I don’t know if this could really be called “new”, but it’s a form of anti-intellectualism that usually goes unnoticed. I find it particularly frustrating because I so often see it often among people who claim to respect knowledge, education, and expertise. It is an ironic lack of respect for that same knowledge, education, and expertise.

The Psychology of Vaccine Denial

I’m sure you’re wondering what I’m talking about here, so I will get to the point. Rebecca Watson wrote a short piece, published in Skeptical Inquirer Online, that seems to question the potential effectiveness of a bill currently in the works in California which would eliminate non-medical exemptions for vaccination requirements to attend public school. I say “seems to” because it’s actually unclear.

My main criticism of the piece itself is not that much of what she says is blatantly wrong, but that the piece doesn’t go anywhere and the research cited doesn’t support the weak, barely identifiable thesis at all. It is disjointed and doesn’t flow well. The transition from the topic of education to that of the bill is a huge leap. Her conclusion makes little sense given the rest of the piece. It’s only a few paragraphs (very short for SI), but in those few paragraphs she manages to treat some important research shallowly and selectively, missing the valuable knowledge that a nuanced look at the findings would provide. I won’t make that mistake here.

She cites two articles, the first mention is this:

Researchers Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler have spent the past few years conducting studies that seem specifically designed to depress science communicators. Last year, they published a paper in which they showed that correcting myths about the MMR vaccination actually decreased a parent’s intention to vaccinate.

What’s missing is that this was only true among those “with the least favorable vaccine attitudes”.

Even showing participants images of sick children was counterproductive, increasing their belief that vaccines are connected with autism.

Yes, but the “even” part is very misleading. Emotional pleas such as describing disease risks and showing images of or telling stories about children with diseases all increased this belief, but education refuting a link successfully reduced that same belief. 

From the article:

“Autism correction” is most effective in reducing agreement with the autism misperception. Strong agreement declines from a predicted probability of 8.9% to 5.1% (and likewise for other response options). By contrast, the predicted probability of strong agreement increases to 12.6% for “Disease images.” Similarly, the predicted probability of believing serious side effects from MMR are very likely increased from 7.7% among control subjects to 13.8% in the “Disease narrative” condition.

This combination of results tells us a lot about what is happening when people are confronted with different strategies, yet nothing Watson wrote went beyond the few bits she selected from the abstract.

For the second citation, Watson writes:

Last month, they conducted a similar test using the common belief that the flu vaccine causes the flu. The results were the same: correcting the misconception only decreased the subjects’ self-reported intention to get vaccinated.

But this is what the article’s abstract actually says:

Corrective information adapted from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website significantly reduced belief in the myth that the flu vaccine can give you the flu as well as concerns about its safety. However, the correction also significantly reduced intent to vaccinate among respondents with high levels of concern about vaccine side effects – a response that was not observed among those with low levels of concern.

After reading the article, I can tell you that the education measures worked across the board–in every concern level, educating people about the vaccine significantly reduced belief in the myth. However, those with the most concern about side effects dug in when it came to intent to vaccinate–not everybody, those with the most concern. (BTW, they didn’t conduct the test “last month”.)

These are finer points, but they are far from trivial. The details are what tell us what’s going on. I would not expect someone without an education in psychology to recognize the implications, although Abbie Smith, who reviewed the first study in a blog post last year, managed quite a bit of insight (which she wrote about with care, describing the findings in detail and not speculating beyond the what happened in the study).

And this is where the anti-intellectualism is most apparent in Rebecca’s piece:

At this point, we can only guess as to the reason why this happens.

No, Rebecca, at this point, you can only guess. So, if you don’t know why it happens, then nobody does?

To anyone who has studied decision making, reason, attention, or just about any area of social psychology for a few years, this statement is absurd. The pattern of results found in these two studies is exactly what I would have predicted. We have decades of research telling us why this happens.

Some brief explanations are provided right there in the articles’ discussion sections. The authors mention loss framing, danger priming, and other effects.

For a much more in-depth look, I will ask you to read Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. The nutshell is that people do all sorts of mental gymnastics to reduce something we call cognitive dissonance–a tension between contradictory attitudes or an attitude and a behavior–in ways that allow us to avoid changing the behavior or strongly-held attitude.

In this case, when those holding strong anti-vaccine attitudes accept that their expressed reasons (e.g., autism) for those attitudes are invalid, they simply find another reason to maintain the attitude (e.g., side effects).

People are invested in the choice not to vaccinate, not the reason for the choice.

This would be especially true for those who have acted on that choice. The alternative is to accept that they have put their children at risk for no reason.

So, although Watson is not incorrect in reporting that some approaches backfired, she failed to see or report the nuances in these findings that tell us why and what we might do about it. And there’s more that I would not expect a layperson to recognize.

These studies only measured attitudes immediately following education–education that worked in dispelling myths about those vaccines. What I would like to see is follow up research examining attitudes months or years afterward. What happens, for example, when people are educated, then given time to change their attitudes without threat to their egos and identities? I predict that a large portion of them will change their minds. Much of the resistance is probably rooted in ego threat. Giving people time and space may allow them to save face while changing the attitude to reduce the cognitive dissonance associated with the conflicting ideas.

Furthermore, in these laboratory studies, parents are asked to report their attitudes prior to the exposure to materials. This is a form of declaration, committing people to a viewpoint that they then feel compelled to defend. That’s not what happens in real world situations.

So her next paragraph…

Do people hold their anti-vaccination beliefs so deeply that correcting a misconception only encourages them to spend time digging around for another reason to hate vaccines? If so, then the answer may be to address the underlying reasons for the belief instead of the scientific facts.

How are these two sentences connected? That people find other reasons to maintain a behavior or attitude is not evidence that there is some hidden reason. And expressed reasons are precisely what what are addressed in the studies she cited. She’s come full-circle with nothing at all to show for it.

Cognitive dissonance and the unconscious strategies people use to reduce it are human nature. We cannot “address” human nature so easily. We can educate people about human nature and how it does not always lead us to the best decisions to meet our goals (and by “we”, I mean people who have studied human nature, such as social scientists with years of training and knowledge), but of course that’s a much broader goal. Increasing vaccination rates is a public safety issue that must be addressed with more urgency and specificity.

Finally, all of this came down to this one guess of hers:

For instance, perhaps the belief is rooted in a fear of government control over individual choices.

Um, seriously? This came out of nowhere as if she just didn’t have an ending to her story, or perhaps couldn’t come up with a good segue to get to the one thing that she meant to talk about: the California bill that may eliminate personal belief exemptions for unvaccinated kids to attend public schools. Rebecca’s logic is that if fear of vaccine harm is actually rooted in fear of government control, then the bill might make matters worse.

This is a huge leap. For one thing, she cites no research showing that fear of government control has anything to do with the average vaccine denier’s choices. Even if it did, the very research she cited shows that removing all government involvement in vaccination would not change intent to vaccinate (those with the most concern would simply find another thing to worry about). But more importantly, she begs the question:

But will the law (which already exists in West Virginia and Mississippi) only encourage the anti-government anti-vaccine activists to band together and renew their efforts to fight for their freedom to harm innocent kids?

Well, now, why not take a few minutes and do a little research to find out how laws affect vaccine rates?

According to Pew,  “states with the strictest immunization laws tend to have the highest immunization rates” (they have a nice graph sorted by vaccination rates and Mississippi is at the top).

Not surprising. People tend to follow the law, and if they want to send their kids to public schools, they must vaccinate. But does this change attitudes? I think a lot of people would say that they don’t care, as long as it changes the behavior, but I think we can all agree that changing the attitude would be best.

And stricter immunization laws will change attitudes and beliefs about vaccines. How do I know this? Simple: cognitive dissonance.

One early finding in studies of cognitive dissonance theory is that it is often easier for people to change an attitude than it is to change a behavior. We have seen numerous examples of this, not only on laboratory studies, but in real-world behaviors such as smoking and exercise habits. Once invested in a behavior, the attitude follows as a matter of reducing the tension because we are invested in the behavior, not the reason for the behavior.

In this case, the biggest thing currently in the way of attitude change is the personal belief exception. Remove that, and behaviors must change. Once behaviors change, attitudes will follow, especially with education, which will pave the way for attitude change by giving parents a way to engage in the behavior (of sending their child to public school) without dissonance. This is especially true when the parent has not declared their attitude prior to education, as they do in a laboratory study.

What the research cited suggests, when included in the context of decades of psychological research about the relationships among attitudes, behaviors, and values, is that a combination of stricter laws and education correcting myths about vaccines is not only highly likely to increase vaccination rates, it will also decrease perceptions of risk of harm from vaccines.  Giving people facts does indeed work. It works to educate people about facts. If you want them to change their attitudes, however, you need to dig a little bit deeper.

To head off what will surely be a the first thing Watson’s supporters will point out: what’s the difference we came to the same conclusion? Her argument is “I think we should try X because nothing else seems to work” and mine is that X is what the science suggests. Only one of these is a valid argument. The ends do not justify the means.

The New Anti-Intellectualism

The implication that just anyone can write about this stuff with authority is the kind of anti-intellectualism I’m referring to in the title.

And before you assume that I am saying that skeptics have nothing to say, think again. Pseudoscience and fraud, the core of skepticism, are not science. Skepticism is a field in and of itself, very distinct from science. It includes scientific thinking and it benefits, as every field does, from the products of science, but it is not science.

This piece is poorly researched, weak, and reads like a book report that someone started, put away, then suddenly realized it was due and wrote the rest while the other kids were watching a film in class. A big part of that is the fact that Watson simply does not know the field, something she has demonstrated repeatedly. Yet, knowing her track record in this area, CFI decided to commission and publish this. The poor quality of the piece is a side effect of overconfidence coupled with a lack of expertise, but it further points to a huge drop in standards by SI Online. Not that SI hasn’t published some misses in the past, but this sad little piece is just one of many lesser-quality articles recently appearing there, including one in which the author describes party/county fair psychics as harmless fun.

So, am I saying journalists and other non-scientists (e.g., skeptics) should never write about science? No, I am not.

It is fine for non-experts to write on topics when they do so with great care. I cannot stress this enough.

A non-expert can do a great job when they do a proper amount of research by talking with experts (rather than spending a few minutes Googling and picking sentences out of abstracts that one believes supports one’s already-formed opinion), when they discuss experiments and studies accurately without omitting important details, when they properly credit the sources of ideas and opinions, when they follow what they find rather than start with a conclusion and attempt to support it, and when they refrain from stating their personal opinions as authoritative. Watson rarely appears to do any of those things when she writes about science. She simply writes and speaks with an air of confidence and that seems to be enough to make some people think that she is clever and knowledgeable.

Good science journalism allows the researchers’ voices to be heard, not the author’s. Think about that.

I have written before about the dangers and hypocrisy of speaking and writing on topics which require expertise one does not have (here, here, and here, for example–two of which are also about Rebecca Watson). It’s actually a topic that has received a lot of coverage, from Massimo Pigliucci’s talk at TAM8 to articles by Daniel Loxton (yes, I’ve linked to them both before and for good reason). I expect to see this kind of thing all over the blogosphere, but to see it on the Skeptical Inquirer’s site is disheartening, especially on the heels of other pieces that fall far below their old standards.

As I stated in this post more than three years ago, we (skeptics in general) criticize Jenny McCarthy and Bill Maher because they don’t have the expertise to make the statements they make. We criticize “the Food Babe” and many, many others for the same reasons. We tell people not to take medical advice from a Playboy Bunny and a talk show host, yet we (skeptics again) give a microphone to a blogger to talk about the psychology of vaccine denial simply because she calls herself “Skepchick”? How is this justified?

Now, I am perfectly aware that many people don’t believe that psychology is a science or that expertise in the field is actually a thing. I deal with that kind of anti-intellectualism every day. But I am still stunned when I see such blatant disregard for it among people and organizations who wave the flag of “listen to the experts” when it suits their purposes. CFI, you should be ashamed.

Those of us who are old enough to remember the “Parts is Parts” and “Where’s the Beef?” campaigns are well aware that there are many, many myths about McDonald’s. I think that we can all agree that busting them is a good idea. But it is questionable whether McDonald’s should be the ones doing the busting and even more questionable if they are going about it in a way that’s beneficial for them.

First, let’s talk about the myths, most of which seem to hinge on the fact that the meat is ground. In all cases, I’m talking about the products sold at McDonald’s in the U.S.

1. Chicken McNuggets and other chicken items are made from leftover “parts” of the chicken. The truth: not anymore. Since 2003 the McNuggets at McDonald’s have been made with white breast meat. Even before 2003, the suggestion that McNuggets were made from “parts” is misleading. They were always made from meat.

2. McDonald’s hamburgers are made from “pink slime”. The truth: there is no “pink slime” in McDonald’s products today. However, pink slime gets a bad wrap.

3. McRibs and/or McDonald’s hamburgers are made from lips, eyeballs, and other non-meat parts. The truth: McDonald’s hamburgers are 100% beef, meaning meat, and the McRib is 100% pork. There are some other ingredients, such as preservatives, but no other cow or pig parts.

4. McDonald’s hamburgers are full of harmful chemicals, which you can tell because they don’t rot. The truth: McDonald’s hamburgers don’t rot the way that most homemade burgers will, but this is because the patties are thin and flat. These patties become dehydrated quickly, which keeps bacteria and mold from growing. The Burger Lab has a great piece describing some solid experiments testing this.

I’m sure there are more, but you get the idea.

McDonald’s has had to deal with these kinds of rumors, myths, and half-truths for decades. The company and its products have been attacked in films, on television, and online. So I guess it should be no surprise that they have begun to combat these claims with a myth-busting campaign.

You may have noticed their commercials recently. They feature people approaching an interactive poster on the street to ask it a question. The poster displays the text “Our food. Your questions.” or “What are your questions about our food?” along with the McDonald’s logo. The people in the ads ask questions such as:

“Does McDonald’s even sell real food?”
“What is really in your beef?”
“I’ve read that there is horse meat in your food.”
“Would you feed McDonald’s to your own family?”
“Pink slime. What’s up with that?”

People are encouraged to go online to get the answers. They have even hired former Mythbusters cast member Grant Imahara to create videos in which some of the questions are answered.

I have my doubts that this campaign will do good things for McDonald’s, for three main reasons.

1. The commercials are off-putting. They show people asking questions, but the answers are not given. This is problematic for several reasons, including that it makes people think that other people think McDonald’s is crappy, scary, or dishonest. Not only is public opinion is extremely influential on the views of individuals, but many people watching the commercials may never have considered those questions before. Now they have the questions, but no answers.
    
   Not in the commercials, but at the beginning of one of Imahara’s videos, several people are shown talking to the interactive poster, saying things like, “I think it’s disgusting” and “Can’t eat at McDonald’s based on what’s in the food.”
2. I’m not sure where the videos with Imahara are being promoted. They are posted on McDonald’s YouTube channel, but are not featured prominently on their website. It appears that the company is relying on media, both mainstream and social, to carry the message to everyone, including those who have seen the commercials. That’s a huge risk.
3. There are some specific challenges to the honest, straightforward, skeptical approach that I doubt McDonald’s has considered. Skeptical activists (and scientists) have to deal with these, but our goals are quite different from McDonald’s. If what you want to do is sell hamburgers, this approach is probably not the best idea.
    
   One of the main problems is something called the “Familiarity Effect”. People tend to favor what’s familiar over what is unfamiliar. The old adage is true: familiarity breeds comfort. For example, when we see a list of judges on a ballot and we know nothing about any of them, we are most likely to vote for the person whose name graced the bulk of lawn signs we’ve seen recently. This effect is often used by advertisers to increase sales. Ads which repeat the product or company name often and those which maintain a “catch phrase” or reuse the same jingle year after year promote familiarity. But the same effect can work against the advertiser.

   A more specific version of Familiarity is the “Propaganda Effect”. This is the well-established tendency for people to rate familiar statements as true, even if they have been told at some point that those statements are false. We remember much less of what we take in than most people think, and when something sounds familiar, but we don’t recall where we heard it, familiarity often wins.

   An even more specific version of this is called the “Backfire Effect”. This is the name given to the phenomenon that skeptics often must face: when we are debunking a myth, we quite often expose individuals to the myth for the first time. This exposure makes the myth familiar, so that the next time they encounter it, if they fail to recall the context in which they heard about it (which is very, very common), they are more likely to believe it than they would have if we had never tried to debunk it in the first place. It’s a bit of a paradox. You can’t debunk something without first revealing it.

   This campaign tells people “Here’s what some people thought was true”. Even after debunking or explaining the full truth, the myths are now familiar to everyone who sees the commercials and/or videos.

4. The last problem is, in my opinion, the biggest: the videos themselves can be off-putting to many. I admit to being put off by them myself. I generally try to curb my own curiosity about things such as where hot dogs come from because I know that if I knew, I’d be less likely to want to eat one. And I like hot dogs.
    
   Just to give you an idea, if I have to cook with fresh meat of any kind, I tend to do a lot of surgery. I do this when I’m eating, too. Ever seen someone just stick a chicken leg in their mouth and pull out a clean bone? I can’t eat after watching that. If it’s got a piece of fat on it, I’m not eating it. And if I spent any significant time thinking about the fact that what I’m eating was once a living, breathing, creature with eyes that ate and pooped and oinked or mooed, I’m quite sure that I would join my vegetarian friends and stop eating meat altogether. I can’t visit a meat packing plant. I had a friend whose family owned one and I had a hard time just sitting outside.

   And I know I’m not alone.

   These videos show large hunks of meat, fat and all, being ground up and pressed. The meat is not the bright pink color you see at the supermarket, where they take great pains to make the meat look appetizing. It’s pale, it’s ugly, and it all looks like sausage. When you get a burger at McDonald’s, you can barely see the patty in it. I’m okay with that. But these videos may even turn a skeptic like me away from the chain forever.

Screenshot from “What are McRib patties made from?” http://youtu.be/PJoMzhStPNk

McDonald’s is probably well aware that this campaign was a big gamble. But there have been some benefits. People are talking about McDonald’s more. And the videos are educational. But how many people are actually going to watch the videos? What’s the profile of people willing to watch? Is is mostly people who are worried about the claims, or skeptics like me? How many watching the videos will be turned off by seeing the meat processed, instead of feeling better about it? These are questions I can’t answer, but it will be interesting to see how it all shakes out in the end.

Just the color of the room can play a huge role in how we feel and act. Paint the walls blue, and studies show you may be more creative. Paint them red, and you may be more vigilant or more sexy. Change to green to calm yourself down. But if you really want something off the wall, paint those walls a certain shade of pink.

I call Bullshit.

This is a quote from a CBS News segment posted online last year.

They are hardly the first to make such claims. My husband, who is an art director by trade, was taught many of these myths as fact in his color theory course at Savannah College of Art and Design. You can find claims like these in books, magazines (including self-described science-based magazines), and all over the internet. They are so ubiquitous that I made the effects of color on emotion my first research project as a psychology undergrad, then continued the work for more than a decade, including a Master’s thesis on the topic.

But 95% of them are bullshit.

What you’ll find when you look up the sources cited (if there are any) for most of these claims is usually a book written by a man named Faber Birren, which includes a list of citations of journal articles, most of which were written by him. And what you’ll find when you read these articles is that his research methods are seriously, seriously flawed. In fact, most research on color is seriously flawed, usually because the researcher(s) failed to consider the anatomy of the eye and the very meaning of “color”–what it is and how it is produced. One need not earn PhDs in physics and physiology, but some basic knowledge of the visible light spectrum is needed, as is an understanding of the way cells in the retina are structured.

I won’t go into those things here, of course, but I will warn you that once you’re armed with that knowledge, a lot of these claims don’t make much sense.

When I set out to study this problem all those years ago, I noted three fundamental challenges that most researchers failed to meet:

1. Defining colors: Much of the older research uses simple terms like “blue” and “red”, which ignores properties of color such as saturation and brightness. There is no way for another researcher to replicate a study without very specific information about the colors used, how they were produced, and how they were displayed. It is also rare in the literature to find control of ambient lighting.



2. Defining emotions: Emotion is not as simple as most of us tend to think. For example, think about what “grief” means to you. Is it a quiet, calm feeling? Is it the urge to curl up in a ball? Or is it a loud, angry feeling–the urge to hit something?
3. Eliminating alternative hypotheses for outcomes: This is perhaps the most important and most challenging issue for any research, but it is especially challenging in the social sciences. Much of the research on color fails miserably when it comes to eliminating other, more plausible explanations for outcomes. For example, in some studies, people were simply asked, “How does this color make you feel?” The participant then provides a cognitive appraisal that includes learned associations of the color with emotions. They think about what that color means to them and make a decision about it. That’s not an emotional reaction to color. It’s an emotional reaction to associations they have with the color.

Once I addressed these issues in my own research, my findings were fairly consistent across experiments and over time, even when I addressed them in different ways. If you are interested, you can find an explanation of some of my experiments here.

What’s more, what I found certainly does not support the vast majority of claims about how color affects emotion and it does not support most of what was stated in this CBS piece. Let’s look at each claim and compare them to what I found in repeated experiments.

Just the color of the room can play a huge role in how we feel and act.

Well, that’s just a presumptuous and vague statement and, in my opinion, it is simply not true.

Paint the walls blue, and studies show you may be more creative.

Uh, no. I’m not even sure where this one came from. I’ve never seen a study with that outcome and I’d be very surprised if there was one that couldn’t be ripped to shreds by a mild critique. Many of these myths seem to have sprung from cultural associations.

While I was studying the effects of color on emotion as a psychology undergrad, I studied cultural associations with color as part of a minor in anthropology. It’s a fascinating topic. Data from the original World Color Survey in the 1970s suggested that the more complex a society, the more colors distinct colors they recognized with different names. I suspected that their associations with color (e.g., red with anger) would follow a similar pattern. I used a wonderful tool called the Human Relations Area Files [HRAF] to search ethnographies for references to color associations.

My hypothesis was supported, but what I also found interesting was that associations for a few basic colors were very similar. Red was almost always associated with vitality of some sort, black with danger or evil, and white with goodness and purity. This would make sense, given that darkness can be dangerous and blood, which is essential for life, is red. However, as the colors moved away from these basic colors, the associations were more and more diverse. In some cultures blue was associated with calm, in some with energy.

Paint them red, and you may be more vigilant or more sexy.

This is perhaps the only claim that even comes close to reality. The findings of my studies have not always shown effects, but when they do, red is always the most arousing. It usually produces more arousal than yellow and blue. But “arousing” does not mean “sexy”. Sexual arousal is only one type, one context, of arousal. All arousal means is that your heart is beating a little faster than when you are not aroused (and there other physical, measurable responses).

Change to green to calm yourself down.

And this is where they totally blow it. Another consistent finding in my research is that green is often more arousing than yellow and blue. It sometimes not statistically different from red, in fact. It does differ from red in that it is usually rated as more pleasant (participants don’t know that they are rating a color).

When you understand the opponent properties of retinal ganglion cells, this makes sense. The idea that red is arousing while green is calming does not.

But if you really want something off the wall, paint those walls a certain shade of pink.

And this is where I have to laugh. As the piece notes, there are entire books written about “Baker-Miller Pink”, the shade of pink used to paint a set of prison cells because the warden was certain that the color was responsible for a calmer inmate population. The problem? No well-designed and replicated research supports this claim. Furthermore, given that pink is simply a light shade of red, this effect would contradict all of my findings.

But what you really want to know is how color affects emotions, right? You want to know what color to paint your bedroom walls?

Paint them any color you like.

You see, while I have found reliable differences in emotions due to hue (and sometimes brightness), the effects are fleeting. The human visual system adapts so quickly that once you’ve spent a few minutes, or even a few seconds, in a room, any effects the color had on your body are pretty much gone. In fact, when you’re paying attention to another person, a television, a computer screen, a task, or anything else, you’re no longer even processing the color of the walls.

If you are not an educator, please help spread the word about this wonderful opportunity.

If you ARE an educator, would you like to bring more skepticism and critical thinking into your classroom? Would you like to be inspired, energized, and informed? The Amaz!ng Meeting 2014 is a great place to meet other educators, gather materials (including printed copies of the JREF’s education modules for classroom use), pick up tips, and be inspired.

The Amaz!ng Meeting is attended by people from all walks of life and all over the globe. Speakers include scientists, philosophers, journalists, educators, activists, and even entertainers. Simply put, The Amaz!ng Meeting is James Randi Educational Foundation’s yearly celebration of science, education, and critical thinking. Educators who attend TAM will be able to bring what they have learned into the classroom.

In addition to three days of superb talks and panel discussions, TAM 2014 offers a full day of workshops, including two which will focus on incorporating skeptical thinking lessons into classrooms. This year’s theme, “Skepticism and the Brain” promises to be especially valuable to educators. And the JREF would like to help you join in!

In an effort to expand our promotion of education and the development of future critical thinkers, the JREF established the TAM Teacher Scholarship Fund in 2013. As many readers know, I am an educational programs consultant for the JREF and will be responsible for this project. The fund will pay the registration fees for a limited number (to be determined by donations received by June 15, 2014) of educators to attend The Amaz!ng Meeting 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada, July 10-13.

The best news is that due to the generosity of the skeptical community, we are already on our way to awarding grants and we have a pledge from one donor, Brian Walker, to send at least TEN more teachers to TAM 2014!

Details regarding eligibility, how to apply, and what to expect can be found here.
If you would like to help send teachers to TAM 2014, you can do so here. Every little bit helps! Donations made after June 15, 2014 will be distributed to TAM 2015 grant recipients.

Each individual has the ability to make judgments about what is “right”, in terms of what is true or correct and in terms of what is moral or ethical. These judgments are the basis for personal knowledge and for personal moral codes. The terms “rational” and “irrational” can apply in either case.

Skepticism is about shared knowledge, but the process of gaining shared knowledge can be easily mapped onto shared morality.

In science, the closest that we can come to what is right (as in “correct”) is whatever the consensus of experts in the field say is most likely right. This is one of the reasons that I cite for why conclusions-based activism is not good skepticism.

You see, the problem is that everybody thinks that their beliefs (i.e., what they hold to be true) are correct; that’s the very definition of “belief”. What’s more is that everybody thinks that they arrived at their beliefs through logic and evaluation of evidence. Everyone. This is a problem because unless we all agree, we cannot all be “right”. So, anyone who insists that their beliefs be adopted by everyone is basically saying “I know the absolute truth for certain,” which is the ultimate display of arrogance and irrationality.

So where does that put skeptical activism? Right where we left it, because good skeptical activism addresses the questions, not the answers. As I have discussed in several blog posts now, good skepticism doesn’t involve telling people that there is no such thing as ghosts or psychic abilities. It involves examining evidence and providing alternative explanations for phenomena. It involves education about this method.

On rare occasions when Skepticism (big-S refers to organized skeptical activism & scientific skepticism) addresses conclusions, it does so because an overwhelming scientific consensus is common knowledge and the consequences of failing to recognize that consensus are potentially very harmful. Again, this is rare; some examples that come to mind are vaccine safety and climate change.

Shared knowledge demands the consensus of those with expertise who have followed a number of steps designed to reduce the impact of human biases and heuristics. It is a process that works slowly, but works well overall.

Moral judgments are not very different from judgments about truth. Good moral reasoning uses critical thinking (i.e., considering plausible alternatives and hidden facts) and is open-minded. As with reasoning about facts, moral reasoning is subject to a number of biases and heuristics which favor what we currently believe and what we want to believe.

As with reasoning about facts, arrogance and cognitive laziness are sources of irrational behavior. We fail to consider long-term ramifications of moral judgments, especially when we choose to act on them. For example, we fail to consider that there may be trade-offs between safety and personal freedoms (think TSA). We fail to consider what we may not know about a situation. We fail to recognize fraud, framing, and spin, especially if the outcome supports our views. We fail to hold our views tentatively while we consider alternatives and we favor the choices that promote our personal goals (e.g., allow us to keep our friendships intact).

As with reasoning about facts, human beings will jump through all kinds of hoops to reconcile conflicting attitudes and actions so that we can maintain our self-image. We justify, rationalize, redefine, backpedal, redirect, and use all of those other wonderful self-deception tools.

As with reasoning about facts, if we don’t all agree on what’s right/righteous, then we can’t all be right/righteous.

As with reasoning about “facts” almost everyone believes that their own moral compass points to what is righteous.

So how do we have justice? Where do we get shared morality? Through something we call the justice system.

Like science, the justice system is imperfect, but self-correcting. Laws are created and changed as culture changes and mistakes are made. It is complex, but built on a strong foundation (in the U.S., we have the constitution) and flexible.

Like science, we are all responsible for providing fuel and direction. In science, that includes the problems that human beings need solved, such as the technology to explore outer space. This dictates priorities for science and encourages the growth of funding sources. In morality, it’s changing culture and technological advances that provide priorities and encourage changes in laws.

Science provides a framework that is adopted outside of the formal process (e.g., academic research and publishing) in many ways. We use scientific methods to investigate crimes and to produce technology. Likewise, the legal process inspires policies such as rules and regulations in employment situations and grievance processes.

Again, both of these are imperfect systems.

However, given all of their imperfections and our tendency to discard them when convenient, science is the best system we have for gaining and sorting out shared knowledge (what’s right) and the system based on our constitution is the best system we have for dealing with issues of justice (what’s righteous).

Whether science or the justice system, when it does not tell us what we want to hear, human beings tend to leave it behind. And that’s a mistake.

Skeptical activism is about promoting scientific consensus and the methods used to achieve it. It’s about limiting the impact of those who choose to circumvent those methods.

This is my tiny effort to limit the impact of those who choose to circumvent methods of shared morality.

At The Amaz!ng Meeting 5, James Randi announced that future meetings would be held in the summer to ensure that more educators would be able to attend. However, the costs associated with large conventions are still a barrier to many. Teaching is a notoriously under-paid profession and, while many schools provide funds for professional development, those funds are often inadequate and their use is usually restricted.

The JREF would like to relieve some of that burden, and you can help.

The TAM Educator Grant is now accepting donations of any size (every little bit helps!). Like all donations to the JREF, these are tax deductable. However, these donations will only be used for the purpose of sending teachers to The Amaz!ng Meeting.

Please visit the website for more details about this very worthy cause.

If you are a teacher, or studying to become a teacher, and would like to apply for one of these grants, the details and a link to apply can also be found here.

Special thanks to volunteer Dale Roy of Granite State Skeptics for her efforts on this project.

‘Infographics’ seem to be the hot thing lately and they really, really bother me. I am usually fine with funny ones, but too often they portray a warped view of the world which is designed for the advancement of an agenda. I may even agree with that agenda, but whenever I see summations with percentages and shocking titles, my skeptical senses tingle.

My example is not quite an ‘infographic’, but the problems are the same: where do the numbers come from and do they mean what they appear to mean? Campaigns rely on the fact that people, in general, are cognitive misers. We generally will not go out of their way to analyze information, especially if it speaks to our world view.

Today a friend posted this on Facebook with the comment that we should be able to trust the data because the source is UNICEF. As usual, the headline itself is grossly misleading, but this is not apparent unless you click through it. I did and found myself on another non-UNICEF page which included more details and a link to the UNICEF press release.

First, let me make the point that the accuracy of data are not usually the biggest problem. Yes, people make up stuff and that stuff gets quoted, etc., but you don’t need to make up numbers to mislead people. How the data are manipulated and framed are the more common problems with these kinds of reports. Looking at the report that my friend posted, although data may be accurate, the frame is questionable and should be insulting to someone who is actually living in poverty. It is not, in my opinion, a measure of the proportion of children “living in poverty”.

I was prepared to take on the information in the press release, but when I read it I discovered that there was a layer of ‘warping’ between UNICEF and the other reports. The release describes a combination of two measures of ‘poverty’. Of course, one needs to download and at least skim the full report to get the big picture, and who is going to do that? Well, I will, of course, but first let me address the report that was posted to my friend’s page.

Image provided in the UNICEF press kit for their "Report Card" on poverty.

This report cherry-picked one of the measures – the one they could most easily use to twist into an image of the U.S. as not-so-child-friendly.

I take issue with such manipulation. Science is too easily abused for the purposes of selling something, even with good intentions. Although evoking sympathy may prompt people to act, it also warps our views of reality. If we cannot view information objectively, we cannot make the best decisions about how to use the resources at our disposal to meet our goals. In the end, everyone loses.

The definition of ‘poverty’ used in this situation is “living in a household in which disposable income, when adjusted for family size and composition, is less than 50% of the national median income”. In other words, they took the income for each household in the country, subtracted an estimate of the cost of basic expenses and adjusted it for family size/structure to determine ‘disposable income’ (more on that later), divided all of the households in half according to the resulting value, then counted the children in each group. They did this for each country separately. Then they ranked the countries accordingly.

There was no standard for ‘poverty’ applied to all countries, so the comparison is severely limited in terms of what it can tell us. The UNICEF report notes a number of justifications for their choices, mostly related the problems associated with alternative measures. I agree with many of their notes about other measures, but that does not solve the problems associated with this measure. In addition, their methodology for determining disposable income and adjusting for family size and structure was very questionable and involved a complicated formula that I will not even attempt to explain.

They found that, in the U.S.A., just over 23% of the children live in households in the bottom half. Frankly, I was surprised by this number. I thought that it would be much higher. It means that more than 3 out of 4 children live in households with an above-average amount of disposable income!

The comparison states that there are 34 other countries in which the proportion of children in the top half of the country’s households in terms of disposable income is higher than the proportion in the U.S.

Poverty, in this analysis, does not mean what the dictionary or Wikipedia say it means (“…an economic condition of lacking both money and basic necessities needed to successfully live, such as food, water, education, healthcare, and shelter.”), yet people will still think of it as such.

This is poor perspective.

The report provided justifications for the 50% threshold, however, I cannot help but be reminded of how often someone is shocked when they hear a report that 50% of people are below average in some desirable measure. It seems to me that no matter how much is done to improve the lives of those children, we will always have a ‘bottom half’. This is one of the problems with framing things in relative terms.

Of course we want all children to prosper, but just as we want everyone to have an above-average IQ, we cannot achieve such a thing when we define our goals in relative terms. The only way to increase the number of children in the upper half of that distribution is to increase the number of adults in the lower half. That’s tough when you consider that adults need to care for children, so nobody who cares for children can be in the lower half, either.

Perhaps that bottom half should be made up entirely of childless, middle-aged people? Or the elderly?

As the press release noted, the UNICEF includes two measures of ‘poverty’. The other measure defined poverty in a standardized manner which was more consistent with the traditional definition. They listed 14 items which were considered essential and considered a child to be “living in poverty” if they lacked two or more of those items. However, this analysis was limited to European countries. So, there is nothing in the report that tells us the proportion of children in the U.S. who are living in poverty as it is traditionally defined. Nothing.

Furthermore, the original post and the one it linked to suggest that we don’t take care of our children. Programs like National School Lunch Program (established in 1946), Head Start, and even basic public assistance are designed to provide those basic necessities, yet receiving them does not affect whether they are considered “living in poverty” by the UNICEF definition, which considers reported income.

Whether or not you believe those programs are sufficient is not something I am even qualified to argue about and not the point. I think that efforts to promote social programs, something which requires some political maneuvering and framing, have redefined what “poverty” means. That may have helped sell those programs, but in the long run we need to readjust in order to see things the way they are. My point is that losing perspective is never a good thing. In the end, we need to see reality if we are to determine how best to distribute resources and services to achieve goals like reducing economic disparity.

When we talk about poverty, I would like to see a more nuanced approach. For example, the most common measure of need used by public schools is whether a child qualifies for the National School Lunch program. Children who are homeless are lumped in with kids whose parents may struggle to make ends meet, but have enough to eat, clothing, shoes, a roof over their heads, and even cell phones. I do not mean to minimize the problems of people who are barely scraping by, but when their problems are not distinguishable from those who are literally going without essentials, that is shameful.

In an age in which many teens and young adults seem to equate criticism and not getting what they want with disrespect, it should not be surprising that some argue for unconditional positive regard in education and elsewhere. However, criticism is essential to gaining knowledge.

I am sure that most people have not thought much about why it’s called “critical thinking” and, when asked, would probably assume that “critical” refers to its importance (especially skeptics). However, they would only be partially correct. “Critical” means “crucial”, but it also refers to discriminating judgments. Critical thinking is a process in which we distinguish accurate information from inaccurate information and/or determine the best course of action given a set of possibilities.

The reason criticism is so important is a bit abstract, but it can be at least partially illustrated through the principle of falsification. Essentially, attempting to falsify a hypothesis is the best way to determine if it is likely to be true.

Most skeptics are familiar with the confirmation bias, which is the very strong human tendency to favor confirming information. We notice, remember, believe, and assign more weight to information that confirms what we already believe to be true than other information. What is discussed less often is how this bias extends to how we seek knowledge and test hypotheses. Humans tend to experiment to determine relationships in the world, but we do so in a confirmatory manner when a better approach is to attempt to falsify. That is, we tend to try this or try that to see what happens. However, the best test of a hypothesis is one in which the outcome tells us what is likely to be true by eliminating other possibilities. This is how science works most of the time and I think that we can agree that science works better than any other method.

A good illustration of this human tendency is the Wason 4-Card Task. Fortunately, it is also a good way to explain why falsification is ideal.

In the Wason 4-Card Task (A.K.A. the Wason Selection Task), participants are given the following problem:

There are four cards in front of you, each with a letter on one side and a number on the other side. The rule is: If there is a vowel on one side of a card, then there must be an even number on the other side.

Which cards must be turned over to determine if the rule holds true? (How many cards, minimum, and which ones?) 

The most popular answers in this task are the E and 4 cards or just the E card. This demonstrates an approach to hypothesis testing which is confirmatory in nature. That is, we search for examples of the first condition, then confirm that the second condition is met. This is similar to how most people deal with other types of questions, such as whether or not a pill reduces headache pain. How would you find out? Should you take the pill when you have headache pain, then judge the pill effective if the pain is gone an hour later?

Unfortunately, this approach is not a very effective means of gaining knowledge. To understand why, let’s look at what we can learn from turning over each card.

Only the bold information tells us anything about whether the rule holds true or not and only in the cases in which it is violated do we learn something meaningful enough to draw a conclusion. The correct answer to the basic Wason Task is that both the E and 7 cards are required. The E card can confirm the rule, but what is important is that it, and the 7 card, have the ability to falsify it. Turning over the 4 card is unnecessary because the rule does not even apply unless it has been followed, therefore, we learn nothing interesting.

If my statement about is confusing, you are not alone. This task is one of the most well-studied in the field of cognitive psychology, yet why humans are so bad at it is still a bit of a mystery. One of the hypotheses is that people have a difficult time recognizing that the rule is not bi-directional. In other words, the rule is:

If there is a vowel on one side, there is an even number on the other side.

it is NOT:

If there is a vowel on one side, there is an even number on the other side and vice-versa.

However, when conditional statements like this are made, we often assume that they are bi-directional unless we have context which tells us otherwise. For example, rules like these provide context which suggests more than what is stated:

If it is Monday, then the banks are open.

If I buy a ticket, I will win something in the raffle.

Because we have schemas that tell us that banks are open on weekdays (at least), we understand that the reverse of the first conditional (If the banks are open, then it is Monday) is not necessarily true. In the second conditional, our knowledge of how raffles work tells us that a raffle ticket must have been purchased if the author won something in it. In each case, however, we are not evaluating the statements on their own merit. We introduce information from our knowledge base. The problem with this kind of reasoning is that we assume that our knowledge is accurate.

When these statements are included in arguments, we draw conclusions based, at least in part, on our current understanding of the world, which could be wrong.

One example that I often used in class illustrates how strong this bias can be and how it affects our ability to determine cause and effect relationships. Given the following argument, students are asked to judge whether the argument is valid or invalid. They are reminded that “valid” refers only to whether the argument is logically sound and not whether the statements within it are true (truth is a separate property):

Major Premise: If I learn a lot, I will get a good grade on the test. 

Minor Premise: I got a good grade on the test.

Conclusion: Therefore, I learned a lot. 

On its surface, the argument appears valid. However, it is not. There is nothing in the major premise to indicate that learning is the only way to get a good grade on the test – that learning is required for a good grade. It merely states that learning will guarantee one. Unfortunately, some dedicated students who have successfully used flash cards and other rehearsal techniques in courses in which memorization is helpful – introductory courses with multiple-choice exams and so forth – will assume that this method of studying equates to learning. When they fail in a more rigorous upper-division course in which conceptual understanding is necessary, they will be unlikely to attribute that failure to their study methods.

Going back to the example of how to determine if a pill takes away your headache pain, the method most people follow is to turn over the E card and nothing else. If your headache pain does not go away (outcome: an odd number), then you will know that the pill doesn’t work. However, what if the headache does go away? Is it possible that headaches go away on their own? Could taking the pill induce a placebo effect? What you need is to design an experiment in which you can eliminate all other possibilities (headaches go away by themselves, placebo effects, etc.). What you need to do is set the pill up to fail. If the headache goes away when it should (turning over the E card and finding an even number) AND it does not go away when it should not (turning over the 7 card and finding a consonant), then we can conclude that the pill worked.

The confirmational approach is like asking a psychic to predict the flip of a coin, but only counting the times in which the psychic was correct. This is an excellent way to find out if they have supernatural powers, but only if you also know the rate at which they are incorrect. When skeptics test psychics, they compare the outcome to what would be expected by chance. If they can consistently outperform blind guessing, the only logical conclusion is that they must not be guessing. To eliminate alternative explanations, skeptics ensure that the psychic is not receiving information from other sources such as body language cues.

Now, what does all of this have to do with criticism?

What science does, both in single studies and as a general process, is eliminate incorrect hypotheses. In general, scientists come up with likely hypotheses and theories based on what we are reasonably certain is true (as many as humanly possible), then eliminate them until only one remains. We eliminate them by finding faults with them, by demonstrating that they can’t be true (or are highly unlikely to be true).

Critical thinking works this way, too. The most effective process of evaluating information is one which looks for faults, inconsistencies, and weaknesses. Applying critical thinking to plans and ideas, otherwise we waste resources and time as well as risk harm. After we have completed a project, even a successful one, analysis should not focus on “what we did right”. We can’t know why we succeeded without comparisons to similar situations in which we failed. Focusing on what we think is good is like counting the “hits” and ignoring the “misses”.

Tuesday I returned home from my third Dragon*Con, “the largest multi-media, popular culture convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film in the universe!” I’m not a big fan of crowds, so I probably would not choose to attend such an event without getting something significant out of it. In this case, I certainly do.

For those new to the community (and this blog), Skepticism is well-represented at Dragon*Con thanks to Derek Colanduno and Robynn (Swoopy) McCarthy of Skepticality. Derek is the director for Skeptrack, the skeptic fan track at Dragon*Con, with the help of Swoopy (who directs the podcasting track) and a number of awesome staff. The track began as a few talks/panels on the Science Track and grew quickly, claiming a large room of its own. Equipment on loan from AburptMedia, along with some handy technicians (who, along with Derek, Swoopy, and the rest of the staff, donate their time) make it possible to stream the Skeptrack content in one’s home on another continent.

This year I participated in five events, including one on the Science Track. This was half as many as last year, so I was able to attend many more of the other talks and panels. But don’t get me wrong – I am quite satisfied that my work was productive and was very glad to be a spectator as others, particularly Phil Plait and Pamela Gay, appeared to run from room to room and talk themselves hoarse as I did at D*C 2010.

I particularly enjoyed a “quiz show” hosted by Brian Thompson called Wait! Wait! Don’t Fool Me! with contestants Phil Plait, Rebecca Watson, George Hrab, and Blake Smith. Tears were streaming down my face, I laughed so hard. Another great show was a series of cool science demos which reminded me of my childhood visits to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and the Museum of Science in Boston. Matt Lowry walked on glass! Here’s a short video of some of what I saw:
 

A panel about activism was mostly excellent, with D.J. Grothe echoing some of the concerns about which I have written recently, but a few statements rubbed me the wrong way. In particular, Brian Brushwood appeared to advocate for “trying anything” without thought to whether it would accomplish any goals or finding out whether it’s been done before by someone who can offer advice. We need innovation, but careless abandon is dangerous and wasteful. Resources are limited and risks are always involved. Another point that was raised was that many people new to skepticism are concerned primarily with issues of religion. I fail to see the relevance of this point. All of the major organizations defend science and science education (e.g., evolution). All of the major organizations debunk testable claims with religious content (e.g., faith healing). Most importantly, however, there are many atheist organizations for those who would like to attack religion or make religion a focus. The idea that defending the focus and scope of skepticism somehow ties the hands of individuals is a bit silly. All of the major skeptic organizations limit their missions to testable claims for reasons which have nothing to do with the threat level or pervasiveness of the claim. The focus on evidence, not conclusions, is a matter of scientific integrity. But of course I have said all of this before.

Two other talks that did not disappoint were given by Genie Scott and Jonathan Strickland of How Stuff Works. Scott gave a fascinating history of creationism and Strickland covered consumer skepticism of tech products. Both were excellent.

A quick summary of the events in which I participated:

The Surprising Science of Self-Esteem – I admit that I was a bit nervous about the attendance for this talk, even though it was a terrific time slot (Friday night at 7pm) on the Science Track. It isn’t the kind of title that would attract me, but my hope was that some of the audience would be deterred from some of the self-esteem boosting BS that I’ve seen, which was more likely if they were there expecting to hear about it. I also pimped the talk to all of the friends I could find beforehand. It’s a topic I have spent a great deal of time with recently and I put quite a bit of work into the material for this talk. Of course the track itself is a draw and the room was packed as always.

I opened by warning the audience that I had misled them a bit. I was planning to talk about self-esteem, but more of the hour would be devoted to something related, but different: narcissism. I do not know if anyone was disappointed; unfortunately, an hour is just not enough time to cover the topic the way I’d wanted to cover it and there was no time for Q & A. Judging by the response (and the sharp victory cry of “YES!” from one audience member when I said, “If you were hoping for a motivational speech, you’ll be disappointed”), most in the audience were glad they stayed.

I will be writing about the topic and my talk in a series of blog posts. In the meantime, a few signs that you might be a narcissist:

• Your name is part of the title and/or URL of your blog (unless you are a best-selling author).
• Your resume is padded with exaggerated or imaginary accomplishments.
• You are as concerned with what your date is wearing as you are your own appearance.
• You believe that you can help others improve their appearance (makeover!) and you are not a hairdresser.
• You celebrate a win by yelling “In your face!” at your opponent rather than “Good game”.
• Your Facebook photo albums (other than your profile pics) include more pictures with you than without you, especially if the pictures are of you alone.
• You brag, especially when you’ve receive a compliment or two from people who are either biased (family and friends) or otherwise not in a position to judge.
• You equate criticism with disrespect or insults. Narcissists do not handle rejection or criticism well and many become angry and aggressive in response.
• You often park in handicapped spaces or red zones, cut in line, cram into elevators before letting people out, block isles and walkways, etc. Entitlement is very, very highly correlated with narcissism.
• You wear clothing with your own likeness on them.
• You have any bumper stickers or social media graphics like those below.

Education/Debunking: What’s the Difference? –  JREF president D.J. Grothe moderated and the panelists were myself, JREF education director Michael Blanford, Skeptical Teacher Matt Lowry, Podblack Cat Kylie Sturgess, and IIG-West’s Brian Hart. I think that we agreed that ‘debunking’ was helpful in education and that teachers do not need to choose between facts and methods. Usually, teaching facts and debunking claims is best accomplished by discussing how we know what we know (empirical testing) and demonstrating that particular feats (e.g., apparent mind reading) can be accomplished without supernatural forces.

On the Ledge – Moderated by Derek Colanduno, this panel was originally planned as a discussion of the independent film The Ledge, but the film’s writer/director, Matthew Chapman, was forced to cancel at the last minute. Although the film came up, the panel, which included D.J. Grothe, NCSE executive director Eugenie Scott, Margaret Downey of The Freethought Society, and myself, focused on the definition of skepticism as well as the missions and scopes of the organizations promoting skepticism, secularism, and atheism.

I believe we agreed on the overlapping, but separate roles and goals of these organizations as well as the reasons demarcations between them exist. It is about more than focus and the best use of resources. It is a matter of maintaining integrity. Something that Genie Scott said stuck with me. She noted that we each have ideologies which we cannot and should not ignore; they make us who we are. However, these ideologies (about which we do not all agree) must be set aside in the pursuit of knowledge because they affect the way that we reason and make decisions (as the literature in my field has clearly shown). This is precisely the argument made in regard to the scope of skepticism (the broader scope, anyway): political, religious, and other ideologies carry with them the baggage of untestable claims, non-empirical conclusions, and conclusions which are arrived at through biased views of evidence.

Very Superstitious… – Moderated by Kylie Sturgess, panelists were me, Atlanta Skeptics Stephen King (a Stephen King, not the Stephen King) and Robert Blaskiewicz, and Skeptic Neurologist Steve Novella. We heard some funny stories about some of the more interesting superstitions which are widely (or narrowly) practiced and discussed the origins of superstitions as a natural product of the pattern- and control- seeking human brain.

Token Skeptic Podcast – I participated in a live recording of Kylie Sturgess’s podcast, along with Derek Colanduno and Steve Novella. It was the last day of Dragon*Con and Kylie was the only Australian in attendance this year. In a departure from the usual serious science and skepticism Kylie produces, she took the opportunity to abuse the Americans. In the first five minutes, she managed to claim Tim Minchin for Australia and disown Mel Gibson, throwing in Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe to boot. I think she just wanted an excuse to dump Mel on us. If that wasn’t enough, she tortured the audience with musk sticks and vegimite! Of course, I don’t know if you can call it torture when they volunteered, but she certainly would have known that they would be skeptical of Steve Novella’s description of vegimite (“It’s like chewing on my dirty gym socks.”) I likened it to Big Foot’s toe jam and I stand by that assessment. Musk sticks are a particularly vile “candy” which tastes strangely like aftershave. blech.

She did redeem herself by offering some wonderful carmels and discussing a topic I know little about: gaming. Apparently, my co-guests were both avid gamers and Novella wrote a few (well, more than that – 7) rule books. As the wife of a gamer who is often asked to calculate odds, I was impressed. The rules for these games are incredibly complicated and must be balanced enough to ensure that a game holds the players’ interest. I thought the panel was going well until the fire alarm went off and Kylie did her best Mel Gibson impression before diving off the stage into the audience… Okay, that’s not exactly how it went, but the panel did end and the ‘all clear’ was sounded before we got much further than the hall.

First, if you have not read Parts I and II, please read them now. The most important parts of those posts are:

Arguments over scope and the conflation of atheism and skepticism have reached a fever pitch, as have arguments over tone. I will talk about some of this, but I will not attempt to explain all of the issues in any detail because everything that needs to be said has been said here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here… Well, you get the picture. In fact, if you want to argue the definition of skepticism or Skepticism* in the comments of this post, don’t bother. Instead, read what I wrote about it last year, which I would simply repeat in answer…

…I suggest is this: Skepticism*, as a movement, is not hindered so much by the conflation of atheism and skepticism, the ridicule of believers, or attempts to promote values-based ideology as it is hindered by the blatant ignorance, arrogance, and irrationality displayed when those acts are committed.

In a field dedicated to reducing ignorance and irrationality, a field in which arrogance is toxic, I find this kind of behavior offensive. It is time that we reclaim Skepticism and restore its credibility and integrity.

If one of the major goals of Skepticism is to educate, shouldn’t we all understand the material?

I am angry. I am angry and a little fearful for our future. We live in dangerous times and the work of Skepticism is serious. The work is hard. It requires patience, discipline, empathy, and knowledge.

I am angry because an influx of people who have stumbled upon or been recruited to the work of Skepticism are making it much more difficult. We’re moving backwards. This is happening, in part, because some of these rookies insist that their understanding of that work is as good or better than the understanding of people who have studied and worked in the field for years. Many have little or no education in the basics of science or the scientific process. Some claim to follow the teachings of people whose works they have never read. Some believe that the ‘old guard’ have more to learn from them than the other way around. These people voice their opinions on blogs and in talks, discussing topics about which they consider themselves competent after reading a couple of blog posts, listening to a podcast, considering their own limited experiences, or MAYBE reading a book or two on the topic.

What’s worse, they argue about details with little or no understanding of even the big picture. They believe that their understanding is complete and, therefore, requires no study, no thought beyond the surface features, and certainly not time or mentoring.

This is anti intellectualism in a field which promotes intellect and deep thought.

The problem has bothered me for some time and, in fact, ignorance of one’s own incompetence is something that bothered me in my classroom so much that I studied its relationship to academic entitlement, narcissism, external attributions for achievements, and study strategies. What we learned is that narcissism, entitlement, and shallow study strategies are strongly correlated with the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is the phenomenon that the least competent people overestimate their competence the most as part of a self-serving bias. As relative competence increases, overestimations decrease, until the 75th to 95th percentile (depending on the domain), when estimates are fairly accurate. This is particularly problematic in an academic setting because the less students understand a concept, the more likely they are to believe that they understand it, the less likely they are to make changes to ensure that they learn it, and the more likely they will be to feel entitled to a high grade for their poor work.

Skeptical activism is not unlike academics.  Incompetence feeds on itself in this effect. The more an individual overestimates their competence, the more entitled they believe they are to an uncritical audience to which they can voice their opinions. What’s more, the more confident a blogger appears, the more their audience will reinforce their views (because they convince the audience that they know; the same thing occurs with eye witness testimony), although this is somewhat limited to situations in which the view is shallow enough to for the audience to understand, a perfect enhancement to the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

But high confidence is not an indication of actual understanding, nor is the number of supportive cheers of agreement from their followers.

The rest of this post will focus on one example of this, but there have been countless. This particular example is an especially egregious one, since she attacked both a friend for whom I have a great deal of respect and the field I defend daily. It was back-breaking straw for me.

When Amanda Marcotte whined that Daniel Loxton doesn’t want us to talk about religion, she built a now very familiar straw man and dressed him with inappropriate comparisons and other ignorant rambles. She appears to be upset because she somehow thinks that the usurping of a movement in motion, one which is founded on scientific principles, for the promotion of her personal political and religious ideology, should go unchallenged.

Amanda does not appear to understand what skepticism actually is or what science involves, yet she’s thrown her hat in, anyway. Perhaps she is insulted that somebody tried to tell her, I really don’t know, but I do know that the confidence with which she writes about the issues is unwarranted, a fact which is clearly demonstrated by the content of her post.

Amanda wrote,

“Look: atheism is the result of applying critical thinking and demands for evidence to the god hypothesis. It’s not any different than non-belief in all sorts of supernatural claims, such as ESP and ghosts. All of the weaseling around that is intellectually dishonest. It’s not about critical thinking, but about politics and frankly, not taking on religion because religion is seen as too powerful. “

Wrong.

What is intellectually dishonest is arguing about something you do not fully understand against people who are experts in the field. What is intellectually dishonest is advancing an uneducated opinion because the educated one does not help you achieve your own goals.

Her first two sentences demonstrate the problem with this entire post and most of the comments on it: ignorance. The rest of the paragraph is bullshit that Amanda made up. Nobody is ‘backing down’ and there is no concern that “religion is seen as too powerful”. This is not about politics. It is about scientific integrity.  This point has been made again and again, but ignored by people like  Amanda. Perhaps they ignore it because they do not understand it, or maybe they ignore it because it doesn’t help them, but the reasons don’t matter. Ignoring it won’t make it go away.

Science is the pursuit of truth. Truth is not value. Desires are not facts. Facts are not morals.

Scientific integrity requires adherence to scientific principles. Likewise, scientific skepticism relies on scientific integrity. Otherwise, we are just a bunch of people with opinions.

… Loxton decided to shit all over the work of people looking at improving gender, sexual oriention, class, and race diversity in the movement by complaining that the panel at The Amazing Meeting dedicated to this didn’t have any fucking Christians on it.

Again, she’s just making stuff up. Daniel noted that the diversity of the panel did not reflect the diversity of the audience in one important aspect. Framing this as “complaining that there were no Christians” is dishonest and the implication that Daniel does not care about issues of gender, class, and race is simply unfounded and abhorrent. Anyone who actually knows Daniel understands just how stupid that accusation is.

He firmly believes that the god hypothesis should be off-limits for skeptics, and that there should be a bright line between atheism and skepticism. This is ridiculous. “God” is a supernatural claim just like fairies and ghosts.

This statement, once again, not only demonstrates gross ignorance and shallow thinking, but the fact that she’s written an entire blog post questioning the knowledge of a professional skeptic on very basic definitions of the field without first educating herself is offensive and disrespectful. Had she even tried to understand the issues, a task which takes time and energy, she might have learned enough to at least recognize that she has a lot more to learn.

But I am clearly expecting too much, because Amanda thinks that “I don’t get it” equates to “It must not be true” as demonstrated by this parroting of Skeptical sound bites and bullet points, mostly taken out of context or misused (bold mine):

The excuse from “traditional” skeptics for making an exception for religion is that the god hypothesis is an untestable claim, and they’re only interested in testable claims. But as this fairy example shows, that’s not really true. There are plenty of things skeptics are skeptical about because of the preponderance-of-evidence standard. We don’t believe in ESP or ghosts or fairies because no one has ever produced solid evidence in favor of these things existing, and we combine that with an assumption that these things are highly unlikely and so the burden is on the people making the claims to prove them. I don’t see how god is any different.

… Yes, it’s true that you can’t test whether or not there is a god somewhere that simply refuses to show himself, but that’s also true of fairies, people with ESP, and ghosts. And yet it’s considered a good use of skeptical time to point out the weakness of the ghost/ESP argument. So why not god?”

She doesn’t ‘see it’, so it doesn’t exist. I hate to add to the sound bites when what is needed here is serious coursework, but there are some basic concepts that could help Amanda “see how” these things are different, starting with breaking down some of her giant straw man. Here are a few basic points that Amanda should have known before she wrote this post:

• Science is empirical, therefore scientific skepticism is empirical. This is more important than testability, although it is related. NOTE FOR THE RECORD: The concept of testability is watered down somewhat in my posts and comments because it is complicated. For a good discussion of these issues, I recommend Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World.

• Skeptics do not “make exceptions” for religion. The fact that “God exists” is not an empirically testable hypothesis is not the fault of skeptics or Skepticism. It is the nature of the hypothesis. Science and skepticism have nothing to say about any hypothesis which can never be tested empirically.

• Skepticism is not a set of beliefs or conclusions. This is important. “We don’t believe in ESP or ghosts or fairies” is not something that a good skeptic would say and the ‘we’ part is presumptuous. I certainly do not want someone like Amanda Marcotte speaking for me if this what she thinks skepticism is.

• What any Skeptic believes is irrelevant. Personal knowledge is derived in whatever way the individual chooses to derive it. Science and skepticism deal with shared knowledge. Shared knowledge requires empirical evidence.

• The reason that we can easily discount ESP in most cases is because it is usually easily tested empirically.

• Requiring empirical testability is not “giving religion a pass”. It is holding true to the scientific process, which is designed specifically to ensure that our human biases and personal values do not affect our ability to distinguish what is true from what is not true. Religion’s most basic claims usually involve an omniscient and omnipotent being, making them largely untestable. This is not at all true of ESP, ghosts, or other traditional topics in skepticism. More on that below.

• A good skeptic would never state that there are no ghosts. A good skeptic would investigate specific claims of hauntings, searching for natural phenomenon which would explain the evidence. A good skeptic would not say there is no such thing as extrasensory perception. A good skeptic would say that we have no evidence to support precognition, telekinesis, etc.

• Skepticism is not about pointing out the weaknesses of arguments. It is about evaluating the evidence. These are not even close to being the same. When a self-proclaimed psychic moves the bar and says, “If it failed the test, then the forces that give me these powers do not want to be seen,” they make their claim untestable. Skeptics then have nothing to say in response. However, skeptics can provide natural explanations for phenomena (e.g., reveal that Peter Popoff was being fed information via an ear piece) which are much more parsimonious than supernatural explanations. This is also what we do with religious claims. If someone claims that God created man as he is today, we can point to the evidence which support the theory of evolution. If they claim that God created the universe, we can point to the evidence for the Big Bang. If they claim that God created the universe and man by making these natural processes possible, well then, we cannot refute that.

But Amanda would like to cast out Pamela Gay because Pamela believes in a personal God. Never mind the fact that she has never tried to sell that view to others, that she never claimed to support it with evidence, or that she is a very competent and knowledgeable Skeptic, scientist, science educator, and science communicator. Nevermind that Pamela Gay is a valued member of the Skeptical community who has done more to educate and excite young minds about science than all but a few others. [NOTE: minor edit for clarity, 08/07/11 9:50am]

Pamela Gay is not being irrational. Amanda Marcotte is.

Marcotte’s diet example is another case of irrelevant comparison. She states, sarcastically, that people are also touchy about their diet and so expressing skepticism about food trends is probably bad idea, too. This is clearly a straw man. We can demonstrate the effects of gluten empirically, so it is a poor comparison, too. Nobody is saying that people should not express skepticism about the existence of a God. What we are saying is that we cannot demonstrate empirically that God does not exist, therefore, if that is your conclusion, you cannot share that conclusion with others. The difference between personal knowledge and shared knowledge is not trivial.

Making others comfortable is not the issue, either, although making people uncomfortable out of arrogance and ignorance is certainly a part of the issue. I would like to point out that Amanda’s double-standard is pretty obvious in that paragraph. Apparently, the needs that matter are the needs of those she thinks deserve our attention and that’s it. But while we’re on the subject, it doesn’t matter if you are promoting skepticism, atheism, or your favorite restaurant. Being an asshole is being an asshole. The reason that DBAD matters to the rest of us is that when a dick represents Skepticism, they make our jobs more difficult.

The issue of scope is more complicated than the atheism/skepticism debate. The only reason that religion is given special consideration in the discussions of scope is that there are more people conflating atheism with skepticism than ever before. There are more people acting like superior assholes than ever before. People who could be helped by skeptical outreach as well as people who contribute a great deal to the movement (people like Hal Bidlack, a brilliant, scholarly, honorable man with years of service to the community) have been run off by the relentless arrogance of people like those I have discussed in this series of posts. The ignorant, the arrogant, and the irrational (I’m picturing monkeys of the ‘no evil’ variety, but with interesting facial expressions).

And this problem is growing.

Most of the comments on Amanda’s post demonstrate a frenzied groupthink that will further convince her that she’s on the right track. Comment number 41 describes this problem (among others) quite well: “One cool thing about having a political blog which is allegedly powered by skepticism is that people will be much more tolerant of logical fallacies.”

Some of the most fallacious comments:

…There’s nothing worse than an agnostic who thinks he’s more logical and skeptical than an openly religious person. Whether you’re an agnostic or a believer you’re engaging in special pleading on the god question, subjecting it to a different standard than any other question of existence, and you are not a skeptic nor are you logical.

“Special pleading” is a straw man that is repeated often. But it is just that: a straw man.

what the hell is skepticism for if not doing away with false beliefs?

More ignorance. There is no such thing as a ‘false belief’. Beliefs are simply what you hold to be true. Nobody actually knows for certain what is true. Skepticism is about evaluating evidence, period.

H0: There is no god. H1: There is a god. There is a serious shortage of evidence for H1, therefore we must accept the null hypothesis.

Introductory statistics cannot address the question of whether or not God exists.

If there’s a lack of humanpower and ressources to do everything, the question skeptics organizations should ask themselves is not why they should get involved in the more political aspects of skepticism, but why they should still waste ressources on the trivial, non-political aspects like Bigfoot/UFO/ghost/cryptozoology debunkings and such.

Wow. This is very disturbing, and I’m not just talking about the spelling or misuse of words like “aspects”. Apparently many commenters don’t watch television or get out of the house much. The number of shows devoted to ghost hunting alone is staggering. Then there are the shows about psychics of all ages, animal mind readers, monster hunting, etc. These shows are appearing on channels once devoted to science, for FSM’s sake. As for why we don’t get involved in politics, read this.

And anyone who is interested in the bigger picture – the picture concerned about meeting the goals of the movement – should read Comment number 75 on Amanda’s post.

The parroting that atheism is the result of applied skepticism that is so prevalent in the comments and stated in Amanda’s post is anti-skeptical. It demonstrates a failure to understand the fundamental process of skepticism and the empirical nature of science and scientific skepticism. The definitions of science and scientific skepticism were arrived at through centuries of study, collaboration, contemplation, and discussion. They are not negotiable, at least not without agreement from a vast majority of scientists.  If you cannot accept these definitions as they are, you have three choices:

1. Publish your opinions in peer-reviewed journals and hope that philosophers and scientists agree with you.
2. Keep arguing about it with Skeptics and impede our progress.
3. Go do something else.

*”Big-S Skepticism” refers to the work of the skepticism movement in promoting the practice of skepticism.