Merriam Webster defines "skepticism" as:
- an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object
- a: the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain
b: the method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism characteristic of skeptics - doubt concerning basic religious principles (as immortality, providence, and revelation)
Out of all the things that makes our species special (but not entirely unique), it's our ability to reason that puts us on top. Through pattern recognition, we're able to draw correlations, and through reason, we're able to make assumptions on effects and outcomes. Combined, we're able to make plans and predictions. Analysis and forethought has made us incredibly successful.
So why does it seem like these abilities have plateaued two thousand years ago for 99% of the human population? We've greatly expanded our knowledge of the world and how it works, and even the poorly educated today are a hundred times better off than the average person a hundred years ago. Everyone in this country is bombarded with information at all times, and one can almost learn new things through osmosis. The entirety of the Internet, the largest treasure trove of information and collect we've ever had in the history of this planet, is available to us in devices as small as a cellphone. Yet for all of our science, reasoning, and education, so many of us take things for granted as fact, or believe things seemingly for no other reason than spite or refusal to apply any sort of critical thinking.
Let me give you an example. There's an old wives' tale about daddy long-legs spiders I'm sure you've heard of. This tale claims that the fangs of these spiders contain the most potent venom of any animal in the world, capable of killing a healthy man in his prime instantly, yet their jaws are too weak to pierce the skin. MythBusters attempted to debunk this myth, but mistakenly used cellar spiders, a similar-looking but unrelated species. It is a myth, though, as the order Opiliones, to which daddy long-legs (or harvestmen as they're also known) belong, has ripping-style chelicerae, not piercing fangs. In fact, harvestmen don't even have venom!
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| Come give daddy a kiss! |
Okay, that's an old wives' tale. Sure you can shrug that one off. People fear what they don't understand, and spiders are already icky, right? (Well, I don't think so, but I digress.) It's not like anyone misunderstands something well understood and in common knowledge. Oh boy, you have no idea how much I wish that were true.
For instance, did you know that some people believe that all radiation is bad? Even radio waves? Radiation is all around us at all times. Radio waves, light, heat, all of these things are forms of radiation. These generalizations get further off the mark when people claim that chemicals are bad. Need I remind you that a chemical in a basic sense is merely any substance made up of atoms, and that chemicals make up every single tangible thing in our universe? These are concepts we learn at a very early age in general science classes. Yet if the chemicals contained in a single banana were printed on a nutrition facts label, it would send people running for the hills.
Radiation, I'd like to note, is a by-product of these atoms converting to energy. PROTIP: "energy" is defined as "the capacity to do work". If someone says the plastic band around their wrist gives them energy, supplement that term with the definition, and presto! Now you know they're talking out of their asses. Energy, radiation, chemicals; these are all buzzwords used by scam artists and the misinformed alike. Scam artists use scientific sounding terms to sell products all the time. Deepak Chopra is making a killing from advertising New Age nonsense as "quantum science". I can guarantee he knows as much about quantum anything as my cat.
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| "Why yes, actually, my PhD is in quantum mechanics and chaos theory." |
Using scientific terms to sell snake oil is old hat. The terms just have to sound scientific, they don't even have to mean anything. Take this website that claims its (totally science-based and not magic at all or anything) little pills work by splitting water molecules to make oxygen more "bio-available" to cells. Another classic example of misunderstood or misrepresented science. Cells don't pull oxygen from water or ingest it directly to begin with; that's why we respire. Splitting water molecules in any capacity is a very difficult and still inefficient process. "Bio-Available" just means "available to life", which really makes it as redundant as it is meaningless in this context.
Just as often, you'll see (un)scientific terms and information used for political gain. Anything containing "nuclear" must be bad, just as anything with "radiation" somehow associated with it must be bad. The nuclear energy industry is hit hardest by this, especially in the wake of the Fukushima incident, which led to countries like Italy and Germany completely banning the use of nuclear energy. I can understand their concern, but their responses were completely at odds with the science and reality behind the situation, such as the fact that the Japanese reactors were based on an old "Generation II" design that wasn't intended to handle earthquakes of a significant magnitude. There was also seemingly no consideration for the many advances in nuclear technology that have been made, solidifying nuclear energy's position as the best option for a cheap, clean, efficient energy resource. It's especially silly (and depressing) when the same people who are against the use of oil and coal for energy get more horrified at the thought of using nuclear energy instead.
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| Think of the children! |
"But that's for the common good, with everyone's safety in mind!" you may cry. Agreed, nuclear energy does produce nuclear waste, and its ability to to create weapons-grade plutonium is why we're trying to keep this technology the hell away from Iran. There are very valid concerns that must be addressed here. But consider the alternatives, such coal-burning facilities, the pollution from which have caused higher cancer rates than nuclear energy ever will. Meanwhile, the technology for nuclear reactors gets more and more efficient, with less and less hazards and waste, as our understanding of the sciences involved improves. You can (and I will) even say the same for our use of fossil fuels.
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| Stick that in your pipe and smoke it! |
"Forget it," some of you may say. "The science isn't there yet, so I don't trust it. Scientists are always screwing around with things, like genetically modified food. That's why I stick to organic foods." Ah, but not is all as it seems there either, my friend. Besides the obvious fact that breeding for specific traits is a form of genetic modification, something humans have been doing for thousands of years, saying something is better because it's "organic" is lunacy. Something that is "organic" is anything that is carbon-based. That includes you, your dog, your food, the bacteria in your gut, malaria, puppies, the AIDS virus, ponies, salad, and a million other things, most of which are actively trying to kill you at any given moment (not to mention all of the inorganic things trying to do the same). The reason food is genetically modified is to prevent it from directly or indirectly causing you harm, and to instead benefit you far more than its unmodified form.
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| "Hi, I'm Norman Borlaug, and I've saved roughly one billion lives by genetically modifying food. Suck it." |
This could spiral any number of directions. Pesticides, for example, or time-stamped food. Instead, I'm going to pretend we went the route of anti-corporate sentiment. This tends to sound something like "the corporations are in on it! They're working together to drive up prices!" This is a form of special pleading, where the claim is so outrageous that it can't be effectively tested. Yes, conspiracies do occur, such as Enron, but most of the time the theory of their existence fails under the first attempt at scrutiny. Think of any particular government conspiracy, such as the one about the United States government being behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Now think of all of the people that would have to be involved. Everything in government moves at a snail's pace when it's legitimate, and even when it's not, there are thousands of people involved. There would have to be a very large team to set up demolitions in each of the two towers, both 231 floors tall, as well as Building 7. Then there are the emergency response crews who could have seen evidence of "what really happened". There are a few who have gone on record as saying "there's no way that wasn't a controlled demolition", but remember, their expertise is not in demolitions or even civil engineering! So, of course, the real experts who have testified against the government conspiracy must all be in on it.
These, you may start to realize, are emotional responses to various dilemmas. I'm not saying that an emotional response should be entirely disregarded, as our intuition can at times spit up solutions or questions of vast importance. But we shouldn't make decisions on emotion alone. Are the concerns of a rational response valid? Possibly, but they should be run through the wringer of critical thinking before even coming near a decision-making process. Not long ago, the general public was up in arms over pharmacies flushing their excess medicine down their toilets. It didn't matter that the medicine broke down into one part per billion when diluted by water and waste treatment. The fact that the tiniest molecule of something like lithium or arsenic was in the precious tap water (that no one drinks anyway because of the "horrors" of fluoride) created such an intense emotional response that it's now federal law to send all extra medicine to proper waste disposal facilities. Facilities that probably just flush their stock down the toilet anyway. But don't tell the media that; half of the problem of the spread of emotional response is the fear-mongering caused by the media. The science behind water dilution and waste treatment is irrelevant to a good headline.
This is a lengthy post, but it's just a tiny, tiny sampling of the kind of nonsense that abounds in the world. I don't want to overwhelm you, but I want to illustrate my point that there are a lot of things people do take for granted without applying any sort of critical thinking to it. And this is where I tend to lose people.
The true test of a skeptical mind comes when your own firm beliefs are challenged. Someone presents you with hard evidence or a well-worded argument against something you hold to be true, or didn't give more than a passing thought to before. This happened to me, and was the real breakthrough to embracing my skeptical side. For me, it was the notion that chiropractic was anything but scientific. My mother has seen a chiropractic regularly since before I was born. Indoctrinated, in a way, as I was to this concept, I never thought there was anything wrong with it. It wasn't until a year ago that I discovered chiropractic is not only an unrecognized medical practice, and therefore unlicensed as such, but is heavily based in pseudoscience of the dangerous sort. I have since shown my findings to my mother and requested that she see a physical therapist instead. Physical therapy and chiropractic may perform similar tasks but are not the same thing, and if someone considers themselves a "reform" chiropractor who believes in science, why are they not a physical therapist instead?
Whenever someone presents me with some New Age baloney, like reiki, or paranormal poppycock, like ghosts, they tell me to "keep an open mind". Whenever someone tells me to keep an open mind, it usually means they're about to attempt to fill it with bullshit.
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| "By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out." - Richard Dawkins |
Skeptics have more of an open mind than anyone. But our minds are open in the way that a sieve is open. We jump at the chance to learn something new, but we filter it through the net of logic, reason, and critical thinking before accepting it. Above all, there must be evidence to support the claims. This makes us unpopular. A lot of people view us as "that asshole skeptic."
But it shouldn't. Skeptics like myself aren't at all like the global warming "skeptics", who have hijacked the definition to mean "anything they don't agree with". We are a community of science-focused people, who don't shy away from what we don't understand, but openly embrace the challenges it presents to us. We desire to know, to understand, to comprehend. More than that, we desire to share, to teach, to educate. When we're in on something phenomenal like the large hadron collider, we want to tell everyone else about how amazing it is, and all of the fascinating discoveries it will help us find. We're not trying to be party-poopers when we explain how the magic trick is done, we're just excited about how the trick exposes some of the strange ways in which our mind works. We're not trying to be a jerk when we tell you that homeopathy is full of crap and not much else, we're trying to get you some medical care that really will help you.
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| I overdosed on homeopathy pills. For science! |
The typical argument, usually proposed by pseudoscientists and mystics alike, is that science doesn't have all the answers. As if that's credit to their own beliefs. No, science doesn't have any answers, it's a process for obtaining answers. Scientists seek these answers, through the scientific method, followed by tests, tests, and more tests, ad nauseum until there's only a miniscule chance that they might be wrong. But scientists and skeptics alike would be the first to admit they are wrong, because learning why they were wrong, and what the real answer was, is so much more exciting! (Barring personal motives and politics, which unfortunately does get in the way sometimes. Scientists are, after all, still people.)
There's a growing atheist movement in this country that is pushing for things like evolution to be taught in schools, humanism and secularism to take precedence in matters of government, separation of church and state, and similar ventures based in logic, reason, and evidence. This is wonderful, but I don't feel it goes far enough. I've met plenty of atheists that worship crystals, believe all UFO's are extra-terrestrial in origin, and that vaccines cause autism (they don't).
That's why I consider myself a skeptic first, and an atheist second. I'm an advocate for science, a citizen scientist and skeptical activist. I believe (and demand) that crackpots like Dr. Oz need to be called to task for their harmful bullshit. I've been told this is a violation of free speech. I would be the last person to ever intentionally infringe on anyone's right to free speech. That's not the issue. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. No one is entitled to their own facts.
I firmly believe that critical thinking and science are the best tools at our disposal to further our species, both in the short term and far into the future. Even small things can help, like these gamers that recently cracked a complex protease to help combat the AIDS virus! Please, join me in the beauty of our reality!
If you are interested in skepticism, please check out these resources.
- Skeptoid.com - critical analysis of popular culture
- Here Be Dragons - a free and very informative video on the basics of critical thinking
- List of Logical Fallacies - Wikipedia's entry. Memorize these, as they are fundamental to a debate. Being a skeptic means you will get into debates!
- The James Randi Foundation - an educational resource on the paranormal, pseudoscientific, and the supernatural
- Skepdic.com - the Skeptic Dictionary is a great resource if you need to check into the legitimacy of something
- QuackWatch.com - a guide to quackery, health fraud, and intelligent decisions
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