Heikertinger or McAteeand others. They criticised exactly the kind of darwinian researches I have quoted. Time obviously hasn’t changed. There was done research around 1910 on Nearctic birds by the United States Biological Survey and which had taken 45 years. Stomachs of 80.000 birds had been dissected and 237.399 food items had been identified. Ornitologist McAtee summarized these results in his treatise “The Effectiveness in the Nature of the So-Called Protective Adaptations…” (1932) and concluded that protective adaptations have little or no effectiveness. Franz Heikertinger also backed up the same idea by a research done by Csiki in Hungary 1905-1915 on 2.523 birds. As far as I know Darwinists never made such experimental research and they still do instead artificiall researches like the quoted one. Poulton and other selectionists were very unhappy about this McAtee research, but maintain that “natural selection” is the only force behind mimicry&aposematism neverthenless. Without any experiment they posited “intraspecies competion” and continued with their experiments with stressed birds in cages or clayed models.
I found the following essay handy on clarifying some of the categories involved: Føllesdal, Dagfinn. “Science, Pseudo-Science and Traditional Knowledge.” In ALLEA Biennial Yearbook 2002, 27-38. Amsterdam: European Federation of National Academies, 2003. The problem is that in terms of how people act and rationalize their understanding of science (and especially in constructing science as a belief system that can be equated to religion) they engage in a variety of behaviors. That is, one person can be pro-science in some contexts, committed to pseudoscience in others, and be quite antiscience in others.
What is and isn’t anti-science needs a finer filter than the one you seem to apply. You have to begin by distinguishing between two kinds of “intelligent design”. “Intelligent design” that presents itself as science, trying to find the hand of God in evolution by science, isn’t “anti-science”, it’s misapplied science or badly done science, but it’s not “anti-science”. “intelligent design”, which is, admittedly, a belief that evolution was directed by God, but which doesn’t claim that science can “see God” with its methods, isn’t anti-science, either. Most of the people who accept the fact of evolution and the wall of separation, keeping religion out of science classes in public schools, would seem to believe in “intelligent design” in the second sense. Creationism in its original sense, is more properly called “anti-scientific” in that it rejects evolution as a fact revealed by science, though there have certainly been creationists who have had successful careers in other parts of science and engineering and who certainly don’t reject science in other ways. A lot of the people who would be put on your list aren’t “anti-science”, they just don’t accept what science has shown as the best current explanation. That’s hardly new. Max Planck said that science advances funeral by funeral, as those with a professional and personal interest in obsolete viewpoints leave the profession. He wasn’t talking about people opposed to the methods or the profession of science, but by some of its most eminent figures. So, some of the most eminent of scientists are “anti-science” in the sense you seem to mean it. The protection of the funding of science and of science teaching in the public schools is a political fight, it’s not a scientific one. You aren’t going to win it by merely asserting the superiority of contemporary science, which, especially in the public face of evolutionary biology, has problems both as science and as a political platform. Arrogantly telling people that their religious faith is entirely false and calling them names is a failed political program, it’s been counter productive, no matter how much its proponents like the feeling it gives them and their clique.
— I suspect that, for the vast majority of people who lack scientific training, which includes most educated people, thinking is dominated by narratives rather than analysis. bad Jim The most public face of evolutionary biology in the past forty years has been exactly based in story telling, the sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists are all about story telling, as Richard Lewontin has pointed out for the entire time it’s been going on. Much if not most of the blog chatter on science blogs is based in the narrative derived from that kind of story telling. If you question the narrative, you will be reviled as being ” a creationist”, even as you cite the fact that evolution is the most documented phenomenon of science. And you could say the same thing about most of cog-sci and almost all of the behavioral sciences. If people who don’t work in science are confused, how could you expect them not to be?
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/
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.
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.]
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.
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?
“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?” A hodgepodge of suggestions: • Review studies on Bounded Rationality and Naive Realism. As you know, many philosophers have a lot to say about this, and social psychology, and now neuroscience, have added new layers. • Even the most “rational” scientist does not have access to the subtle biases of their “adaptive” unconscious. We can all have glitches and false beliefs in our thinking and be unaware that they contradict the rest of our world view. We can dissociate, disconnect, and hold multiple contradictory assumptions. [Check out Lakoff and Johnson’s biconceptuality research.] • Then there is the study of confabulation and delusion. Having a false belief in one area does not translate to an entire “mind”. Peter Duesberg is a dangerous HIV denialist but he still appears to be conducting respectable cancer research Penn and Teller are famous debunkers of woo but have done a disservice to the world by promoting the “Libertarian” view of Climate Change denial. • Check out Emily Pronin’s research on the Blindspot Bias • Also, evidence is showing that humans tend to be naturally vitalistic, dualistic, essentialist magical thinkers, etc. which is why I recommend that you read Bruce Hood and Paul Bloom and others • How we are trained to look at evidence is extremely important. Research on reasoning and metacognition is showing is that critical thinking and logic are NOT enough to help us confront our subtle biases, emotional investments and self-deception and misperceptions. For example, someone with Asperger’s may be intellectually brilliant but miss subtle emotional cues as well as nuances of language in others. I speculate that many of the arguments that occur among the Atheists/agnostics/etc., are due to subtle language misperception. Sam Harris arguing with Philip Bell amazed me: I honestly felt that Harris was not understanding the subtle semantics in Bell’s sentences and was jumping to conclusions based on his own literal projections. Bell, also, didn’t address this possibility, so they were literally talking past each other. • I think that the study of “interoception” is a particularly fruitful area for finding ways promote reflective thinking where we can question our most cherished or unseen schema by helping us become aware of what makes us uncomfortable and what we are identified with. • Carol Dweck’s research on the importance of learning through mistakes and stumbles Please allow me to email pdfs of papers on any of these topics if you cannot easily find them. I have reference lists and abstracts too. And consider
I doubt that you could come up with one explanation of why people do what you ask about, their motives would be individual. You would have to distinguish those who took the anti-science position out of conviction and those who took it out of professional advantage. I doubt that you can distinguish the list you asked about from any position that was without the normal levels of scientific validation. To uphold the position supporting science, whatever evidence you used would have to have an impeccable profile of scientific propriety, not least of all because to not do that could leave you open to a charge of inconsistency. In his Swathmore Lecture of 1929, Eddington pointed out that in order to express a value judgment about an incorrect answer to even the simplest math problem, you had to do so from outside of science. Mathematics can tell you the right answer, it can’t tell you why that answer had a higher value than the wrong answer. I believe he shortened his argument to “science can’t deal with ‘ought’ statements”. I’m inclined to give Eddington’s observations on scientific epistemology a lot of credence.
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? John, what follows are some random thoughts provoked by reading your last comment before going for a walk with the dog; all my best ideas come by dog walks, all the worst ones as well. I think a possible answer to your query, and this will please you, is that they don’t learn philosphy of science, scientific methodology or critical thinking for that matter. Most people with a so-called scientific education are not really scientists but are practitioners of Kuhn’s normal science, doting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s in a very small area of their nominal scientific discipline. They haven’t really learnt to think scientifically or critically in a general sense but to follow a problem solving algorithm within their area of work. Another aspect is that they have not really learnt to critically assess sources but are victims of a form of undifferentiated belief in authority. XY is true or correct because Prof. Dr. ABC says so in the standard text to the subject and so on and so forth. Pseudo sciences operate according to the same principles. QP is true because Dr. Dr. Dip. Eng. MNOP says so in his major work The TRUTH about RST! This all sounds very abstract but I have often met this form of explanation from people with scientific professions defending their belief in some sort of WOO. “I read it somewhere!” Nobody ever taught them that “you can’t believe everything you see and hear can you?” to quote that famous philosopher Jimi Hendrix. Anyway that’s my two pence worth!
This comment strongly resonates with my own personal experiences. Obviously, we have to take care not to appeal to false equivalence, but your point is quite correct that the operating procedures of real scientists often – for good or ill, out of necessity or laziness – do overlap with those of perceived pseudo-scientists. And without possibly banging the old drum too hard myself, I thoroughly agree that there is a deficiency in exposure and understanding* inre the philosophical underpinning of Teh Method. In fact, the belief among some scientists that there is a specific, s00pa-d00pa, tried and tested, one size fits all Scientific Method (with it’s perfect little p<0.05 benchmark for truthiness) is evidence of that. * The deficiency in exposure is perhaps more of a problem than a deficiency in understanding. For example, my exposure to some of the discussions on Bayesian and frequentist approaches to inference has been invaluable in terms of making me realise just how fuzzy things are in the world of statistics, but my understanding of the finer points of the arguments one way or the other is sketchy to say the least. As appeals to authority among scientists go, our sometimes violent adherence to statistical models we don't actually understand is probably the most common.
It does not look particularily abstract to my eyes and is not limited to the scientific professions but a general problem of university education, I suspect.
Thony C. , I strongly endorse your comments and, at the risk of stating the obvious, would point to the concept of cognitive dissonance, i.e., I would be very surprised if denial was not a major factor in “the heuristics of anti-science.” For John, my knowledge of social psychology, generally, and cognitive dissonance, specifically, is superficial but a name which comes up regularly is Jon Elster; may be worth looking into. Two pence more.
I’d be surprised if getting paid to support corporate viewpoints didn’t account for most of it. Which is more old fashioned lying and fraud.
Thony C., agreed (ah, greed!). Topping the list of the reasons driving denial would certainly be economic self interest. Warm regards, Bill W.
Be careful howyou describe ‘antiscience.’ Remember Francis Collins. One could hardly call him antiscience, yet he believes that the genome is complex enough to warrant an intelligent designer. The best books for you (that WILL NOT be on the radar) are Mortimer Adler’s “How to think about God, a guide for Pagans,” (he was an agnostic at the time of its writing) and “Religion vs. Science, the 500 Year war” by David Turell. Both display highly rational people, both accepting evolution, only denying chance as the cause. Turell goes further and discusses epigenetics as a means to explain punctuated equilibrium. Both are somewhat Thomist in thinking, but any more analysis by me ad I will poison you.