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<HTML>E-SKEPTIC FOR AUGUST 31, 2001
Copyright 2001 Michael Shermer, Skeptics Society, Skeptic magazine, e-Skeptic
magazine (www.skeptic.com and skepticmag@aol.com). Permission to print,
distribute, and post with proper citation and acknowledgment. We encourage
you to broadcast e-Skeptic to new potential subscribers. Newcomers can
subscribe to e-Skeptic for free by sending an e-mail to:
join-skeptics@lyris.net
---------------------------------
UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS
Correction and apology: Last e-Skeptic I slammed a number of environmental
organizations in frustration at their inability to come up with an
environmental scientist to debate Bjorn Lomborg at Caltech. I should not have
included the UCS, since they are, in fact, working to find me someone. Turns
out that apparently almost no one in the environmental studies business is a
generalist. Most are specialists narrowly focused in one area, whereas
Lomborg, as a statistician, sweeps across all different fields, and thus I
need a generalist to match that scope. Hopefully by next week we'll have
someone. I did get David Pimentel of Cornell to agree to review Lomborg's
book, which should be good since he's featured (critically) in two entire
sections in the first chapter of The Skeptical Environmentalist.
--------------------------------
SHERMER INTERVIEWS AT EDGE.ORG AND SALON.COM
John Brockman's interview with me can be accessed at www.edge.org, and the
Salon.com interview at:
[www.salon.com]
Excerpts below, followed by some entertaining letters to the editor t
salon.com
-------------------------------
Edge 89 - August 23, 2001 EXCERPT
[www.edge.org]
If you know of people who would be interested in receiving EDGE
editions on this basis, please point them to
[www.edge.org].
SCIENCE AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEFS
A Talk with Michael Shermer
The one thing we've learned from the last three decades of research
is that science is socially and culturally embedded and thus biased.
Still, it's the best system we have for understanding causality in
all realms, in all fields. So despite the fact that it's loaded with
biases, there is a real world out there that we can know and the best
way to know it is through science. The reason for that is because
there's at least a method, an attempt to corroborate one's own
subjective perceptions. There's a way to find out if you and I are
seeing the same colors when we see red. There's actually a way to
test these things, or at least try to get at them. That's what
separates science from everything else.
EDGE: Why are you playing the edges; why bother to debunk, why spend
your time exposing people that are outright frauds, phonies, or who
are merely self deluded?
MICHAEL SHERMER: Because it gives us better insight into Karl
Popper's discussion of the demarcation problem; that is, where do we
draw the line between science and non- or pseudoscience.
It turns out that it's a very complex problem. Popper's answer to
that question was that of false viability, what is the result when
you put something to an empirical test? Well that's nice, but what do
you do with string theory then? It's never been tested, probably
can't be tested, yet it's mathematically elegant and theoretically
beautiful. Is that science? How about consciousness research? The
kind of thing that people like Dan Dennett and Pat and Paul
Churchland do - is that philosophy, metaphysics, or science? That
kind of research is in a gray, borderland area. How about hypnosis?
There's a whole range of claims that people don't really question as
to what they are and analyzing those claims helps us gain insight
into how science works.
EDGE: How is this implemented in your public communications?
SHERMER: We do two different things at Skeptic. We are social
activists who don't believe that intellectuals should just remain
cloistered in their ivory towers (though those who want to do so
certainly can). And we believe in Darwin's dictum, as I like to call
it, that all observations must be for or against some view if they
are to be of any service. To take it even further, what are you going
to do with those observations? You must communicate it to people. If
there's no communication to the general public, then doing science or
anything else is an utter waste of time. So I'm very discouraged and
disheartened when I hear scientists disparage science writing or fall
into the trap of propagating the pecking order, with physics and
mathematics at the top and the social sciences at the bottom, if
present at all. I think that such infighting is unnecessary.
The debunking stuff that we do is, as Stephen Jay Gould said, like
trash collecting, a dirty job but somebody's got to do it. That's our
job. But to me, that's secondary. It's not particularly interesting
to know and to expose phony psychics. In general, the expose of out
and out fraud is not that interesting, because it's just somebody
lying. What's more interesting is self-deception; how leaders of
cults come to believe that they can actually do what they think they
can do. How does someone believe in cold fusion or zero point energy,
or any of those wildly speculative alternative energy theories?
Obviously there's pretty good room for skepticism on a lot of these
claims yet these people really believe that this stuff is there. How
do they become such fervent believers? Scientists of course do the
same thing, they are passionate believers in their theories, and the
interesting question is why? Thus, the second thing we study is why
people believe weird things, have certain belief systems and how
those systems work. Including in science.
The one thing we've learned from the last three decades of research
is that science is socially and culturally embedded and thus biased.
Still, it's the best system we have for understanding causality in
all realms, in all fields. So despite the fact that it's loaded with
biases, there is a real world out there that we can know and the best
way to know it is through science. The reason for that is because
there's at least a method, an attempt to corroborate one's own
subjective perceptions. There's a way to find out if you and I are
seeing the same colors when we see red. There's actually a way to
test these things, or at least try to get at them. That's what
separates science from everything else.
EDGE: Why the increase in Darwinism, which seems to have happened in
the last 10-15 years?
SHERMER: First, Darwin was right. In the realist sense, he is the
only one of the big three - Darwin, Marx and Freud - who is still
alive. Marxism has shown itself not to work and Freud was wrong about
much of his ideas. Modern evolutionary biology, on the other hand, is
showing that Darwin was right. Culturally and socially, the
nature-nurture pendulum is swinging back and forth and I think that
ever since Wilson's sociobiology, it's become acceptable to construct
evolutionary models to explain human behavior and society. I think
evolutionary psychology folks, with a few extreme exceptions who are
telling just-so stories, have it right. Since their research is
pretty good, the combination of good science and cultural trends goes
a long way towards explaining the recent popularity of Darwin.
EDGE: Can you explain what you mean by just-so stories?
SHERMER: As examples or over-reaching, the just-so stories, sometimes
the reconstruction of what life would have been like in the
paleolithic era, in the environment of evolutionary adaptation, or
EEA, will focus on why the particular thing that you're studying
would have been advantageous. A good example of this was in a recent
book in which the author was talking about how the origins of
religion came about when men were on the hunt; at some point, they
realized that life was completely meaningless. They had an
existential crisis and realized there was no point to life at all,
and that whether they were successful or not in the hunt didn't make
any difference in the long run. So they created God, to sort of snow
everybody else into realizing that there is a meaning and purpose to
life.
Well that's a nice story; now prove it. How do you prove that?
There's no possible evidence of this phenomena. That's a typical
just-so story that the critics of evolutionary psychology would
justly nail them for. The harder thing to do is to find ways to test
very specific claims. That's why the research that Pinker is doing is
so good; he's very narrow and focused, and takes just one particular
thing and tries to test it. It isn't the big questions which are of
interest, why are humans the way they are, why is or isn't there a
God or whatever - but very specific things. That's where the good
research is.
EDGE: Let's talk about Skeptics.
SHERMER: If we're going to accomplish our goals of science literacy,
which is one of the primary goals of the Skeptic Society, you have to
reach as many people as you can. You do it through print, the
magazine and books, plus mass communication, television and the
radio. You absolutely have to do it, and that's what we do.
EDGE: But you don't get invited to appear on major television shows
if you are only talking about ideas. The general public like confrontation.
SHERMER: The best you can hope for is getting in three or four
points. Like with Larry King - he constantly interrupts his guests.
So I just said, right off the bat, well, Larry there's three points
to this answer, one... Now he can't interrupt because the guy's got
to make his three points. He tried, but I made my three points
anyway. It's like being a politician who's trained to stay on
message. I have my message and I'm going to get it across, even if I
only have two minutes to do it. And the message is that science is
the way that we find out about the world, and that all kinds of other
stuff is anecdotal and fun and interesting, but it doesn't get us any
closer to understanding reality; for that, we have to use science.
Why Oprah is so much more successful than PBS shows; people want a
quick fix, the simple answer, how they can improve their love lives
and their health. Health, money, love and career; that's the big
four. We're not in that business. Science and ideas are ultimately
much more important. One's whole life is grounded in ideas. Our
mission then, instead of complaining and whining about it, is to make
those ideas more interesting. To market it better. We're simply
selling people that these ideas are actually more important than the
little self-help stuff.
In terms of getting the word out, we just have to sell publishers on
the idea that it is really important that they publish this kind of
work, much more important in fact than doing other books. One of the
things that will motivate them to do that the bigger advances for
books by scientists, which in turn forces the publishers economically
to do something about it. This development has been is one of the
most important things that's happened to science in a long time.
It's possible to influence people's decision-making process. That's
what marketing and advertising is all about. Now scientists, instead
of looking at popular books as a necessary evil or something to do on
the side, are considering it one of the most important things that
they can do. If you look at the history of science, with few
exceptions, revolutions and change have been triggered by books. Not
journal articles. Books have done far more than anything else. Think
of THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA, etc.; the entire
evolutionary synthesis came about through a number of important books.
Scientists need to take writing seriously. It's a skill, like
anything else they've already developed. It's an art and a craft that
takes practice. It's not just throwing down ideas, you have to do it
in a way that's appealing. You have to market ideas. A few scientists
can do it: Gould is great at it and Dawkins is an elegant writer. But
hardly any others are like that. More scientists need to read those
kind of books and work their own writing. Some of the books that come
down the pipeline are just awful. It's like they were penned it in
two nights or something as if it wasn't important. I've got news for
you: it's the most important thing they can do. If you're not writing
to get the ideas out to everybody, then it's just a waste of time.
-------------------------
SALON.COM INTERVIEW EXCERPT
Science, semi-science and nonsense
A professional skeptic talks about what's real science (evolution, the Big
Bang), what's balderdash (ESP, Creationism) and what lies between (hypnotism,
superstring theory).
By Suzy Hansen
Aug. 27, 2001 Michael Shermer, editor in chief of Skeptic magazine and
author of "Why People Believe Weird Things," spends much of his time casting
Holocaust revisionism, UFOology, creationism and astrology out of the realm
of possibility and into the intellectual netherworld of "nonscience." Yet
there are ideas being floated around that, while falling short of fully
proven, aren't quite as kooky as the belief in alien abductions. Shermer dubs
these "borderlands" sciences, theories that -- for now, and in his eyes --
land somewhere between firm-footed disciplines (evolution, quantum mechanics)
and faddish bunk (Freudian psychoanalytic theory).
Shermer has a method for diagnosing this semi-madness. In his latest book,
"The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense," he applies a
"boundary detector kit" to such vexing issues as racial differences among
athletes; the belief that, unlike Europeans, indigenous peoples live in
harmony with nature; and cloning. Shermer's 10 boundary detectors include
some obvious questions -- for example, have the scientist's claims been
verified by another source? -- but what's remarkable is how open-minded
Shermer remains during his assessment. In one chapter, Shermer looks at the
life of Carl Sagan who, in his relationships with UFOlogists and SETI (Search
for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) people, managed to strike an admirably
"exquisite balance" between curiosity and doubt. With wit, grace and
skepticism, "The Borderlands of Science" does the same -- and dishes on the
behind-the-scenes head-butting and gentlemanly agreements that have molded
much of what we believe about science and nonscience today.
---------------
The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense
By Michael Shermer
Oxford University Press
319 pages
Nonfiction
---------------
Shermer spoke to Salon about the myth of genius, hypnotism and Tiger Woods
from his office in Los Angeles.
Why do you think that science is the best lens through which to view the
world?
There are checks and balances in science. There's somebody checking the
people doing the science and then there's somebody who checks the checkers
and somebody who checks the checker's checkers. Personally, I don't have time
to run all these experiments so there's a certain amount of confidence that I
put in this system. The fact that I understand how the system works gives me
confidence that if someone's claim is incorrect, then somebody else is going
to nail him on it.
Take superstring theory. I don't understand it. Almost nobody does! But I can
go down to my buddies over at Caltech and say, "Hey, what's the story with
this?" And they'll give me the terms of the debate and say there's this guy
at New York and this guy at Chicago who believe this and this. I get a
feeling that they are watching each other.
What about when big business funds science? How can you be so sure that there
isn't an agenda behind someone's research?
For example, I don't worry that the American Medical Association is heavily
influenced by drug companies. You know, it is. Drug companies give a lot of
money for research. If you go to conferences sponsored by the AMA, the drug
companies are there giving away stuff. Recently, I was paid fairly well to
give a talk at a Pasadena medical association. The whole thing was sponsored
by a drug company. There they were, handing out samples. And before I spoke,
the guy from the drug company was up there plugging his wares! But, while I
worry about that, there are a lot of medical researchers out there --
post-docs and Ph.D. and M.D. students -- who are not influenced by the drug
companies. They would love nothing better than to show that, in fact, a
particular drug doesn't do what the company claims. Those are the checks and
balances that keep me confident that science really works.
The difference between science and nonscience is somewhat subjective. You
have a boundary detection kit. I'm wondering if other scientists agree with
your methods of assessment of what's science and what isn't.
The questions that I ask -- the quality of evidence, who's doing the
research, what else do they believe, what else have they done, have they
tested their own claims -- is the way of science. All skeptic stuff is
science. Scientists are skeptics. It's unfortunate that the word "skeptic"
has taken on other connotations in the culture involving nihilism and
cynicism. Really, in its pure and original meaning, it's just thoughtful
inquiry.
Next page | "Creationists don't do science"
------------------------------
SALON.COM LETTERS
Your interview with know-nothing Michael Shermer was appalling. Anyone who
can produce the sentence "All skeptic stuff is science" clearly hasn't read
any of the skeptics. He should start with Hume, and by the time he's finished
his blind faith in empiricism may have lost its fanatical, sectarian edge.
-- Matt Norwood
Like Professor Frog living in a well, trying to imagine the size of the
Pacific Ocean, this man thinks all the wonders of the world should fit into
his tiny brain. What a joke!
-- Paul Howard
Michael Shermer's interview by Suzy Hansen left me personally disappointed
because once again the untouchable subject of UFOlogy was left untouched.
Shermer's label as "non-science" was simply referenced and that was that.
There are 400 respectable people who have evidence and who, with the help of
Steven M. Greer, M.D., want to at least have an opportunity to bring their
case to the border of science and testify to Congress. Shermer's personal
experience with hypnotism puts the subject on the border only because of his
personal experience. Am I to guess that UFOlogy is not on the border because
he has not personally experienced it?
-- Pete Priel
So, Michael Shermer says history is scientific in that we can see from the
massive slaughters perpetrated during the "Soviet experiment" that Communism
is bad, yet Skinner and behaviorism "just kind of went away and something
else came in." Never mind the decades of research and theory development in
linguistics, psychology and computer science that have sought to explain what
behaviorism cannot. This is but one example of Shermer's shaky grasp of (the
philosophy of) science. He blithely banters about evidence and the checks and
balances that give him confidence "that science really works" without
explaining what evidence is, how it supports theories differentially, or what
it means for science to work. Far greater minds have tried, and failed, to
demarcate science and nonscience. Simply adding a third category doesn't
solve the problem. The true test of his "boundary detector kit" is whether or
not the bullshit alarm goes off when the kit is applied to itself.
-- Noah Silbert
Michael Shermer's ideas in the interview with Suzy Hansen were interesting,
if a bit obvious. But when he was quoted as saying, "Once you start down the
road using science and technology, you just have to keep going," his extreme
bias became obvious.
Why do we have to keep going? This whole concept of the assumed positive
value of "progress" is a relatively recent one in human cultural history, and
while there may be evidence to support the value of learning how to better
interact with our environment, there is no real evidence to support the
assumption that there is never a place to stop and say, "That's about
enough!"
That's the problem with operating in a vacuum of values, as Shermer seems to
advocate. Checkers of checkers of checkers don't do a damn bit of good if
they operate in an environment in which the only value is to keep on moving,
no matter whether we know where you're supposed to be going, ultimately, or
why you're going there.
There is a time to move, and a time to stop and say we have arrived, and this
is a good enough place, and why is it we aren't happy with the abundance we
have created? And it is always important to consider that question, and not
just keep moving forward to assuage the anxiety resulting from a lack of
meaning in our lives and our souls.
-- Charles A. Richardson
While Michael Shermer's skepticism is laudable, his own thought seems to lack
the scientific rigor he so obviously prizes.
During his wide-ranging interview with Suzy Hansen, Mr. Shermer failed to
make a distinction between migrating Homo sapiens who populated the Western
Hemisphere and those Native American civilizations that subsequently arose.
He dismissed the notion that corporate funding can color scientific research,
although this danger is already documented. He ridiculed organic agricultural
practices and their commitment to natural processes as "laughable,"
apparently mistaking an opposition to chemical intensive farming and its
corrosive effects upon the environment for some sort of neo-Luddite
resistance to breeding.
"Once you start down the road using science and technology," says the author,
"you just have to keep going." Are we to believe this trip is a sacred
pilgrimage, brooking no rational restraint nor the type of healthy skepticism
for which the author is so well renowned?
When I was teaching science, I instructed my students that the discipline was
a wonderful human tool, but that it was invariably limited to what it can
verifiably measure, failing to confer legitimacy upon those phenomena that it
can't. Perhaps the next time Mr. Shermer is enjoying cocktail chatter with
Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould he might pause for a moment to
contemplate physicist Niels Bohr's observation that science doesn't tell us
what nature is; it only tells us what we can say about nature. It is a
useful, if humbling, point.
-- David Seppa
Regarding your review of Michael Shermer's book, "The Borderlands of Science:
Where Sense Meets Nonsense," it would seem to me that, if anything, Shermer
is not skeptical enough. Shermer fails to discuss the influence of Janis'
groupthink-type phenomena on the scientific method. It is entirely likely
that everything we believe now about superstrings, quarks and dark energy
will prove to be complete blind alleys in the next hundred years. Physics, in
particular, appears to be based on increasingly minute variations in
scientific data. Think of the grand cosmic theories today being spun out of
small variations in the cosmic background radiation or red shifts. Never mind
the influence of corporate dollars on science, the name of the game in
science is conformity: to follow the accepted wisdom of one's peers in order
to be hired, get grants, tenure at a desirable university and travel
allowances. Or sell books. What Heidegger called "the business of science"
actually slows down scientific progress, and is a flaw in what we today call
"the scientific method."
Another point: Shermer notes that the Soviet system can be judged a failure
because "they had to kill 40 million people to make it work." But since the
collapse of the Soviet Union, like numbers of people continue to die there
due to the inefficiencies in their healthcare, even though one could call
their current political system somewhat more market-based. Could it be that
this has nothing to do with the failure of socialism, but simply that Russia
is a uniquely large, cold, basically landlocked country where life is grim
because of the climate and lack of resources? Can it be that the communist
system failed because it was defeated in a propaganda war in the 1980-90's,
and the collapse followed because the people were demoralized and simply lost
their will to continue? Perhaps the Soviet system was just the best that
could be done under the circumstances with the resources available, and that
their system made possible a population that could not be supported under
capitalism? Imagine if 150 million people were plunked down and suddenly
forced to survive in Canada! Would it not be logical then to assign the blame
to Ronald Reagan for engineering a Russian Holocaust of massive proportions,
much like the European conquerors are today given the responsibility for the
decimation of the Native Americans?
Of course, all science is ultimately based on dollars. Economically,
Freudianism would probably still be active if there were enough healthcare
money for it, and HMOs today would still be funding free therapy for
everybody. If that were the case, I'm sure there would be a lot fewer random
shootings than there are now, but we evidently can't afford that while
keeping a massive senior citizen population alive. Ultimately, however,
Shermer shares a trait with the Holocaust skeptics he's so critical of. If
you listen carefully to what he's saying, you see he has a subtext, and that
is just defending the status quo. He's saying: Accept what the scientists are telling you because they're respected members of the scientific community. But obviously, this is really pretty circular, and not particularly
enlightening, because most of the really important scientific advances were
made by complete heretics. And certainly, not a good excuse for independent
thought.
-- Martin Lerner
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Copyright 2001 Michael Shermer, Skeptics Society, Skeptic magazine, e-Skeptic
magazine (www.skeptic.com and skepticmag@aol.com). Permission to print,
distribute, and post with proper citation and acknowledgment. We encourage
you to broadcast e-Skeptic to new potential subscribers. Newcomers can
subscribe to e-Skeptic for free by sending an e-mail to:
join-skeptics@lyris.net
---------------------------------
UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS
Correction and apology: Last e-Skeptic I slammed a number of environmental
organizations in frustration at their inability to come up with an
environmental scientist to debate Bjorn Lomborg at Caltech. I should not have
included the UCS, since they are, in fact, working to find me someone. Turns
out that apparently almost no one in the environmental studies business is a
generalist. Most are specialists narrowly focused in one area, whereas
Lomborg, as a statistician, sweeps across all different fields, and thus I
need a generalist to match that scope. Hopefully by next week we'll have
someone. I did get David Pimentel of Cornell to agree to review Lomborg's
book, which should be good since he's featured (critically) in two entire
sections in the first chapter of The Skeptical Environmentalist.
--------------------------------
SHERMER INTERVIEWS AT EDGE.ORG AND SALON.COM
John Brockman's interview with me can be accessed at www.edge.org, and the
Salon.com interview at:
[www.salon.com]
Excerpts below, followed by some entertaining letters to the editor t
salon.com
-------------------------------
Edge 89 - August 23, 2001 EXCERPT
[www.edge.org]
If you know of people who would be interested in receiving EDGE
editions on this basis, please point them to
[www.edge.org].
SCIENCE AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEFS
A Talk with Michael Shermer
The one thing we've learned from the last three decades of research
is that science is socially and culturally embedded and thus biased.
Still, it's the best system we have for understanding causality in
all realms, in all fields. So despite the fact that it's loaded with
biases, there is a real world out there that we can know and the best
way to know it is through science. The reason for that is because
there's at least a method, an attempt to corroborate one's own
subjective perceptions. There's a way to find out if you and I are
seeing the same colors when we see red. There's actually a way to
test these things, or at least try to get at them. That's what
separates science from everything else.
EDGE: Why are you playing the edges; why bother to debunk, why spend
your time exposing people that are outright frauds, phonies, or who
are merely self deluded?
MICHAEL SHERMER: Because it gives us better insight into Karl
Popper's discussion of the demarcation problem; that is, where do we
draw the line between science and non- or pseudoscience.
It turns out that it's a very complex problem. Popper's answer to
that question was that of false viability, what is the result when
you put something to an empirical test? Well that's nice, but what do
you do with string theory then? It's never been tested, probably
can't be tested, yet it's mathematically elegant and theoretically
beautiful. Is that science? How about consciousness research? The
kind of thing that people like Dan Dennett and Pat and Paul
Churchland do - is that philosophy, metaphysics, or science? That
kind of research is in a gray, borderland area. How about hypnosis?
There's a whole range of claims that people don't really question as
to what they are and analyzing those claims helps us gain insight
into how science works.
EDGE: How is this implemented in your public communications?
SHERMER: We do two different things at Skeptic. We are social
activists who don't believe that intellectuals should just remain
cloistered in their ivory towers (though those who want to do so
certainly can). And we believe in Darwin's dictum, as I like to call
it, that all observations must be for or against some view if they
are to be of any service. To take it even further, what are you going
to do with those observations? You must communicate it to people. If
there's no communication to the general public, then doing science or
anything else is an utter waste of time. So I'm very discouraged and
disheartened when I hear scientists disparage science writing or fall
into the trap of propagating the pecking order, with physics and
mathematics at the top and the social sciences at the bottom, if
present at all. I think that such infighting is unnecessary.
The debunking stuff that we do is, as Stephen Jay Gould said, like
trash collecting, a dirty job but somebody's got to do it. That's our
job. But to me, that's secondary. It's not particularly interesting
to know and to expose phony psychics. In general, the expose of out
and out fraud is not that interesting, because it's just somebody
lying. What's more interesting is self-deception; how leaders of
cults come to believe that they can actually do what they think they
can do. How does someone believe in cold fusion or zero point energy,
or any of those wildly speculative alternative energy theories?
Obviously there's pretty good room for skepticism on a lot of these
claims yet these people really believe that this stuff is there. How
do they become such fervent believers? Scientists of course do the
same thing, they are passionate believers in their theories, and the
interesting question is why? Thus, the second thing we study is why
people believe weird things, have certain belief systems and how
those systems work. Including in science.
The one thing we've learned from the last three decades of research
is that science is socially and culturally embedded and thus biased.
Still, it's the best system we have for understanding causality in
all realms, in all fields. So despite the fact that it's loaded with
biases, there is a real world out there that we can know and the best
way to know it is through science. The reason for that is because
there's at least a method, an attempt to corroborate one's own
subjective perceptions. There's a way to find out if you and I are
seeing the same colors when we see red. There's actually a way to
test these things, or at least try to get at them. That's what
separates science from everything else.
EDGE: Why the increase in Darwinism, which seems to have happened in
the last 10-15 years?
SHERMER: First, Darwin was right. In the realist sense, he is the
only one of the big three - Darwin, Marx and Freud - who is still
alive. Marxism has shown itself not to work and Freud was wrong about
much of his ideas. Modern evolutionary biology, on the other hand, is
showing that Darwin was right. Culturally and socially, the
nature-nurture pendulum is swinging back and forth and I think that
ever since Wilson's sociobiology, it's become acceptable to construct
evolutionary models to explain human behavior and society. I think
evolutionary psychology folks, with a few extreme exceptions who are
telling just-so stories, have it right. Since their research is
pretty good, the combination of good science and cultural trends goes
a long way towards explaining the recent popularity of Darwin.
EDGE: Can you explain what you mean by just-so stories?
SHERMER: As examples or over-reaching, the just-so stories, sometimes
the reconstruction of what life would have been like in the
paleolithic era, in the environment of evolutionary adaptation, or
EEA, will focus on why the particular thing that you're studying
would have been advantageous. A good example of this was in a recent
book in which the author was talking about how the origins of
religion came about when men were on the hunt; at some point, they
realized that life was completely meaningless. They had an
existential crisis and realized there was no point to life at all,
and that whether they were successful or not in the hunt didn't make
any difference in the long run. So they created God, to sort of snow
everybody else into realizing that there is a meaning and purpose to
life.
Well that's a nice story; now prove it. How do you prove that?
There's no possible evidence of this phenomena. That's a typical
just-so story that the critics of evolutionary psychology would
justly nail them for. The harder thing to do is to find ways to test
very specific claims. That's why the research that Pinker is doing is
so good; he's very narrow and focused, and takes just one particular
thing and tries to test it. It isn't the big questions which are of
interest, why are humans the way they are, why is or isn't there a
God or whatever - but very specific things. That's where the good
research is.
EDGE: Let's talk about Skeptics.
SHERMER: If we're going to accomplish our goals of science literacy,
which is one of the primary goals of the Skeptic Society, you have to
reach as many people as you can. You do it through print, the
magazine and books, plus mass communication, television and the
radio. You absolutely have to do it, and that's what we do.
EDGE: But you don't get invited to appear on major television shows
if you are only talking about ideas. The general public like confrontation.
SHERMER: The best you can hope for is getting in three or four
points. Like with Larry King - he constantly interrupts his guests.
So I just said, right off the bat, well, Larry there's three points
to this answer, one... Now he can't interrupt because the guy's got
to make his three points. He tried, but I made my three points
anyway. It's like being a politician who's trained to stay on
message. I have my message and I'm going to get it across, even if I
only have two minutes to do it. And the message is that science is
the way that we find out about the world, and that all kinds of other
stuff is anecdotal and fun and interesting, but it doesn't get us any
closer to understanding reality; for that, we have to use science.
Why Oprah is so much more successful than PBS shows; people want a
quick fix, the simple answer, how they can improve their love lives
and their health. Health, money, love and career; that's the big
four. We're not in that business. Science and ideas are ultimately
much more important. One's whole life is grounded in ideas. Our
mission then, instead of complaining and whining about it, is to make
those ideas more interesting. To market it better. We're simply
selling people that these ideas are actually more important than the
little self-help stuff.
In terms of getting the word out, we just have to sell publishers on
the idea that it is really important that they publish this kind of
work, much more important in fact than doing other books. One of the
things that will motivate them to do that the bigger advances for
books by scientists, which in turn forces the publishers economically
to do something about it. This development has been is one of the
most important things that's happened to science in a long time.
It's possible to influence people's decision-making process. That's
what marketing and advertising is all about. Now scientists, instead
of looking at popular books as a necessary evil or something to do on
the side, are considering it one of the most important things that
they can do. If you look at the history of science, with few
exceptions, revolutions and change have been triggered by books. Not
journal articles. Books have done far more than anything else. Think
of THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA, etc.; the entire
evolutionary synthesis came about through a number of important books.
Scientists need to take writing seriously. It's a skill, like
anything else they've already developed. It's an art and a craft that
takes practice. It's not just throwing down ideas, you have to do it
in a way that's appealing. You have to market ideas. A few scientists
can do it: Gould is great at it and Dawkins is an elegant writer. But
hardly any others are like that. More scientists need to read those
kind of books and work their own writing. Some of the books that come
down the pipeline are just awful. It's like they were penned it in
two nights or something as if it wasn't important. I've got news for
you: it's the most important thing they can do. If you're not writing
to get the ideas out to everybody, then it's just a waste of time.
-------------------------
SALON.COM INTERVIEW EXCERPT
Science, semi-science and nonsense
A professional skeptic talks about what's real science (evolution, the Big
Bang), what's balderdash (ESP, Creationism) and what lies between (hypnotism,
superstring theory).
By Suzy Hansen
Aug. 27, 2001 Michael Shermer, editor in chief of Skeptic magazine and
author of "Why People Believe Weird Things," spends much of his time casting
Holocaust revisionism, UFOology, creationism and astrology out of the realm
of possibility and into the intellectual netherworld of "nonscience." Yet
there are ideas being floated around that, while falling short of fully
proven, aren't quite as kooky as the belief in alien abductions. Shermer dubs
these "borderlands" sciences, theories that -- for now, and in his eyes --
land somewhere between firm-footed disciplines (evolution, quantum mechanics)
and faddish bunk (Freudian psychoanalytic theory).
Shermer has a method for diagnosing this semi-madness. In his latest book,
"The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense," he applies a
"boundary detector kit" to such vexing issues as racial differences among
athletes; the belief that, unlike Europeans, indigenous peoples live in
harmony with nature; and cloning. Shermer's 10 boundary detectors include
some obvious questions -- for example, have the scientist's claims been
verified by another source? -- but what's remarkable is how open-minded
Shermer remains during his assessment. In one chapter, Shermer looks at the
life of Carl Sagan who, in his relationships with UFOlogists and SETI (Search
for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) people, managed to strike an admirably
"exquisite balance" between curiosity and doubt. With wit, grace and
skepticism, "The Borderlands of Science" does the same -- and dishes on the
behind-the-scenes head-butting and gentlemanly agreements that have molded
much of what we believe about science and nonscience today.
---------------
The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense
By Michael Shermer
Oxford University Press
319 pages
Nonfiction
---------------
Shermer spoke to Salon about the myth of genius, hypnotism and Tiger Woods
from his office in Los Angeles.
Why do you think that science is the best lens through which to view the
world?
There are checks and balances in science. There's somebody checking the
people doing the science and then there's somebody who checks the checkers
and somebody who checks the checker's checkers. Personally, I don't have time
to run all these experiments so there's a certain amount of confidence that I
put in this system. The fact that I understand how the system works gives me
confidence that if someone's claim is incorrect, then somebody else is going
to nail him on it.
Take superstring theory. I don't understand it. Almost nobody does! But I can
go down to my buddies over at Caltech and say, "Hey, what's the story with
this?" And they'll give me the terms of the debate and say there's this guy
at New York and this guy at Chicago who believe this and this. I get a
feeling that they are watching each other.
What about when big business funds science? How can you be so sure that there
isn't an agenda behind someone's research?
For example, I don't worry that the American Medical Association is heavily
influenced by drug companies. You know, it is. Drug companies give a lot of
money for research. If you go to conferences sponsored by the AMA, the drug
companies are there giving away stuff. Recently, I was paid fairly well to
give a talk at a Pasadena medical association. The whole thing was sponsored
by a drug company. There they were, handing out samples. And before I spoke,
the guy from the drug company was up there plugging his wares! But, while I
worry about that, there are a lot of medical researchers out there --
post-docs and Ph.D. and M.D. students -- who are not influenced by the drug
companies. They would love nothing better than to show that, in fact, a
particular drug doesn't do what the company claims. Those are the checks and
balances that keep me confident that science really works.
The difference between science and nonscience is somewhat subjective. You
have a boundary detection kit. I'm wondering if other scientists agree with
your methods of assessment of what's science and what isn't.
The questions that I ask -- the quality of evidence, who's doing the
research, what else do they believe, what else have they done, have they
tested their own claims -- is the way of science. All skeptic stuff is
science. Scientists are skeptics. It's unfortunate that the word "skeptic"
has taken on other connotations in the culture involving nihilism and
cynicism. Really, in its pure and original meaning, it's just thoughtful
inquiry.
Next page | "Creationists don't do science"
------------------------------
SALON.COM LETTERS
Your interview with know-nothing Michael Shermer was appalling. Anyone who
can produce the sentence "All skeptic stuff is science" clearly hasn't read
any of the skeptics. He should start with Hume, and by the time he's finished
his blind faith in empiricism may have lost its fanatical, sectarian edge.
-- Matt Norwood
Like Professor Frog living in a well, trying to imagine the size of the
Pacific Ocean, this man thinks all the wonders of the world should fit into
his tiny brain. What a joke!
-- Paul Howard
Michael Shermer's interview by Suzy Hansen left me personally disappointed
because once again the untouchable subject of UFOlogy was left untouched.
Shermer's label as "non-science" was simply referenced and that was that.
There are 400 respectable people who have evidence and who, with the help of
Steven M. Greer, M.D., want to at least have an opportunity to bring their
case to the border of science and testify to Congress. Shermer's personal
experience with hypnotism puts the subject on the border only because of his
personal experience. Am I to guess that UFOlogy is not on the border because
he has not personally experienced it?
-- Pete Priel
So, Michael Shermer says history is scientific in that we can see from the
massive slaughters perpetrated during the "Soviet experiment" that Communism
is bad, yet Skinner and behaviorism "just kind of went away and something
else came in." Never mind the decades of research and theory development in
linguistics, psychology and computer science that have sought to explain what
behaviorism cannot. This is but one example of Shermer's shaky grasp of (the
philosophy of) science. He blithely banters about evidence and the checks and
balances that give him confidence "that science really works" without
explaining what evidence is, how it supports theories differentially, or what
it means for science to work. Far greater minds have tried, and failed, to
demarcate science and nonscience. Simply adding a third category doesn't
solve the problem. The true test of his "boundary detector kit" is whether or
not the bullshit alarm goes off when the kit is applied to itself.
-- Noah Silbert
Michael Shermer's ideas in the interview with Suzy Hansen were interesting,
if a bit obvious. But when he was quoted as saying, "Once you start down the
road using science and technology, you just have to keep going," his extreme
bias became obvious.
Why do we have to keep going? This whole concept of the assumed positive
value of "progress" is a relatively recent one in human cultural history, and
while there may be evidence to support the value of learning how to better
interact with our environment, there is no real evidence to support the
assumption that there is never a place to stop and say, "That's about
enough!"
That's the problem with operating in a vacuum of values, as Shermer seems to
advocate. Checkers of checkers of checkers don't do a damn bit of good if
they operate in an environment in which the only value is to keep on moving,
no matter whether we know where you're supposed to be going, ultimately, or
why you're going there.
There is a time to move, and a time to stop and say we have arrived, and this
is a good enough place, and why is it we aren't happy with the abundance we
have created? And it is always important to consider that question, and not
just keep moving forward to assuage the anxiety resulting from a lack of
meaning in our lives and our souls.
-- Charles A. Richardson
While Michael Shermer's skepticism is laudable, his own thought seems to lack
the scientific rigor he so obviously prizes.
During his wide-ranging interview with Suzy Hansen, Mr. Shermer failed to
make a distinction between migrating Homo sapiens who populated the Western
Hemisphere and those Native American civilizations that subsequently arose.
He dismissed the notion that corporate funding can color scientific research,
although this danger is already documented. He ridiculed organic agricultural
practices and their commitment to natural processes as "laughable,"
apparently mistaking an opposition to chemical intensive farming and its
corrosive effects upon the environment for some sort of neo-Luddite
resistance to breeding.
"Once you start down the road using science and technology," says the author,
"you just have to keep going." Are we to believe this trip is a sacred
pilgrimage, brooking no rational restraint nor the type of healthy skepticism
for which the author is so well renowned?
When I was teaching science, I instructed my students that the discipline was
a wonderful human tool, but that it was invariably limited to what it can
verifiably measure, failing to confer legitimacy upon those phenomena that it
can't. Perhaps the next time Mr. Shermer is enjoying cocktail chatter with
Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould he might pause for a moment to
contemplate physicist Niels Bohr's observation that science doesn't tell us
what nature is; it only tells us what we can say about nature. It is a
useful, if humbling, point.
-- David Seppa
Regarding your review of Michael Shermer's book, "The Borderlands of Science:
Where Sense Meets Nonsense," it would seem to me that, if anything, Shermer
is not skeptical enough. Shermer fails to discuss the influence of Janis'
groupthink-type phenomena on the scientific method. It is entirely likely
that everything we believe now about superstrings, quarks and dark energy
will prove to be complete blind alleys in the next hundred years. Physics, in
particular, appears to be based on increasingly minute variations in
scientific data. Think of the grand cosmic theories today being spun out of
small variations in the cosmic background radiation or red shifts. Never mind
the influence of corporate dollars on science, the name of the game in
science is conformity: to follow the accepted wisdom of one's peers in order
to be hired, get grants, tenure at a desirable university and travel
allowances. Or sell books. What Heidegger called "the business of science"
actually slows down scientific progress, and is a flaw in what we today call
"the scientific method."
Another point: Shermer notes that the Soviet system can be judged a failure
because "they had to kill 40 million people to make it work." But since the
collapse of the Soviet Union, like numbers of people continue to die there
due to the inefficiencies in their healthcare, even though one could call
their current political system somewhat more market-based. Could it be that
this has nothing to do with the failure of socialism, but simply that Russia
is a uniquely large, cold, basically landlocked country where life is grim
because of the climate and lack of resources? Can it be that the communist
system failed because it was defeated in a propaganda war in the 1980-90's,
and the collapse followed because the people were demoralized and simply lost
their will to continue? Perhaps the Soviet system was just the best that
could be done under the circumstances with the resources available, and that
their system made possible a population that could not be supported under
capitalism? Imagine if 150 million people were plunked down and suddenly
forced to survive in Canada! Would it not be logical then to assign the blame
to Ronald Reagan for engineering a Russian Holocaust of massive proportions,
much like the European conquerors are today given the responsibility for the
decimation of the Native Americans?
Of course, all science is ultimately based on dollars. Economically,
Freudianism would probably still be active if there were enough healthcare
money for it, and HMOs today would still be funding free therapy for
everybody. If that were the case, I'm sure there would be a lot fewer random
shootings than there are now, but we evidently can't afford that while
keeping a massive senior citizen population alive. Ultimately, however,
Shermer shares a trait with the Holocaust skeptics he's so critical of. If
you listen carefully to what he's saying, you see he has a subtext, and that
is just defending the status quo. He's saying: Accept what the scientists are telling you because they're respected members of the scientific community. But obviously, this is really pretty circular, and not particularly
enlightening, because most of the really important scientific advances were
made by complete heretics. And certainly, not a good excuse for independent
thought.
-- Martin Lerner
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| Subject | Author | Posted |
|---|---|---|
|
Mikey Brass | August 31, 2001 07:45PM |
|
Carl Tanner | September 03, 2001 01:10AM |
|
Michael Brass | September 03, 2001 05:36AM |
|
Stephen Tonkin | September 03, 2001 01:30PM |
|
Mikey Brass | September 03, 2001 04:14PM |
|
Carl Tanner | September 04, 2001 01:24AM |
|
lone | September 05, 2001 03:46AM |
|
lone | September 05, 2001 04:25AM |
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