While I was on vacation, I missed a post by Sharon Hill on Skeptical Inquirer online. She recently re-shared the piece on Facebook, so I had an opportunity to give it a good read. Sharon’s pieces are usually filled with thoughtful reminders to reign in arrogance and do more than just tolerate other view points, embrace them and learn from them. I highly recommend following her regular columns there or at her blog, Doubtful News.

Is science hazardous?

This recent piece seems to be in response to the current discussion about the limits (and lack thereof) of science, such as this piece by Steven Pinker. However, it lacks the nuance I’ve seen in criticisms of Pinker’s piece.

Hill’s piece seems to define scientism, science, and several other terms somewhat vaguely, oversimplifying the issue and overcomplicating it at the same time. She begins the argument by claiming, if I may use an analogy, that there are many different ways to skin a cat, but then goes on to support that claim by pointing out that there are questions about whether the cat should be skinned, how much the process will cost, and whether the cat has a name. Answering these questions and skinning the cat are different tasks with different goals.

But it is this claim that I take the most issue with:

People who advocate fanatical reliance on science—where all competing methods of gaining knowledge are illegitimate—are practicing scientism.

This definition may very well put me in the category of “practicing scientism”, but it depends on what she means by “illegitimate”. While I recognize that personal knowledge can come from any number of methods and sources, respecting personal knowledge is not a reasonable stance when it comes to enacting policies and making choices which involve other people. To make the best choices, we need to rely on shared knowledge.

And I certainly do believe that empirical methods are necessary to gain genuine, reliable information about the world. In fact, that’s a basic assumption of science (more on that later).

The “just apply science” plan is an overly simplistic solution that not everyone will automatically buy into. There are other, also valid ways of evaluating problems. All the world’s problems cannot be solved by throwing science at it. At least not now (probably never).

This is a confusing statement with twists and turns.

First, whether or not “everyone will automatically buy into” a solution is no measure of the solution’s value.

Second, the statement about evaluating problems conflates the different tasks and goals associated with solving problems. Science, philosophy, and the humanities are different animals. To complicate matters, science incorporates philosophy and the humanities incorporate some scientific thinking. None of these things can tell us what to value, either.

For example, philosophy studies problems; it doesn’t solve them. Philosophy can only provide a way of thinking, not the information that one is to think about. Science, for that matter, doesn’t solve problems, either. It seeks and provides information and explanation. Technology solves problems, but it doesn’t do so just by thinking about them. Technology uses the products of science and scientific thinking (which includes products of philosophy) to solve problems.

So, this seems like a lot of apples and oranges and bananas to me.

The piece also contains more than a few straw men. For example:

For a start, scientism has utility problems. If we need to justify everything with empirical evidence, and then justify that evidence with evidence, and so on, not only do we get bogged down in minutiae, we end up in a scientistic loop which we can’t resolve. There must be a point where we accept a premise as a given – that reality is real, that we aren’t being fooled by a devious creator.

This is not only a straw man, it’s a misleading. Science does accept several premises as givens. In most college-level introductory science textbooks you can find these listed as “canons” or “assumptions”. For example, science assumes that the universe is deterministic, that all events have natural causes. Without this assumption, science can tell us nothing about the world with confidence because anything we observe might be explained by the supernatural.

So in a sense, the argument supports “scientism”.

Hill goes on to admonish over-enthusiasm for science because it “can mask the attention that should be paid to human social issues that are too complex…”, yet her examples are not issues too complex for science, but questions of policy which involve more than just information (e.g., one example involves the ethical question of whether to carry a fetus to full term knowing that it will be born with a debilitating condition). Science informs values, it doesn’t dictate them. However, values can’t answer those questions by themselves any more than science can.

Look at our laws. Many are informed by science (cigarette restrictions, driving after alcohol consumption, environmental regulations) but are tempered by other human interests such as personal pleasures, social norms and economic considerations.

Again, this seems a bit of a straw man. While there are those who claim that science can dictate values (which are embedded in each of those “human interests”), that is not a typical view and does not seem to be the view that Hill is railing against.

Science cannot tell us what we value or what we should value, but without scientifically-derived information and thought processes, we will fail to make choices and policies which promote those values.

Here is an example from my recent talks at TAM2013 and Dragon*Con, as covered in What Intelligence Tests Miss by Keith Stanovich:

In a study by Ubel, participants were asked to allocate 100 livers to 200 children who needed transplants. The children were presented in two groups: A and B. As you can imagine, most participants divided the livers equally, giving half to one group and half to another.

However, when the participants were told that the children in group A had an estimated 80% average chance of surviving the surgery, while the children in group B had only an estimated 20% average chance, the allocations varied much more. About one quarter of the participants gave all of the livers to group A, one quarter gave half to A and half to B, and half of the participants distributed the livers in a manner in between these two choices (i.e., one quarter gave 75 of the livers to group A and 25 to group B).

When asked why they gave livers to group B, participants justified their actions by saying things like “needy people deserve transplants, whatever their chance of survival.” This, of course, ignores the real question, which is how to allocate a limited number of livers to save the most lives. It tells us nothing about why the individual chose one child over another.

Participants in another study were given the same task except that the recipients were not grouped. Instead, they listed the recipients individually, ranked by the individual chance of survival. If the justifications were true, we would expect at least 25% of the participants to allocate the livers to every other child, or somewhat randomly down the list. Instead, participants had no problem allocating all of the livers to the top 100 children on the list.

The difference between the answers when the children are grouped and the answers when they are listed individually is called a “Framing Effect”. The way the problem is framed determines how a majority of the participants respond to it.

Now, science can’t tell us what’s “right” in this situation, but it can sure tell us how to meet our goals once we have decided what those goals are.

Let’s assume that our goal is to maximize the number of children who will be saved. Rational thought tells us that, given that goal and the choice of the two groups, we should give all of the livers to group A (science tells us that those are the children with the best chance for survival). The difference between that choice and the equal distribution is an expected 30 dead children.

It should be obvious from this example that considering our values and goals is not enough to make the best choices. We need good information and good thought processes to make the kinds of decisions that allow us to meet our goals.

One more statement that got under my skin:

When we overly indulge our science bias in informing decisions, such as in the realm of policy, the risk of making an unpopular guidance or rule increases.

Wait a minute. Is our goal to put the most popular policies in place or the best policies? For my part, I want policies that are best for society and the individuals within it. I don’t care if they are popular or not.

Science is not perfect or infallible, even when implemented correctly. Our knowledge is incomplete, which means that we will make a lot of mistakes when we take actions based on that limited knowledge. However, it will always beat human judgments in the long run, allowing us to make the best decisions and take the best actions toward our goals.

Works cited:

Stanovich, Keith E. (2009). What intelligence tests miss: The psychology of rational thought. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Ubel, P.A. (2000). Pricing life: Why it’s time for health care rationing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Several people have asked me if I plan to respond to PZ Myers, considering the “beating” he gave me and others in a post last week.

No, I don’t. I may if I see a good reason, but the truth is that responding to him is a bit like debating a creationist. Sometimes one should, but this is not one of those times. In this case, PZ has so grossly misrepresented my writings and statements that it is very clear that no productive discussion can occur with him on the matter. This is not the first time he has done so and not the first time that I have essentially ignored it. The post is almost entirely built on mischaracterizations, straw men, and falsehoods. If anyone else wants to discuss it, I will be happy to do so after you have read what I actually wrote, context and all.

Instead, I think that this is a good time to gather some of the more recent materials on the matter in one place because I strongly believe that most of the discussion in the general community over these issues involve new members trying to get a handle on what we’re all about. So, I will summarize my views on the matter in a few bullet points and provide a list of links to posts, publications, and videos what are free to all.

I will not be discussing tone and approach, but some of the materials do touch on this issue. I disagree with Novella and a few others on that question and it is always a discussion worth having, but separately.

As always, I welcome comments, but ask that if you plan to leave a comment arguing against my stance, please look through the links and read/watch those which appear to address your argument before you do so. I really hate repeating myself, especially when I have written what I think is a clear explanation, so I am quite likely to respond by referring you to one of the links.

A summary of my position and opinions on the issues:

• Skepticism, secularism, humanism, and atheism (as an issue for activism, not a conclusion) are distinct ideologies with differing central values. These distinctions are important for several reasons, including organizational focus, communication, and personal objectivity. Those are covered in more detail in the materials linked.
• Many people have adopted more than one of these ideologies (I, for example, have adopted all of them to some degree), creating a “greater” community we tend to refer to as the “rationalist” community. Not all community members have adopted all ideologies.
• Activism is about goals, and organizations form around specific goals to promote specific ideologies. Although the “greater rationalist community” shares a few core values, most importantly a naturalistic world view, each organization uses its resources in different ways, supporting different priorities.
• Central to one of these ideologies, atheism, is the conclusion that there is no higher power (god). The ideological part is the value that belief in a higher power is harmful. There is more to atheism than that and I will not outline how it differs from secularism, etc., but these points are important because conflation of the conclusion with the value is one source of conflict.
• At the core of scientific skepticism is the view that evidence-based reasoning is the best way to decide what is and is not true.  Furthermore, the only legitimate way to acquire evidence is through the scientific method, which is basically a combination of systematic observation (empiricism) and reason. Therefore, scientific skepticism involves using the scientific method to test claims.
• The major Skeptic organizations have expressed missions to promote scientific skepticism. They do so for a number of reasons, both epistemic and pragmatic, most of which have been discussed at length in past days, weeks, months, years, and decades (and so on).
  • From a “best practices” standpoint, skepticism reaches more people by focusing its efforts on testable claims because it can include those people who have not adopted one or more of the other ideologies I mentioned (e.g., atheism).
  • From a philosophical standpoint, science is a method for acquiring knowledge, all of which is tentative. Because nobody knows with absolute certainty what is true, the method is much more important than personal conclusions. The method is how we can convince other people that our conclusions are accurate.
  • Also from a best practices standpoint, promoting methods (which includes sharing evidence and information such as alternative explanations for events) provides people with the tools to evaluate other claims more effectively.
  • From both a philosophical and best practices standpoint, promoting personal conclusions rather than method is a violation of basic scientific tenets and logic. Likewise, when we judge a person’s ability to use methods based solely on their beliefs (e.g., statements such as “Christians are not good skeptics”), we are judging an argument by its conclusion and not the merits of the argument itself. This is not scientific at all. Ironically, it’s bad skepticism.
• Skepticism activists do promote some conclusions, such as the conclusion that vaccines are relatively safe and effective, however, we do so with great care. Where scientific consensus is weak or lacking, expertise and personal responsibility is vital.
• Objectivity is a central feature of scientific thinking and, therefore, of scientific skepticism. Although no human being is purely objective (arguable, but I think most of us agree), one of the main purposes of the scientific method is to remove subjectivity from the inquiry process. In practice, it’s imperfect, but if we throw our hands up on this issue because scientists are not unbiased, we must reject science altogether. It’s that central.
• Because objectivity is central to skepticism and values such as political ideologies should not drive the practice of skepticism or science, but should be informed by the findings of science and skeptical inquiry (e.g, science cannot tell us if gun control is good, but it can tell us if a specific regulation is likely to reduce the number of deaths by gun). In other words, economy, religion, and feminism are not “off-limits”. They should be and are subjected to the same treatment that all other topics are subjected to. They appear to receive different treatment merely because the claims made in these areas tend to be more complex and more difficult to test (if they are testable at all). Furthermore, these topics tend to be attached to strongly-held values and, because human beings are notoriously tenacious in their beliefs, more controversial.
• The difficulties with discussions of complex topics makes internal agreement less common and without internal agreement, good outreach efforts are not possible because no coherent, unified message is possible. The goal of most activist organizations is outreach more than community and they are trying to maximize success, not put up roadblocks to it. Therefore, they tend to focus on claims which provide a more predictable and clear outcome.

I could get into more detail, but that isn’t my goal with this post. So, I will stop here. Following is a list of excellent materials which discuss, in one form or another, the scope of skeptic activism, its purposes, and its value.

Free Publications (these three should be required reading):

• Where Do We Go From Here? by Daniel Loxton – The most to-the-point discussion of why we do what we do, sometimes referred to as a skeptical manifesto
• What Do I Do Next? edited by Daniel Loxton – a collection of discussion about skeptical activism by leading skeptics
• Why Is There A Skeptical Movement? by Daniel Loxton – A two-part essay with highlights from the history of the movement and a practical discussion of scope

Blog Posts/Web Publications:

• Scientific Skepticism, CSICOP, and the Local Groups by Steven Novella and David Bloomberg – a primer on scientific skepticism and organizational scope
• Bigfoot Skeptics, New Atheists, Politics and Religion by Steven Novella – a response to PZ Myers and another blogger who suggested that skeptical activism needs to expand its scope
• PZ Replies by Steven Novella – a continuation of the dialogue with PZ Myers, responding to a reply in which Myers accuses several of us (myself included) of intellectual dishonesty and cowardice
• Scientific Skepticism, Rationalism, and Secularism by Steven Novella – more clarifications incorporating the discussions which followed the dialogue with PZ.
• Steven Novella Steven Novella Takes on Some of the Oldest Clichés About Scientific Skepticism-Again by Daniel Loxton – more on the conversation between Novella and Myers
• You May Be Forgiven For Thinking That Some Skeptics Are Taking A Firm Stance, But… by Kylie Sturgess – more on the conversation (and a reiteration that the arguments are not new) with added emphasis on the importance of educating one’s self before criticizing
• Further Thoughts on Atheism by Daniel Loxton – discusses the need compartmentalization of concepts (atheism and skepticism), mostly for pragmatic reasons
• The Surprising Twists of TAM9’s Diversity Panel by Daniel Loxton – discusses the way that a focus on methodology allows for a more inclusive group
• The Conflation of Atheism and Skepticism: Fact or Fiction? by Kylie Sturgess – a discussion of the problems with confusing methods with conclusions
• Skepticism and Religion – Again by Steven Novella – a reminder of the reasons behind mission focus and what it does and does not mean in terms of how skeptics approach religious claims
• A Few Comments on the Nature and Scope of Skepticism by Jim Lippard – a discussion of the problems with conflating skepticism with atheism and assuming that one leads to the other. This blog contains a large number of posts on scope, many of which are linked in this post, so I will only link to this one, but I highly recommend browsing through them
• On the Scope of Skeptical Inquiry by Massimo Pigliucci – discusses the relationships among philosophy, skepticism, atheism, etc.
• What Is Skepticism, Anyway? by Michael Shermer – also includes a video, so it’s listed twice here
• Is There a New Atheism at the JREF? by D.J. Grothe – a response to accusations that the JREF’s mission might be shifting with an emphasis on the organization’s priorities
• Media Guide to Skepticism by Sharon Hill – Sharon worked with community leaders to produce a summary of the purpose and scope of organized skepticism.
• Blog post by Daniel Loxton introducing a video of a panel at TAM 2013.
• John Horgan is “Skeptical of Skeptics” by Steve Novella
• Bigfoot Serses the Quest for World Peace? by Daniel Loxton

Posts on this blog:

• Take Back Skepticism Part I: The Elephant in the Room – The first in a three-part series about the scope of skepticism, tone, and arguments about both
• Take Back Skepticism, Part II: The Overkill Window – the second in a three-part series which focuses on the propogation of hate and irrational arguments about tone and scope
• Take Back Skepticism, Part III: The Dunning-Kruger Effect – the third in a three-part series which focuses on overconfidence and anti-intellectualism displayed during arguments about scope
• Paved With Good Intentions – about the dangers of allowing values to drive the process and interfere with objectivity
• Why the “Critical” in Critical Thinking – covers the basic falsification approach in science and critical thinking to explain the purpose of critique
• You Can’t Judge an Argument by Its Conclusion – describes the Belief Bias (a form of Confirmation Bias) and explains why judging a person’s ability to reason based on their beliefs is fallacious (ironically)
• Mission Drift, Conflation, and Food For Thought – discusses some of the dangers of “mission drift” and attempting to add values such as political ideologies to organizational missions
• What Matters – a response to the misguided view that skeptical activism does not focus on things that matter
• Scientific Skepticism: A Tutorial – about definitions and scope

To watch/listen

• Overlapping Magisteria, TAM2012 – Jamy Ian Swiss talks about the importance of mission focus, the value of the work that skeptics do, and the reason we value methods more than conclusions
• Skepticism is a Humanism, NECSS 2010 – D.J. Grothe’s keynote, which discusses the scope of skeptical activism, noting that, although it is methods-based we are motivated to activism by humanist values
• On the Ledge, Skeptrack at Dragon*Con 2011 – A panel discussion with Eugenie Scott, Margaret Downey, D.J. Grothe, and me, moderated by Derek Colanduno about the overlap of atheism and skepticism, its challenges, advantages, and pitfalls. Ideology is discussed about half way through
• What Is Skepticism, Anyway? by Michael Shermer – also includes a blog post, so it’s listed twice here
• Skeptical Scope and Mission, a panel at TAM 2013 with myself, Daniel Loxton, Steven Novella, Jamy Ian Swiss, and moderated by Sharon Hill.
• How To Be A Bad Skeptic, Q.E.D. – D.J. Grothe’s rundown on some of the dos and don’ts of skepticism. You’ll have to guess which parts are facetious and which are serious. By this point, you should be able to do this.

I will add to this post as new content becomes available, so if I have missed any that you think should be included (and it is freely available online), please contact me on Twitter or Facebook so that I can add them into the body of the post. I will also apologize now if I have missed something important. There has been so much discussion of this topic that I was a bit overwhelmed trying to put together just the highlights.

Responses to requests, demands, and criticism in the blogosphere in recent months has prompted a great deal of discussion, most of it terribly unproductive. In fact, most of it has been downright silly – a childish back-and-forth which, to an outsider, might appear to be violent agreement. In other words, camps do not appear to disagree, in general, about foundational issues, yet the bloodshed continues. Need I provide examples? I don’t think so*.

I hate to harp on a point (I really do), but oversimplification and shallow treatment of issues appears to be at the source of so much of the animosity that I think that rational discussion could be had if a short checklist were followed which included keeping one’s mind open to the possibility the other person is not evil simply because they criticized something or failed to submit to demands.

I am short on time and not prepared to discuss “Atheism Plus” in detail at the moment, but the discussion of it provides an excellent example or two that I think provide some insight into how discussions devolve into battles.

First, there is a slippery slope involved which is accelerated by crowd behavior and by unproductive reactions to criticism. We may, for example, start with a civil discussion about whether or not gender disparity in local groups can be attributed to a barrage of unwanted sexual attention women may receive at meet-ups. A number of views will be expressed, some with comments about their own experiences:

Person A: “I don’t do that.”

Person B: “I’ve been groped at meet-ups and it made me feel powerless and alone.”

Person C: “That’s never happened to me.”

Person D: “I think we should ban people who do that kind of thing.”

Person E: “So, I can’t ask a woman out at a meet-up?”

Person F: “Wait, I go to meet-ups to meet men and I like it when they grab me. I can take care of myself and I don’t want that behavior banned.”

Person G: “I’m not going to attend meet-ups anymore if people think that groping is okay.”

…and so on.

None of these views should shut down discussion. The refusal to concede that one’s own view may not be “right” is what turns discussions like these into battles of wills. Note that the original talking point was simple and there are small steps away from it as people talk rather than listen or make assumptions about what was said rather than ask for clarification. Those small steps add up. One day, a woman casually asks that men put a little more thought into when and how they proposition women and a few months later dozens of people are painting everyone who doesn’t support a rather specific call to action as a misogynist or ‘gender traitor’ while some of those called misogynists and gender traitors have dismissed the original problem altogether. This helps no one.

Those promoting “A+” have painted critics with a broad brush; we are “haters” who are “against social justice”. A post by Greta Christina on the issue of inclusiveness provides some insight:

An atheist movement cannot be inclusive of atheist women… and also be inclusive of people who publicly call women ugly, fat, sluts, whores, cunts, and worse; who persistently harass them; who deliberately invade their privacy and make their personal information public; and/or who routinely threaten them with grisly violence, rape, and death.

An atheist movement cannot be inclusive of atheists of color… and also be inclusive of people who think people of color stay in religion because they’re just not good at critical thinking, who blame crime on dark-skinned immigrants, who think victims of racial profiling deserved it because they looked like thugs, and/or who tell people of color, “You’re pretty smart for a…”.

In addition to holding up the reprehensible behavior of a few trolls as representative of the community as a whole, these statements are so full of subtext that they cry out for scrutiny. There are clearly false dichotomies buried in there as many of the proponents of A+ and many of their readers have expressed the desire not simply exclude the asshats who “publicly call women ugly” or “who deliberately invade their privacy”, but also anyone who dares to question whether such things have actually happened in given situations.

As has been said many times, we should be charitable when someone’s meaning is not entirely clear – give them the benefit of the doubt when we have little evidence of malice. This requires empathy. It requires us to resist defensive reactions and reconsider our views when we realize that we have failed in that regard.

Greta also notes that to provide a safe space for people of color, they must exclude “people who think people of color stay in religion because they’re just not good at critical thinking”. I found this particularly interesting in light of the fact that the belief that everyone with faith in a deity of some sort is “not good at critical thinking” is a widespread view among atheists (and skeptics, unfortunately). PZ Myers, one of the founders/owners of FreeThoughtBlogs said  this of the religious in a debate a few months ago (one I urge you all to watch: http://youtu.be/ZsqqFpWh7m8 ): “There’s something wrong with their braaains!”

It may be that Greta meant to refer to those who claim that people of color are generally poor critical thinkers and this explains lower rates of atheism. However, the math does not add up. Try constructing a syllogism from these statements. The proportion of believers in the population of people of color is higher than the general population. Believers are poor critical thinkers. Therefore…

So, who is right? Well, neither is right. Or correct.

Out of curiousity, I watched a recording of a few people discussing “Atheism+” [A+]. Much of this particular discussion involved defending the approach of A+ and suggesting that critics are somehow against social justice in general. I won’t got through the entire discussion; many of the arguments were straw men, which are not relevant. However, many were based on unsupported assertions (assumptions) and that is directly relevant.

One of the participants, Debbie Goddard (of CFI On Campus) attempted to address real criticisms rather than discuss those straw men and from her comments the disagreements became more clear. At one point, Stephanie Zvan criticized skeptics for ignoring evidence, noting that “We have mountains of evidence that ‘treating people equally’ is not treating people equally.” Debbie clarified this by expressing her belief that “color-blindness” is wrong.

That is when I realized that what they are talking about here are legitimate and rational disagreements over how to approach social injustices.

Legitimate and rational disagreements. Meaning that neither view is so well-supported that they can claim to know what’s best.

Yet people attempting to discuss these things rationally have been vilified and views have polarized. And the people who were speaking in this recording were doing so with such certainty that they were “right” that they failed to see that legitimate and rational disagreement was even possible.

And this has happened with many on both sides of the issue with most of the ‘dust ups’ in the community. I think a lot of the problem lies in treating these topics as simple when, in fact, they are not. As Ron Lindsay stated in a recent post on A+:

Social justice is great. After all, who’s against social justice? It’s when one starts to fill in the details that disagreements arise.

And it’s the details that matter here.

There are some who argue that, because minorities are at a disadvantage due to a history of oppression, they require special protection in order to reach equality. There are others who argue that such protection is both unnecessary and racist/sexist/___ist in and of itself. And there is a full spectrum of positions in the grey area in between these two views. 

What Stephanie claimed is that science tells us that the first view is “right”. Her certainty in that conclusion is clear from the video. Yet, she is wrong – sort of.

There are three details that we should consider. I am going to ignore one which comes from that grey area because it is extremely complicated, and that is the question of whether equal opportunity or equal outcome should be the goal. In other words, what “equality” means [If you claim that the answer to that question is no-brainer, you are making my point]. The other two major issues are the evidence for the claim and the evidence which suggests the best courses of action to correct injustices, which is the whole reason for asking the question in the first place.

We all know that stereotypes exist and that racism, sexism, any-ism, are alive and well in our society. And there is plenty of evidence that implicit biases exist. In fact, they are impossible to eliminate. We favor people whom we view as “like us” in many different ways. Depending on one’s definition of “ingroup” in a given context, we favor those who fit it. However, we are capable of making choices and taking actions which render such favor powerless. We are capable of overcoming these biases just as we are capable of overcoming other cognitive biases. Not eliminating, overcoming.

So science tells us that we have implicit biases which require a special effort on our part to overcome. Stephanie is right, no?

Not so fast.

Science may be able to tell us if affirmative action has contributed to the huge reductions in racism and related outcomes which have occurred in recent decades, but it cannot tell us if affirmative action is a good idea today simply based on the knowledge that we need to make a conscious effort to overcome biases. Even the first question is difficult to assess confidently, but I suspect it can be done and I suspect that the answer will be, “Yes. Yes, it has.”

But this is an extremely complex issue and it is further complicated by the fact that we all have dog in the race. We all care about it because we all identify with one or more of those man made categories we sum up as the variable “race”.

My personal views about special protection are like most of my political views (this IS a political issue, after all): very centrist. I believe that we need to pay attention to things like gender parity if we are interested in decreasing it. I am not convinced, however, that quotas are entirely appropriate in all situations. And if you think that science has the answer to whether my views are “correct”, I challenge you to prove so.

And here’s where I say that in my view, both Stephanie and Debbie are wrong. What I won’t do is reject their views outright and wonder why they can’t just see the truth that I think is written in “mountains of evidence”. I won’t do that because, although I am confident in my own conclusions, I am open to the possibility that I am wrong about this very complex, emotionally-charged issue.

Why I think they are wrong:

The goal is not to place blame for disparities, but to reduce them. If the major source of disparity is discrimination, then the act of discriminating needs to be reduced. Science does provide us with information which is useful in efforts to reduce interracial and other inter-group tensions. What the evidence suggests is not the multiculturalism approach that Debbie believes is best, but what she rejected: color-blindness (and gender-blindness, etc.). Or perhaps a better term would be color-not-noticing, but that doesn’t roll of the tongue very well.

We all have multiple identities. I am a woman, a scientist, an educator, a skeptic, an activist, a blogger, etc. There are always people with whom I share some identities and not others. When the context focuses on a specific value or identity, those with whom I share that value or identity are part of my ingroup. Ingroup/outgroup classification changes with context, but some are more flexible than others.

Decades of applied research has failed to demonstrate that interracial tension in schools can be reduced by increasing discussions of cultural differences and celebrating diversity. This should not be surprising given the mountains of research that Stephanie mentioned about ingroup/outgroup mentality. Attention to differences increases that tension.

What reduces the tension? Focus on similarities, seeing people as part of the ingroup and ignoring the differences which are present in a given context. Reducing the amount of “othering” we engage in. The best way to do that is to focus on commonalities. For example, the work that Chris Stedman, author of a soon-to-be-release book entitled Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious  does has been criticized by PZ Myers and others because it brings people of different religious affiliations (and none) together to work toward common prosocial goals. Just yesterday a group of interfaith activists (as they call themselves) spent the day picking up trash on a beach to make it safer and cleaner.

Am I suggesting that people suppress parts of themselves about which they are proud? Let me make this clear: Hell, no. 

If that is what you’re taking from this post, you need to look outside of yourself and try to see the bigger picture. What I am saying is that my gender identity should have zero bearing on whether I am hired for a job or asked to speak at a conference or viewed as a sexual object in a professional context. Does that mean that I should not be proud to be a woman? Of course not.

Interfaith work does not suggest that people ‘check their religion at the door’, either. The work benefits more than just the likelihood that they will accomplish common goals.  Working together exposes each participant to people with whom they both share ideology and differ in ideology. Focus on the common ideology reduces the tensions caused by differences in other views and that reduction spreads to the differences themselves.

For example, a 2009 Gallop Poll result which most will find unsurprising is that people are much, much less likely to oppose same-sex marriage if they know someone who is gay/lesbian. There are certainly problems with drawing causal conclusions from such a study, but the effect is large and the findings are consistent with many lines of research which converge.

As I stated before, this is a complex issue. You may completely disagree with my argument, but to dismiss it altogether would be ludicrous, not to mention closed-minded and, dare I say it?, anti-intellectual.

I prefer to be recognized for my work rather than patronized because I am female. You may not see the issues the way I do, but calling me a misogynist for that disagreement is not only outrageous, it’s insulting and wrong.

When you speak with such certainty about how right and moral you are in relation to your critics without considering the possibility that you may be missing a nuance or two, you cannot hold any sort of moral or intellectual high ground.

My purpose here is not to argue about the topic of social justice, but to make the point that certainty, particularly about moral questions, is something we all need to be careful about. Too much (more than what is warranted) and it gets in the way of rational discussion. Too much and it divides people when no division is necessary. Too much and it is counterproductive. Too much and it is not confidence; it’s arrogance.

NOTE: Before you start commenting that Atheism Plus is about “allowing these discussions” because nobody else will, let me remind you that nobody ever said that discussions about evidence were outside the scope of Skepticism (one of the primary reasons put forward for the founding of A+) just because they relate to issues of social justice. In fact, quite the opposite is true and I think that this post is a good example of how science and skepticism can be applied to those areas.

*For those not following the ‘rationalist’ blogosphere, I apologize for my lack of links to the incidents I mentioned here. Frankly, there are too many and it’s difficult to know where to start or to choose one link which clearly demonstrates what’s happened. It seems to me that one does not need the background information to understand the example, but I cannot tell for certain.

‘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.

I am doing some more ‘navel gazing’, but in a very real sense, it is of a skeptical nature. Given the name of this blog space, it should be no surprise that my primary goals include refuting or correcting misinformation. Well, I found some more of the kind I have written about many times here: misunderstandings and/or misrepresentations of the nature of skepticism, of statements made by myself and others, and of the ‘movement’ in general.

I will start by quoting from the comments of another blog because I don’t want this comment to go unread. The comment was written by D.J. Grothe, President of the JREF.

…Leaving aside your conflation of atheism, skepticism and secularism, allow me to respond to a few of your remarks.

I appreciate that you reference the diversity panel I programmed into last year’s TAM schedule. JREF is happy to have taken the lead in such programming at conferences, having had both a panel and a workshop on women’s issue in 2010, and a panel on diversity in 2011. We plan some similar programming along these lines in 2012. And I am personally proud that half the speakers at TAM last year were women, and about 40% of the attendees were women (we programmed TAM this way not out of some commitment to quotas, but because we know that skepticism in general and the event in particular are better off if we include the talents of everyone, not just one half of the population). This is a marked improvement over where these allied movements were 15 years ago when I first got involved professionally.

As the only organization in the skeptic/atheist/humanist world run by a gay man, JREF takes issues of diversity seriously (http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1430-diversity-at-the-amazng-meeting-9.html), including political and religious diversity. (I might add that this one reason why we find it very important to avoid conflating skepticism with atheism; to repeat what I have said elsewhere: JREF is not an atheist organization (http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1081-new-atheist-directions-at-the-jref.html). Similarly, even though Randi and I are both gay men, JREF is not a gay rights organization.)

But to clarify, I never argued that skepticism should be completely removed from social issues. Indeed, I argued quite the opposite, both in that diversity panel and in a number of previous talks (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/05/10/d-j-grothe-skepticism-and-humanism/) that I have given over the years. The skepticism JREF advances is motivated by our interest in the well being of others, and out of our commitment to make the world a better place, not just from a petty desire to prove others wrong. When skeptics rail against the use of the ADE 561 dowsing rod as a bomb detector at checkpoints in Afghanistan and Iraq, we do so because that unfounded belief kills people. When skeptics rage against psychics who prey on the grieving, we do so not only because belief in psychics in bunk, but because belief in psychics really hurts people.

I do believe it is important for nonprofits to remain focused on their unique missions, and to avoid “mission creep.” The JREF’s mission is to “promote critical thinking by reaching out to the public and media with reliable information about paranormal and supernatural ideas so widespread in our society today.” Obviously, there are many other important missions and causes for folks to commit themselves to, in addition to JREF’s cause. Indeed, for nearly 20 years I’ve been involved with LGBT activism, as well as with atheist activism, and with environmentalism. But I would never join, say, PETA and insist they focus on other causes I care about like global warming instead of their mission, nor would I join the NRA and demand they start advocating for gay rights instead of the right to bear arms.

That said, JREF’s work over many years has been precisely to address the harm that results from undue credulity, and often within marginalized communities. Consider that Peter Popoff preys mostly on socio-economically disadvantaged communities of color, or that there is a lot of harmful pseudoscience peddled about and within the gay community. Or look at the work of Leo Igwe, the Nigerian skeptic and activist who works with the JREF to combat persecution of “witches” in Africa….

D.J.’s comment mainly addressed the following (NOTE: this is edited somewhat, but I do believe that there is enough context to convey the author’s intended message.):

One of the things that I have trouble with in this movement is the lack of focus on issues that “matter”…

…as someone who cares deeply about social justice, it has very often been a very difficult movement to be a part of. For me the great appeal of secularism, the great tragedy of religion, and my own personal passion for this cause is all centered around the fact that religion is the source of many evils or used to justify those evils perpetrated against humanity. As was said several times over the weekend, UFOs and Bigfoot aren’t that important to me, skepticism is much more interesting when applied to issues that impact people’s lives in serious ways. Children, minorities, people of color, women, poor people, the disabled, the elderly, LGBT, and other marginalized groups would benefit so much from having the tragic consequences of religious bigotry removed from their lives.

So when people in charge of important organizations speak on a panel at TAM to say that social justice isn’t and shouldn’t be within the purview of skepticism, or people in my local atheist group leave because they think it is inappropriate that someone posted a link to a story about the Rally Against the War on Women because who cares about that feminist bullshit, or important people in the movement tell me not to bother submitting something to TAM if it has anything to do, even tangentially, with women’s issues, I start to doubt why I am even involved.

First, I must say that I find the implication topics in traditional skepticism do not “matter” nothing less than offensive. If you agree with that statement, I invite you to visit whatstheharm.net and read a few of the stories under topics that D.J. mentioned. Then tell the families of children who were maimed or decapitated by witch doctors that their suffering does not “matter”. Tell the people who were bilked out of their life’s savings by psychics that their problems do not “matter”. Tell the people whose loved ones succumbed to cancer because they were told that their faith would heal them that their deaths – that they – do not “matter”. Tell them that these things did not “impact their lives in serious ways”.  Need I go on? Or perhaps that statement should have read, “…lack of focus on issues that “matter” to me.”

According to a CBS poll, the majority of Americans believe in psychic phenomena, although that proportion is declining, thanks to the efforts of groups like the JREF.

Newsflash: The issues addressed by the JREF and other skeptic organizations matter to me. They matter to others. They “matter”.

It is easy to wave the vague flag of liberal ideology, to throw out terms such as “marginalized groups” and claim to care about the well-being of others, but how does that translate to real progress? What, exactly, are you doing that “matters” more than the work you claim does not “matter”?

Next, although D.J. is not named, it is clear that in the second paragraph the author refers first to D.J.’s comments on a panel about diversity in skepticism which appeared at last year’s Amazing Meeting. This panel sparked quite a bit of discussion and at least one blog post. Many clarifications and “hammer-it-home” comments were made, including this one by D.J. (bold mine):

No questions should be off-limits to us, no issues taboo, including religious beliefs. And I feel the same way about diversity when it comes to political and economic views. I would hate to see the skeptics movement become merely a platform for left-leaning (or right-leaning) ideologies. As I have said many times, I personally favor a skepticism that is widely and consistently applied (and personally believe that will lead to atheism), but I professionally also favor organizations that have clear and limited missions, since an organization that tries to do everything may end up doing nothing very well…. our mission is focused on the paranormal, pseudoscience and testable supernatural claims. Unapologetically.

D.J. noted that the JREF plans to post video of the entire panel soon, so you can see for yourself what was actually said about the scope of skepticism.

Before I add my two cents (or more of it), there is one part of D.J.’s comment which I think is likely to be challenged:

…I might correct the misinformation or misunderstanding that there are people who go around insisting that skeptics only focus on UFOs or Bigfoot; a quick review of the program over the last few TAMs should disabuse you of the misunderstanding, or combat the misinformation…

Discussions of the scope of the movement have popped up in the past and there are those who advocate for a focus on traditional topics such as psychics and UFO abduction. However, any interpretations of those efforts as “insisting”, “telling people what to do”, or even as a question of the definition of skepticism, are misguided.

I know of no instance in which an individual connected with a skeptic organization (big or small) or a blog or anything else which might identify the person as involved with Skepticism has disagreed with the ideal behavior of applying skepticism to all aspects of life. If you think that is untrue, please read at least the first half of this post before reading further here. If you still disagree, please provide examples in the comments of this post.

There are good reasons for organizational focus which go beyond the issue of “mission creep”. One involves the fact that movement skepticism is, as D.J. noted in his discussions of the diversity panel, diverse. I say this, not to point out the inclusion that goes along with diversity, but the fact that a group of people who agree on what is best for society in every possible way is not a group at all. It’s an individual. People are complex. Issues are complex.

Skeptics promote scientific skepticism because they agree that it is the best way to evaluate claims. They do not necessarily agree on political, economic, and social issues.

Most importantly, however, is that the only role that ideology can play in science or scientific skepticism is in motivating individuals to act. Ideology [30 min mark] gets in the way of good reasoning and good science.

This does not mean that science and scientific skepticism should not inform one’s personal ideology, but this is not the same thing. It also does not mean that one’s values should not motivate them to do what they do, as D.J. has noted on numerous occasions (follow the links in his comment). For example, the claim that homosexuals are more likely to be child molesters is one that organized skepticism can address with scientific evidence.  The claim that homosexuality is “morally wrong” is not.

It is worth noting that self-described skeptics are overwhelmingly supportive of gay rights initiatives, but that does not make gay rights a skeptical issue. The ability to separate scientific and logical reasoning from ideology makes it possible to know what we know about homosexuality, which paves the way for acceptance of it. however, when we start with ideology and allow it to lead us, we greatly impair our ability to draw reliable conclusions.

Moving on, I would like to say something about the conflation issue that D.J. set aside, because I think that the problem is related. Here’s my hypothesis about what happens in this community:

1. There are large overlaps of the communities of skepticism, secularism/humanism, and atheism, with individuals who are involved in more than one and with organizations working together on specific projects.
2. There is a high correlation of identification with one or more of these communities and socially-liberal values.
3. An individual discovers the community, either through skepticism, secularism, or atheism, and mistakes this correlation with a “movement”.

Here’s the thing: skepticism, secularism, and atheism are different things. Among them, secularism has the closest ties with liberal ideology, but even secularism is not liberalism.

This may seem unimportant to some and I have often heard the argument, “But people care about X!” That argument is not relevant. If you care about X, promote X. Just stop calling it Y and stop insisting that promoters of Y also promote X.

Furthermore, referring to complaints about conflation as “nit-picking” is ironically anti-intellectual. These distinctions matter. A lot. If you do not know the difference between these things, and if you discuss them as if they are one, the integrity of skepticism as a scientifically-minded endeavor is lost. So are your ability to reason well and the ability of skeptic organizations to achieve their goals. As Daniel Loxton often says, “good fences make good neighbors”.

Individuals new to the communities are best served by studying these issues before publicly opining about them, much as we are all best served by speakers whose expertise supports the content of their talks. Unfortunately, I think that many do not see a role for themselves in activism unless it’s a leadership role. I find that a bit sad; there is plenty to be done while one learns the field.

Finally, I will add that complaints about TAM and other conferences failing to offer “what I want” leave me scratching my head. Most of these complaints are ridiculously off-base if you look at the content that is offered. Even if the topics you want are not discussed, so what? It is not organized just for you and what you think is important.

The Amazing Meeting is a curated event for which speakers (and discussion topics) are chosen by the curators themselves. It is clearly content hat more than 1650 people wanted last year, a number that has grown by at least 10% each year. If you are not among those people, then by all means, go to a conference that meets your requirements for “worthy of attending”.

Or perhaps this is really about whether or not the community should have input into the programming of such events. In that case, I can only point out that the community has plenty of input. You choose to attend/not attend. If you attend, you are asked to provide comments about what you did/did not like as well as offer suggestions for the future.

Anyone here think that your input should be valued more than that of the other attendees?

I had promised myself that I would spend less time ranting about the problems of the activist community, but I was so disappointed and frustrated during a Twitter exchange with Melody Hensley (of CFI-DC, caveat: she was speaking for herself, not necessarily CFI) the other night that I felt it prudent to bring it up once again, or at least a part of it.

First, I want to address the tired complaint that traditional skeptics exclude “the god question”.

Yup, we do. But before you roll out the silly paragraphs in which you substitute “God” and “religion” with “ghosts” and “the paranormal”, understand this: we also don’t address “the ghost question”.

Or “the psychic question” or “the Bigfoot question” or “the angel question”.

Statements such as “There are no ghosts” with claims that this is more than a personal conclusion are not good scientific skepticism*. Neither is “All psychics are fakes”. Neither is “there is no God”.

I can’t tell you if ghosts exist. I can tell you that I don’t believe in ghosts. I can explain why I don’t believe in them. I can give you alternative explanations for the noises coming from your attic. I can discuss reasons that you might ‘feel’ that ghosts exist. But I cannot prove to you that there are no such thing as ghosts.

I can devise an experiment to show that your dog is not psychic, but I can’t prove that psychic energy doesn’t exist.

I can explain the mechanics of sleep paralysis and the nature of memory, but I can’t say for certain that aliens did not abduct you if you remove the testability of your claim by adding things like “they reset the clocks”.

I cannot prove that there is no dragon in your garage if it does not interact with the world in measurable ways. I can only say, “I am not convinced.”

What I personally believe about these things is irrelevant. It is poor skepticism, poor science, and poor reasoning to include my beliefs in a discussion of your claims. (NOTE: “Belief” is defined in my posts as “that which one holds to be true”.)

I will not speak for everyone who has “harped” about this issue, but I can tell you that this has always been my bottom line in these arguments, so those who would take it out of context and build straw men like “she says that religion is off-limits”, don’t bother.

What I really want to talk about is about here is why this isn’t good skepticism. I’d also like to refute the tired argument that only atheists are good skeptics.

Since there are several versions of this argument and I acknowledge that they carry different meanings, I am also arguing against the following claims:

• Only atheists are rational.
• Theists/Deists may be good skeptics when it comes to other areas, but they are not skeptical about religion.
• Agnostics and theists/deists do not ‘go far enough’.
• There are no reasons to believe in/is no evidence for the supernatural.

The problem with these claims is that they are based almost entirely on a conclusion – the conclusion that there is no god (atheism). It is human nature to judge the validity of arguments by the believability of the conclusion. For example, consider the following syllogisms and decide whether each is valid or invalid:

Some students are tired.
Some tired people are irritable.
Therefore, some students are irritable.

All dogs have four legs.
Daisy is a dog.
Therefore, Daisy has four legs.

If I study, I will get a good grade on the exam.
I got a good grade on the exam.
Therefore, I studied.

If you are like most of my students, you identified the first and third as valid, but the second as invalid. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. An argument is valid if and only if the conclusion logically follows from the premises. Validity is not truth. This is important, because none of us actually knows with 100% certainty what is and is not true.

When we assume that we know what is true, we fail to evaluate arguments on their own merits. If it we were wrong, we perpetuate and strengthen our misguided beliefs instead of discovering our errors.

To know how strong a conclusion is, we must examine two things: 1) the validity of the argument that produced it and 2) the strength of the premises.

The validity of the argument lies only in its logical progression, so we can evaluate this without going beyond what is presented. However, the strength of the premises is another matter. To evaluate those, we must consider their sources. In science, some are conclusions of other arguments (often previous research) and we must evaluate that research to know how strong the premise is. Others are a matter of observation, which is subjected to interpretation and induction. For example, in the famous syllogism about Socrates mortality, the strength of that conclusion relies on the assumption that the premise “All men are mortal” is accurate. Since not all men have died, we don’t actually know with 100% certainty that all men are mortal. We accept it based on a large number of observations and converging evidence, but certainty is not possible.

In my examples, the second syllogism is logically sound, but most people reject it because they “know” that not all dogs have four legs. Perhaps you’ve seen or heard of a three-legged dog (I met one once named “Tripod”) or you have knowledge of how it could occur. This does not make the argument invalid, but it does address #2, making the conclusion unsupported. We cannot determine if it is true from this argument.

The first and third arguments are invalid because the logic is unsound. We may “know” that the conclusions are true, but we can’t know that based on these arguments, so if we want to convince others we need to come up with better evidence/arguments.

The tendency to judge conclusions based on current beliefs is a product of how our brains evolved and developed – a side-effect of what makes us successful organisms. It is human nature, it is wrong and must be overcome if one is to be consistently rational (This, by the way, is a bit of a pipe dream, but I think it’s a good goal).

This problem pops up in a host of cognitive tasks and is a manifestation of the most influential of human frailties: the confirmation bias. This makes it extremely resistant to correction, especially in real-world contexts. In my experience, the concept of “validity” is difficult for many people to grasp because of this problem.

So, going back a few paragraphs, note that I wrote, “The problem with these claims is that they are based almost entirely on a conclusion – the conclusion that there is no god (atheism).”

Reason is about the validity of arguments, so judging a conclusion as valid or invalid without examining the argument is itself an irrational act. Without the argument, your only yardstick is your own belief about the truth of that conclusion. Although we have reasons for our beliefs, so do the people whose beliefs we’re evaluating. Everyone thinks that their beliefs are well-reasoned and accurate. That’s why they believe them!

If you find their conclusion unbelievable, then by all means, be skeptical, but to call it “irrational” without evaluating the argument is to say that you are 100% certain that there is no rational argument. That is the very definition of arrogance and it is not scientific.

Science does not tell us what is (true). Science tells us what is likely (to be true) and, in most cases, how likely. It does so by making arguments. Science is shared knowledge, not because it tells us facts, but because we can discuss the evidence and logic processes behind why we should be reasonably certain of many things. Although science is both a process and a set of knowledge (I’ll call them ‘facts’), the facts in that set are the products of the process. This may include negatives such as “my dog is not psychic” and “vaccines do not cause autism”, but testing is required to make such conclusions scientific.

Science is not about those facts, though. It’s about the process of discovery. When scientists make arguments (by publishing papers), they cite previous literature by noting the findings and, in some cases, describing how those findings were produced. They do not list facts; they discuss evidence.

Scientists don’t judge conclusions. Scientists judge arguments. Scientists look at the whole argument – the assumptions, evidence, and methodology that make up the premises as well as the logic that holds them together – and judge if the conclusions logically follow from those premises.

Likewise, scientific skepticism is about testing claims, examining evidence, and providing natural explanations for the evidence. If there is no evidence to examine, there is nothing to discuss.

Because science ignores untestable claims and because some scientists (e.g., Carl Sagan) have discussed the reasonability of belief without evidence, many people oversimplify the issue (as Melody did in this Twitter conversation) by making the statement that belief in God is within the scope of scientific skepticism because “You don’t believe something without scientific evidence”.

This is misguided for several reasons, but the two main reasons are:

1. The assumption that most or all religious belief is completely blind faith is simply wrong. “Evidence”, scientific or otherwise, comes in all manner of forms. In a 1998 study conducted by the Skeptic Society, the most popular answers among believers for why they believe in God involved empirical evidence and/or reasoning (you can find this in Michael Shermer’s How We Believe). These people certainly think that they have good reasons to believe. How people interpret evidence varies a great deal. Most real-world questions are very complex and what seems an obvious conclusion to one person may seem ridiculous to another. Skepticism is about how we interpret evidence, how we reason, and how we consider alternative explanations, not about the conclusions we eventually draw.A good example of interpreting evidence is the study that prompted me to send a tweet to Melody in the first place. She’d first shared a link, then tweeted it again, this time directly to Daniel Loxton, editor of Junior Skeptic, with the comment “More good news about atheists that you might find hard to believe:” Only Melody knows what she meant by the comment, but when I read the study I was disappointed to find that it is not “good news about atheists” at all. I will include details in a post to follow shortly, but the gist is that article’s spin is a very loose interpretation of the findings that fails to mention some sobering facts. Its overgeneralizations and assumptions are criminal. For example, the study reported doesn’t involve atheists. Researchers measured religiosity, then divided participants in half (“more religious” and “less religious”), a common practice in social psychology. Sure, there were atheists among the “less religious”, but we don’t draw conclusions about a part of a sample. Furthermore, taking the three studies as a whole, the ‘more religious’ were more compassionate and more prosocial than the ‘less religious’ half. In essence, anyone wanting to spin the findings another way could easily do so by noting that the less religious half onlyacted prosocially when moved to do so by compassion, whereas the more religious were consistently prosocial. This is not a finding that atheists are better people and, quite frankly, I am sick of people trying to prove such nonsense. Promoting the fact that one can be good without God does not require atheists to be morally superior and, as this study shows, it is a good thing that it doesn’t.Again, we all think that our beliefs are well-reasoned, but what’s more interesting is that people tend to assume that those who disagree do so because either they “need to” (In that same Skeptic Society survey, the most popular reasons believers gave for other people’s beliefs in God involved the stereotype of comfort and meaning to life.) or they are not as rational.
2. Even if there was literally zero evidence, the “null hypothesis” argument is an oversimplification of a concept borrowed from statistical rules and applied to the assumption that science makes that every hypothesis is testable. Science makes this assumption, but it also acknowledges that the assumption could be wrong by excluding the possibility of 100% certainty and by limiting its scope to testable hypotheses. You cannot invoke science as an answer to claims it cannot test, nor can you claim that someone’s conclusion is wrong because science cannot test it; that’s circular reasoning unless you’re saying that science is the only way to know something. By that logic, people cannot be scientific thinkers and also have morals**. Science (shared knowledge) may ignore the supernatural, but people (personal knowledge) do not and cannot use scientific processes to examine every question and still manage to function in the world, so if you want to attack person knowledge as wrong, you’ll have to do better than “it’s not scientific”.

So, what about the other versions of this claim?

Are atheists more rational than believers? Probably on average, considering the other variables which are correlated with atheism. However, given how poorly all human beings are at reasoning, that isn’t saying much.

Is atheism rational? I can’t answer that. Atheism is a conclusion. Whether it’s a rational conclusion depends on why the individual drew that conclusion.

Is religion rational? Again, I can’t answer that and neither can you. It’s a conclusion. Whether it’s a rational conclusion depends on the reasoning of the individual and the evidence they considered.

From what I know about how human beings process information, I can see a great many valid arguments for the existence of God that would be perfectly rational. They’d have to have some extraordinarily well-supported premises in order to convince me, but lacking support for those premises won’t make them irrational. Reasoning well does not require convincing others.

As I’ve said twice now, everyone thinks that their conclusions are the ‘right’ conclusions. So what makes your conclusion (that there is no God) better than someone else’s?

If your answer is “mine is well-reasoned”, that’s not a comparison. See two sentences back.

To know that you are “right” and they are “wrong”, you actually have to examine their argument/evidence. If you haven’t examined their argument, then who are you to tell someone that they are irrational? Who are you to tell them that they have no evidence when you haven’t even bothered to ask them what their evidence is? This is exactly what you’re doing when you claim that any belief in a god is “irrational” or make a blanket statement about the intelligence or cognitive abilities of those with religious beliefs. It’s elitist, arrogant, bigoted wishful thinking.

You cannot judge an argument by its conclusion, no matter how unbelievable the conclusion seems to you.

Finally, the following is a list of things that I have NOT said. In fact, I do not believe that any of the people accused most of making these statements actually has:

• “Religion is off-limits in skepticism.” There are plenty of testable claims related to religion, but test the claims and discuss the evidence rather than attacking belief in them.
• “Stop talking about ‘the god question’.”I have no problems with debates about the existence of God. What I have a problem with is criticizing conclusions as rational or irrational without examining the argument that produced them and calling such criticisms “skepticism”.
• “Stop promoting secularism.” I am a strong advocate of secularism, but promoting atheism is, in my opinion, no different from promoting any other set of conclusions. Freedom from religion requires freedom of religion. Removing religion from government does not mean taking it away from its citizens.
• “Atheism is not the only valid conclusion of properly-applied skepticism.” I did not say that it was, either. Hopefully my discussion explains why that question is not relevant.

I had planned to ignore Melody’s accusations that my criticisms are ‘mean-spirited’, but I cannot do that, either. It certainly is mean-spirited to attack people, but that is not what I have done. You won’t find a personal comment about Melody here. If it is mean-spirited to address (or even attack) what people say and do, especially when one finds what they promote to be harmful, then our whole business is ‘mean-spirited’.

*Given that all of the major organizations in skepticism have adopted scientific skepticism, this is what I’m discussing. If you would like to argue that activism should go beyond scientific skepticism, please do so elsewhere. For that matter, this post is not even about limiting scope for practical and strategic purposes, which is an entirely different cup of tea.

**Yes, I am aware that Sam Harris claims that science can tell us what is moral, but so far his arguments fall far short.

NOTE TO WOULD-BE COMMENTERS: Please do not comment if you have not actually read (not skimmed, READ) the post. Also, before you write a comment about how Dawkins and others (i.e., persons whose credentials you think I should not question) argue that science refutes the existence of God or should include “the god question”, I recommend a thorough review those arguments (that means more than reading a couple of blog posts by bystanders or comment threads). Their treatment of the subject is much more considered than the oversimplification I’m addressing here and their arguments are not as shallow. Finally, if your plan is to quote from Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World, you might want to read the whole book first.

From a NY Times article which appeared last week:

Some years ago, Dr. Robert A. Burton was the neurologist on call at a San Francisco hospital when a high-profile colleague from the oncology department asked him to perform a spinal tap on an elderly patient with advanced metastatic cancer. The patient had seemed a little fuzzy-headed that morning, and the oncologist wanted to check for meningitis or another infection that might be treatable with antibiotics.

Dr. Burton hesitated. Spinal taps are painful. The patient’s overall prognosis was beyond dire. Why go after an ancillary infection? But the oncologist, known for his uncompromising and aggressive approach to treatment, insisted.

“For him, there was no such thing as excessive,” Dr. Burton said in a telephone interview. “For him, there was always hope.”

On entering the patient’s room with spinal tap tray portentously agleam, Dr. Burton encountered the patient’s family members. They begged him not to proceed. The frail, bedridden patient begged him not to proceed. Dr. Burton conveyed their pleas to the oncologist, but the oncologist continued to lobby for a spinal tap, and the exhausted family finally gave in.

As Dr. Burton had feared, the procedure proved painful and difficult to administer. It revealed nothing of diagnostic importance. And it left the patient with a grinding spinal-tap headache that lasted for days, until the man fell into a coma and died of his malignancy.

The oncologist’s intentions were good, but he cared so much for the welfare of his patients that it clouded his judgment about what was best for his patients. The goal he wanted to accomplish was driven by his values, as most goals are, but his ability to accomplish that goal was hindered by the same values.

In the past month alone, I have seen good skeptics deny consensus science, cherry-pick, hyper-rationalize, and engage in a number of poor practices in order to justify their decisions or actions. In the past few years, I have noted an embarrassingly large number of occasions in which skeptics have charged forward with ideas in ways I consider to be counterproductive and, in some cases, potentially harmful – giving talks and workshops without an appropriate amount of knowledge on the subject, staging meaningless protests simply because they’ve gained attention, or wasting resources conducting surveys and experiments without clear goals, training, or regard for issues such as the ethical treatment of human subjects. I am sure that these skeptics were motivated by a desire to make a difference – a desire to do something. However, ideology, values, passion, and beliefs got in the way of good reasoning. For example, last year a group of skeptics, angry that an anti-vax rally starring Wakefield was going on in their town, charged forward without consulting an expert and distributed a number of fliers which said, in part:

Vaccines…don’t cause diseases or disorders or distress or dystopia. In fact, receiving vaccines is completely safe.

I don’t think I need to go into the possible ramifications of this mistake.

Skepticism, as a movement, promotes critical thinking, careful consideration of evidence, and attention to details which are easily missed. When skeptics fail to apply those same principles to the work their actions are, at best, wasteful and, at worst, potentially harmful.

I found myself scratching my head last week when D.J. Grothe posted this article to Swift titled Should skepticism be divorced from values?. It was a surprise for two reasons. 1) On most matters of the philosophy of skepticism and even activism, D.J. and I are in near-total agreement, yet I did not agree with this piece at all. 2) It seems to contradict some of D.J.’s statements, particularly those he has made on the stage at various events.

In an effort to better understand, I entered a conversation on Facebook and tried to explain my confusion as well as my opinion. I failed. D.J., no doubt drawing on experiences in conversations with me and others about similar topics, is certain that we agree and that talking it out will eventually lead us both to see that. I am not as confident. Although I do not doubt that D.J. will agree with nearly everything in this post, I think we will remain divided on an important point.

First, let me declare now that I have a tremendous respect for D.J. At every event he seems to find ways to communicate the most important fundamentals of organized skepticism, facts that new participants need to know (and seasoned skeptics need to remember) such as organizational scope, tolerance, and integrity. He does so without apology. He is also one of the best panel moderators and interviewers I have ever seen. He asks tough questions without blinking and, when those questions are not directly answered, he steers the conversation in the direction intended. That said, the post bothered me and not a little bit.

Second, I will not use the term “divorced” because I don’t feel that conveys an appropriate level of distance (so, in that sense, one may split hairs and say that D.J. and I agree). I will use “separate”.

A little bit of background

In the post and afterward, D.J. notes that the post is a reinforcement of his 2010 NECSS talk – a talk I quite like. There are elements of the talk of which I take issue, but overall I feel that it is a good “initiation” talk for new skeptics. I would summarize the talk this way:

“Skepticism” refers to a method for evaluating claims, but it also refers to a movement. The movement is a type of humanism. It is a type of humanism because those who began it did so for humanitarian reasons. To Randi, it’s just the right thing to do. This humanism drives me (D.J.) and most others I know; we debunk and educate because pseudoscience is harmful. We share the value that to know reality is to avoid such harm. In order to do this work, we must also have a strong mind – the kind of mind that allows us to see reality as it is and not how we would like it to be.

I don’t think that D.J. would disagree with this summary, but perhaps his emphasis is different from mine. I would expect that. As an instructor and researcher, I have focused on the importance of objectivity and how to achieve it. As an activist, D.J. has focused on the reduction of harm.

However, I believe that D.J.’s Swift post differs significantly from this talk and introduces a serious problem in an attempt to emphasize the humanistic goals of organized skepticism. The problem is in the title and is the theme of the post – a theme I do not believe it shares with the NECSS talk. Regardless of D.J.’s intended message, I feel very strongly that this post sends the wrong message – a message that it’s okay (maybe even important) to allow one’s “moral indignation” to dictate how the work is done. It’s not. In fact, it’s more than just not okay. A core property – THE core property – of good science is objectivity. Values are important. Values motivate us to act and provide us with goals. However, values, practically by definition, erode objectivity almost universally.

In a comment on Facebook, D.J. stated:

I don’t want the position that one must separate ethics from her skepticism to gain ground. It’s both wrong, and also counter my goals.

Ethics are a slightly different issue and very domain-specific. D.J. specifically described a moral imperative (to mitigate the harm that pseudoscience causes), so in my mind “moral values” replaces “ethics” in his sentence and I address it as such.

The problem of values

It is actually unethical, in my opinion, to fail to separate one’s moral values from the work.

Is it ethical for a pharmacist to refuse to sell contraceptives, yet expect to be allowed to continue in that career? Is it ethical for a doctor to tell the parents of a fifteen year old victim of incest about her pregnancy because he believes that she’s lying and the father is the head of the household?

Those are, of course, examples of situations in which the values conflict with the work. However, there are many, many ways in which the same values that motivate people to pursue a career or volunteer work hinder their ability to do that work well. This is more obvious in some careers than others; some that come to mind immediately (other than the most obvious, scientists) are doctors, politicians, judges, journalists, and teachers. For example, would it be it ethical for the teacher who wrote this letter to fail to teach evolution because he feels that it makes kids “think like atheists”, something he feels is harmful to kids? Is it okay for a journalist to slant a story rather than simply report the facts?

One of D.J.’s comments sums up the differences between us, I think. He wrote:

I do not favor letting the suggestion stand that the method of skepticism should be practiced in a value-neutral vacuum.

Insisting that practitioners separate their values from the work is not even close to creating “a vacuum”. The “moral imperative” provides both motivation and a general purpose (e.g., “to reduce or eliminate the harm caused by pseudoscience”). However, that is where the role of values should end. I contend that any practice of skepticism that does not strive to be value-neutral is contradictory, counterproductive, hypocritical, and generally just bad.

Another of his comments reads, in part:

If what you are saying is that the work of skepticism should be practiced in a value-neutral way, and that our priorities as skeptics should not be informed by our ethical commitments (as an example, defrauding someone of their nest egg with fake psychic claims is equivalent to your grandpa thinking he can dowse in your backyard) then I disagree.

Well, this is quite a loaded statement, but I am saying something very much like this. I am certainly not saying that those two examples are equal, but I am saying that priorities should be informed by facts. One of those facts is a goal or set of goals which were derived, in part, from values. Once a general purpose or mission is defined, the question of priorities is epistemological; we need to know which projects best meet our goals. The examples D.J. provided are easy to compare, but what about the more difficult comparisons? Which should be a higher priority, rallying people pass out fliers at a “talk” by the author of an anti-vaccine book or producing materials to be used in classrooms to teach kids how to evaluate claims? In both the easy and the difficult scenarios, the choice should be driven by the organizational goals (facts) and information about how each scenario meets those goals (more facts). Values should be set aside because they impair our ability to perceive, process, and remember facts. 

Recognizing one’s motivations and separating them from the process of reasoning is a fundamental part of both science and skepticism.

If you think about the psychologists who have spoken at TAM and other events, most of the topics covered are d to the myriad of ways that human beings err in receiving, recording, remembering, and processing information about the world. It is precisely because we are so bad at this that we need science. And it is precisely because we are so bad at this that skeptical activism exists.

The examples we use to demonstrate these flaws are usually a bit removed from daily life. Visual illusions, pareidolia, and probability problems do not always show how subtle the reasoning problems can be. Consider this example from a recent Scientific American blog post Lessons from Sherlock Holmes: Trust in The Facts, Not Your Version of Them (bold mine):

When we look around us, what is it that we see? Do we see things as they are, or do we at once, without thinking, begin to interpret? Take the simple example of a wine glass. All it is is a transparent object that holds a liquid–which we know by experience should be wine. But if we’re in a store and late for a party? It’s a present, an object of value and beauty for someone else to appreciate. At home and thirsty? It becomes, perhaps, a water glass, if nothing else is available. Bored? A toy to turn around and around, seeing what reflections we can see, how we can distort our own face on the curved surfaces. Solving a murder? Potential evidence of some final, telling pre-death interaction–perhaps the victim took a final sip before he met an untimely end.

Soon, instead of saying there is a wine glass on the table, you say the victim’s glass had been empty at the time of the crime. And you proceed from there. Why was the victim drinking? Why was he interrupted? Why had he placed the glass where it was? And if it doesn’t make sense? Impossible. You’ve started with a fact and worked your way forward. It must fit. The only thing is, you’ve forgotten that it was just a glass to begin with. The victim’s? Maybe not. Placed there by him? Who knows. Empty at the time of the crime? Perhaps, but perhaps not. You’ve imbued an object with a personal take so naturally that you don’t realize you’ve done it. And that’s the crucial–and sometimes fatal–error, of both reasoning and world perception. A pipe is never just a pipe.

Hardly ever, in describing an object, do we see it as just a valueless, objective wine glass. And hardly ever do we think to consider the distinction–for of course, it hardly ever matters. But it’s the rare mind that has trained itself to separate the objective fact from the immediate, subconscious and automatic subjective interpretation that follows.

The way our perceptual and cognitive systems operate allows us to function in the world, but higher-order thinking requires recognizing the flaws in this system and correcting for them. This is the “strong mind” that D.J. was talking about in his NECSS talk. Most skeptics are intimately familiar with the confirmation bias, which is the tendency to notice, remember, believe, and assign more weight to information that is consistent with our current beliefs than neutral or conflicting information. This bias is one of many biases and heuristics, but it is arguably the one that does the most damage to our ability to reason well. What many skeptics may forget is how many of our beliefs are ideological – driven by moral values and opinions more than facts. These beliefs are even more difficult to set aside because they embody what we wish to be true more than simply what we think is true. So it is even more important to separate ideology from epistemology and decision-making than other beliefs.

Most readers are familiar with the thought experiments in moral reasoning which provide a framework for the practice of solving moral dilemmas, but they illustrate my point well. A variant of “the trolley problem” is particularly relevant:

A train (trolley) is running out of control down a track. In its path are five people who have been tied to the track by a mad philosopher. Fortunately, you are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five, but you know for certain that it will work. You do not weigh enough to stop the train, so simply jumping is an act of suicide that will not save the people. Nobody will see you push him, so there are no social or legal consequences to consider. Would you push him?

This is a very tough choice. On the one hand, your ability to act in this situation alone makes you morally obligated to act, at least according to many. Failing to act is an action in and of itself; you’ve allowed five people to die. Pushing the man off the bridge is an act which can only be considered murder. The most morally-correct decision is generally considered the utilitarian decision to throw the fat man over, yet few people make that choice. [NOTE: I am fully aware that some argue about whether utilitarianism is truly rational and I will not discuss those issues here. I will just say that these scenarios severely limit the number of possible strategies and force a choice between them.]

This is, admittedly, grossly oversimplified moral reasoning without an epistemological context, but it is not difficult to add such context.  In fact, this exercise was, ironically, part of a recent study that provides that kind of context in addition to explaining what’s wrong with using the problem as more than an illustration.

Bartels and Pizarro presented students with a series of bridge-style exercises, including a “fat man” version the trolley problem. What they found was that the rate of utilitarian responses were positively correlated with measures of psychopathy (someone high in psychopathy will be low in empathy and relatively anti-social) and machiavellianism (the degree to which an individual is emotionally detached, cynical, and manipulative).

If you don’t understand the study, as the media clearly didn’t (big surprise), you might be tempted to conclude (as the media did) that people who care little about others can make the best decisions about what is best for the majority. This is an ugly finding that many people are likely to reject, simply because they don’t like it. Science doesn’t work that way. Science is about truth, not values, and sometimes the truth is just not pretty. Scientists who fail to separate their values and motivations from their work fail to interpret evidence appropriately (or form good theory). The same is true for skepticism.

However, when viewed in the context of the literature on moral judgments, the finding is not about the characteristics of reasoners, but the use of these exercises to measure moral reasoning:

Our study illustrates that the widely adopted use of sacrificial dilemmas in the study of moral judgment fails to distinguish between people who are motivated to endorse utilitarian moral choices because of underlying emotional deficits (such as those captured by our measures of psychopathy and Machiavellianism) and those who endorse it out of genuine concern for the welfare of others and a considered belief that utilitarianism is the optimal way of achieving the goals of morality.

Now, I think that there is something missing from this study that would likely wash out the effects, namely that the sample of college students is likely to be filled with people who have not yet spent much time thinking about moral dilemmas. In fact, a 2008 study suggests that most undergraduate students do not even know what a moral dilemma is. There are exceptions, but many students might have genuine concern for the welfare of others, but fail to recognize utilitarianism as an optimal choice at this time in their lives. I suspect that, given a sample with a wider age range, the effects would be reduced or disappear as the proportion of caring utilitarians increases.

Even with such a sample, though, the authors’ conclusions in regard to their purpose stand because, in part, the scenarios do not consider how the individual arrived at the choice. A common problem in studies of cognitive processing is that arriving at the prescriptive answer is no guarantee that one has followed good reason to get there. Consider the atheist who endorses alternative medicine (*cough* Bill Maher). The exercises are easily reduced to a simple math problem. What they have measured is one’s ability to determine the “morally correct” course of action given a specific scenario, not whether they have adopted the moral values that we assume are embodied in that choice.

So what does this have to do with skepticism and values? Let me explain by telling you what I would predict if I could observe participants in real-life situations as described by the “fat man”. I believe that the psychopaths and machiavellians would fail to push the fat man. They may know that this is the best moral choice, but not care. They have no motivation to act. The result is failing to save four people (net).

So, I believe that values are extremely important because they motivate us to take action. However, which action is best? The individual who is unable to separate their values from the choice they have to make, at least according to and this many other studies, usually fails to make the utilitarian choice in any case. If you do not know what the best choice is, how can you take the best action? (This, by the way, is what is meant by “informing values”. I contend that we can only do so by first setting them aside.) I’d predict that those who both value the lives of others and are able to set that value aside and solve the problem objectively are much more likely to take action than either of the two others. In less restricted, real-world scenarios, these are the people who take the actions which are most likely to lead to positive change.

The consequences of value-driven actions

Humanism is an ideology which drives us to promote skepticism. That same ideology drives others to a long list of careers and activities, from social worker to clergy to homeopathic product sales. Secular humanism may reduce that group to atheists and agnostics, but my point here is that humanism is not why we promote skepticism. It’s why we want to help people. We promote scientific skepticism for a number of reasons, some of which are shared, such as the belief that it is the best way to evaluate claims. Some other reasons to choose skeptical activism as a means of helping people are that we find it interesting or have a specific skill set which can be of use. However, these are motivations to do the work and not the work itself.

I realize that I now sound like a broken record, but if we fail to separate these motivations from the work, we fail to be objective. “Righteous indignation” may lead to action, but it does not always lead to positive actions when it clouds our judgment. How do we keep it from clouding our judgment? By separating it from the work. Cool heads prevail; hot heads make mistakes.

Good intentions have motivated people to do all sorts of things. Outcomes from the actions we take with good intentions are just like those we take when our intentions are not so good: they vary from great to devastating. Take, for example, the well-intentioned “Self-Esteem Movement”, an effort to increase academic performance, reduce bullying, and create a long list of other benefits.  With the best of intentions and motivated by values that I believe most of us share, educators, parents, and psychologists plowed forward with programs and policies which are still very alive and well today. These policies have done irreparable harm to our children and society in general because they achieve the opposite of the goals they set out to acheive.

Contrary to popular belief, children do not need high self-esteem in order to succeed.  In fact, efforts to raise self-esteem are extremely counter-productive and harmful because they tend to increase not self-esteem, but narcissism. These efforts are particularly harmful when enacted as part of a bully prevention program. The Freudian idea that bullies are compensating for low self-esteem is not only myth, but the opposite is true. Bullies are narcissistic and entitled. Attempting to raise their self-esteem makes the problem worse, not better. Recent reviews of the literature lead to clear conclusions: narcissists often respond to criticism and rejection with aggression. They do this because they are incapable of understanding the point of view of another and, therefore, helpless to change it. Like a toddler with no negotiation skills, they throw a tantrum.

Most laypersons adopt similar views of criminals and others with anti-social behaviors. It feels better to think of people who do bad things as “broken”. Not only does it allow us to think that people can never be inherently bad, but it gives us a sense of control. If we can just “fix” them, they’ll be good, or if we can stop the cycle of abuse…  right?

The use of pop-pedagogy is another example of good intentions and values getting in the way of reason. If you doubt that pseudoscience in education is a serious problem, attend a back-to-school night or just visit some education websites and count the number of references to “Learning Styles”, “Multiple Intelligences”, “Emotional Intelligence”, or “Bloom’s Taxonomy”. Then visit the education department of any university and discover why. Instead of teaching from the academic literature, they are teaching from textbooks with content drawn from popular press. Teachers adopt these ideas because they seem right and they address good values – the idea that every child is equally intelligent, just in different areas, the idea that all children are capable of learning everything that every other child can learn; they just learn “differently”. Experiences easily reinforce the ideas through the confirmation bias. (Caveat: “Bloom’s Taxonomy” is supported, but it is descriptive. The suggestion that drawing from all levels of taxonomy in teaching or assessment is unsupported.)

When we allow our good intentions to pave the road, it doesn’t lead to truth. Yes, we should be motivated by our values. We should consider our values when setting general goals. However, in order to reach the goals we claim to care about, in order to achieve the things we claim to value, we must separate those values from the work. We must not allow those values to enter into our decision-making processes.

In an effort to get to the bottom line in under 4,500 words, I’ll end with another quote from D.J. Grothe and a new, more direct reply:

I argue that the work of skepticism should not be divorced from our ethical imperative or “righteous indignation” to mitigate the harm that undue credulity causes. I don’t think you’re saying this.

Well, yes, actually (if you replace “divorced” with “separated”) I think I am.