Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time Read online

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  Copyright © 1997, 2002 by Michael Shermer All rights reserved. Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.

  "Science Defended, Science Defined" originally appeared in the journal Science, Technology, and Human Values, 16, no. 4 (Autumn 1991), 517-539.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shermer, Michael.

  Why people believe weird things: pseudoscience, superstition, and other confusions of our time / Michael Shermer; foreword by Stephen Jay Gould.—Rev. and expanded. p. cm. "First Owl Books edition"—T.p. verso. "An owl book." Includes bibliographical references and Index. ISBN 0-8050-7089-3 (pbk.)

  1. Pseudoscience. 2. Creative ability in science. I. Tide. Q172.5.P77 S48 2002

  133—dc21 2002068784

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  First published in hardcover in 1997 by W. H. Freeman and Company

  First Owl Books Edition 2002

  A W. H. Freeman / Owl Book

  Printed in the United States of America

  7 9 10 8 6

  To the memory of Carl Sagan, 1934-1996, colleague and inspiration, whose lecture on "The Burden of Skepticism" ten years ago gave me a beacon when I was intellectually and professionally adrift, and ultimately inspired the birth of the Skeptics Society, Skeptic magazine, and this book, as well as my commitment to skepticism and the liberating possibilities of science

  It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything new. You become a crotchety old person convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.)

  On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of sceptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish useful ideas from the worthless ones. If all ideas have equal validity then you are lost, because then, it seems to me, no ideas have any validity at all.

  —Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism," Pasadena lecture, 1987

  Contents

  FOREWORD | The Positive Power of Skepticism

  by Stephen Jay Gould

  INTRODUCTION TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION

  Magical Mystery Tour

  The Whys and Wherefores of Weird Things

  PROLOGUE | Next on Oprah

  PART 1: SCIENCE AND SKEPTICISM

  1. I Am Therefore I Think | A Skeptic's Manifesto

  2. The Most Precious Thing We Have | The Difference Between Science and Pseudoscience

  3. How Thinking Goes Wrong | Twenty-five Fallacies That Lead Us to Believe Weird Things

  PART 2: PSEUDOSCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION

  4. Deviations | The Normal, the Paranormal, and Edgar Cayce

  5. Through the Invisible | Near-Death Experiences and the Quest for Immortality

  6. Abducted! | Encounters with Aliens

  7. Epidemics of Accusations | Medieval and Modern Witch Crazes

  8. The Unlikeliest Cult | Ayn Rand, Objectivism, and the Cult of Personality

  PART 3: EVOLUTION AND CREATIONISM

  9. In the Beginning | An Evening with Duane T. Gish

  10. Confronting Creationists | Twenty-five Creationist Arguments, Twenty-five Evolutionist Answers

  11. Science Defended, Science Defined | Evolution and Creationism at the Supreme Court

  PART 4: HISTORY AND PSEUDOHISTORY

  12. Doing Donahue | History, Censorship, and Free Speech

  13. Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened, and Why Do They Say It? | An Overview of a Movement

  14. How We Know the Holocaust Happened | Debunking the Deniers

  15. Pigeonholes and Continuums | An African-Greek-German-American Looks at Race

  PART 5: HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

  16. Dr. Tipler Meets Dr. Pangloss | Can Science Find the Best of All Possible Worlds?

  17. Why Do People Believe Weird Things?

  18. Why Smart People Believe Weird Things

  Bibliography

  FOREWORD

  The Positive Power of Skepticism

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Skepticism or debunking often receives the bad rap reserved for activities—like garbage disposal—that absolutely must be done for a safe and sane life, but seem either unglamorous or unworthy of overt celebration. Yet the activity has a noble tradition, from the Greek coinage of "skeptic" (a word meaning "thoughtful") to Carl Sagan's last book, The Demon-Haunted World. (Since I also wrote a book in this genre—'The Mismeasure of Man—I must confess my own belief in this enterprise.)

  The need—both intellectual and moral—for skepticism arises from Pascal's famous metaphorical observation that humans are "thinking reeds," that is, both gloriously unique and uniquely vulnerable. Consciousness, vouchsafed only to our species in the history of life on earth, is the most god-awfully potent evolutionary invention ever developed. Although accidental and unpredictable, it has given Homo sapiens unprecedented power both over the history of our own species and the life of the entire contemporary biosphere.

  But we are thinking reeds, not rational creatures. Our patterns of thought and action lead to destruction and brutality as often as to kindness and enlightenment. I do not wish to speculate about the sources of our dark side: Are they evolutionary legacies of "nature red in tooth and claw," or just nonadaptive quirks in the operation of a brain designed to perform quite different functions from the ones that now regulate our collective lives? In any case, we are capable both of the most unspeakable horrors and the most heartrending acts of courage and nobility—both done in the name of some ideal like religion, the absolute, national pride, and the like. No one has ever exposed this human dilemma, caught between the two poles of our nature, better than Alexander Pope in the mid-eighteenth century:

  Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,

  A being darkly wise and rudely great... He

  hangs between; in doubt to act or rest;

  In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;

  In doubt his mind or body to prefer;

  Born but to die, and reasoning but to err.

  Only two possible escapes can save us from the organized mayhem of our dark potentialities—the side that has given us crusades, witch hunts, enslavements, and holocausts. Moral decency provides one necessary ingredient, but not nearly enough. The second foundation must come from the rational side of our mentality. For, unless we rigorously use human reason both to discover and acknowledge nature's factuality, and to follow the logical implications for efficacious human action that such knowledge entails, we will lose out to the frightening forces of irrationality, romanticism, uncompromising "true" belief, and the apparent resulting inevitability of mob action. Reason is not only a large part of our essence; reason is also our potential salvation from the vicious and preci
pitous mass action that rule by emotionalism always seems to entail. Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism—and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.

  Michael Shermer, as head of one of America's leading skeptic organizations, and as a powerful activist and essayist in the service of this operational form of reason, is an important figure in American public life. This book on his methods and experiences and his analysis of the attractions of irrational belief provides an important perspective on the needs and successes of skepticism.

  The old cliche that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty must be the watchword of this movement, for if the apparently benign cult maintains the same structure of potentially potent irrationality as the overtly militant witch hunt, then we must be watchful and critical of all movement based on suppression of thought. I was most impressed, on this theme, by Shermer's analysis of the least likely candidate for potent harm—Ayn Rand's "Objectivist" movement, which would seem, at first glance, to be part of the solution rather than the problem. But Shermer shows that this sect, despite its brave words about logic and rational belief, acts as a true cult on two key criteria—first, the social phenomenon of demanding unquestioned loyalty to a leader (the cult of personalities), and second, the intellectual failure of a central irrationalism used as a criterion of potential membership (the false belief that morality can have a unique and objective state—to be determined and dictated, of course, by the cult leaders).

  Shermer's book moves from this powerful case in minimalism, through the more "conceptual" (however empty of logic and empirical content) irrationalisms of creationism and Holocaust denial, to the scarier forms of activity represented in ages past by crusades and witch hunts and, today, by hysteria about Satanic cults and the sexual abuse of children (a real and tragic problem, of course) on a scale simply inconceivable and therefore resting on an unwitting conspiracy of false accusations, however deeply felt.

  We really hold only one major weapon against such irrationality—reason itself. But the cards are stacked against us in contemporary America, where even a well-intentioned appearance on Oprah or Donahue (both of which Shermer has attempted with troubling results, as described herein) only permits a hyped-up sound bite rather than a proper analysis. So we have to try harder. We can, we have, we will. We have also won great victories, big and small—from Supreme Court decisions against creationism to local debunkings of phony psychics and faith healers.

  Our best weapons come from the arsenals of basic scientific procedures—for nothing can beat the basic experimental technique of the double-blind procedure and the fundamental observational methods of statistical analysis. Almost every modern irrationalism can be defeated by these most elementary of scientific tools, when well applied. For example, in a case close to my heart (for I am the father of an autistic young man), the poignant but truly unreasonable hope for communication by non-speaking autists via the use of "facilitators" (people who claim that they can guide the fingers of non-speaking autists over a computer keyboard to type out messages) met with insufficient skepticism (it always looked like the old Ouija board trick to me!) when most facilitators were typing out messages that parents wanted to hear ("Dad I love you; I'm sorry I've never been able to say so"). But when several facilitators, swept up in the witch hunting craze of childhood sexual abuse as the source of all problems, decided (probably unconsciously) that autism must have a similar cause, and then started to type out messages of accusation with their phony "facilitation," then a "harmless" sop to hope turned into a nightmare, as several loving parents were falsely and judicially charged. The issue was resolved by classic double-blind experiments—information known only to the autist and not to the facilitator never showed up in messages, while information known only to the facilitator and not to the autist usually did appear in the supposed messages—but not before the lives of loving parents (who had suffered enough already from the basic circumstance) had been tragically twisted, perhaps permanently (for one never quite overcomes such a heinous charge, even when it has been absolutely proven untrue—a fact well appreciated by all cynical witch hunters).

  Skepticism's bad rap arises from the impression that, however necessary the activity, it can only be regarded as a negative removal of false claims. Not so—as this book shows so well. Proper debunking is done in the interest of an alternate model of explanation, not as a nihilistic exercise. The alternate model is rationality itself, tied to moral decency—the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known.

  INTRODUCTION TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION

  Magical Mystery Tour

  The Whys and Wherefores of Weird Things

  The bane of hypocrisy is not its visibility to others, it is its invisibility to the practitioner. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus pointed out both the problem and the solution:

  Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. (Matthew 7:5)

  While winding down a national publicity tour in the summer of 1997 for the hardcover edition of this book, I witnessed just such an example. I was scheduled to appear on a radio program hosted by Ayn Rand's hand-picked intellectual heir, Leonard Peikoff, the Objectivist philosopher who, like a medieval monk, has carried on Rand's flame of Truth through books, articles, and now his own radio show. We were told that Peikoff was interested in having me on because I had written a book praising the value of reason, the highest virtue in Objectivist philosophy. I assumed I was actually booked because I had written a chapter (8) critical of Ayn Rand, and that Peikoff did not intend to allow this critique to go unchallenged. Frankly, I was a bit nervous about the appearance because, although I know Rand's philosophy fairly well (I have read all her major works and most of her minor ones) Peikoff is a bright, acerbic man who knows Rand's works chapter and verse and can quote them from memory. I have seen him reduce debate opponents to intellectual mush through wit and steel-cold logic. But I wrote what I wrote so I figured I would buck up and take it like a man.

  Imagine my surprise, then, when my publicist informed me that the interview had been canceled because they took exception to my criticism of Rand's personality, movement, and followers, they objected to my classification of them as a cult, and they would not acknowledge a book that "contains libelous statements about Ms. Rand." Obviously, someone from the show had finally gotten around to reading the book. They said they would be happy to debate me on the metaphysics of absolute morality (they believe there is such a thing and that Rand discovered it), but not in a forum that would give recognition to my libelous book. The real irony of all this is that my chapter on Rand focuses on showing how one of the telltale signs of a cult is its inability or unwillingness to consider criticisms of the leader or the leader's beliefs. So, while denying they are a cult, Peikoff and his Ayn Rand Institute did precisely what a cult would do by squelching criticism.

  Amazed that anyone could be this blind to such obvious hypocrisy, I called the producer myself and pointed out to him the two important caveats I included in that chapter: "One, criticism of the founder or followers of a philosophy does not, by itself, constitute a negation of any part of the philosophy. Two, criticism of part of a philosophy does not gainsay the whole." I explained to him that on many levels I have great respect for Rand. She is the embodiment of rugged individualism and unsullied rationalism. I embrace many of her economic philosophies. In a pluralistic age in search of nontraditional heroes, she stands out as one of the few women in a field dominated by men. I told him that I even have a picture of her on my wall. This got his attention for a moment so I asked him for a specific example of libel, since this is a mighty strong word that implies purposeful defamation. "Everything in the chapter is a libel of Ms. Rand," he concluded. "Give me just one example," I insisted. Did she not cuckold her husband? Did she not excommunicate followers who breached her absolute morality, even over such trivial matters as choice
of music? He replied that he would have to reread the chapter. He never called back. (It is only fair to note that a very reasonable group of scholars at The Institute for Objectivist Studies, headed by David Kelly, are very open to criticism of Rand and do not hold her in worshipful esteem as "the greatest human being who ever lived," in the words of an earlier intellectual heir, Nathaniel Branden.)

  Ayn Rand seems to generate strong emotions in anyone who encounters her work, both for and against. In addition to libel, I was accused of presenting nothing more than an ad hominem attack on Rand. I meant to do neither. I wanted merely to write a chapter on cults. So much has already been written on cults in general, and on specific cults such as the Church of Scientology or the Branch Davidians, that I did not wish to repeat the work of others. At one time I considered myself an Objectivist and an enthusiastic follower of Ayn Rand. To put it bluntly she was something of a hero, or at least the characters in her novels were, especially those in Atlas Shrugged. Thus, it was somewhat painful for me to examine my hero through the lens of skepticism, and to apply a cultic analysis to a group I would have never considered as such. However, like my other forays into Christianity, New Age claims, and other belief systems (recounted in these pages), as time offered distance and perspective I recognized in Objectivism the type of certainty and Truth claims typically found in cults and religions, including and especially the veneration, inerrancy, and omniscience of the leader, and the belief one has absolute truth, particularly with regard to moral questions. These are the characteristics of a cult as defined by most cult experts, not me; I simply examined the Objectivist movement to see how well it fit these criteria. After reading this chapter you be the judge.

  "Judgment" is the appropriate word here. I purposefully chose to open this Introduction with an excerpt on hypocrisy from the Sermon on the Mount, because that chapter in Matthew (7) begins as such: "Judge not, that ye be not judged." Nathaniel Branden begins his memoirs of his years with Rand, appropriately tided Judgment Day, with this same quote as well as an analysis from Ayn Rand: