Pseudo-Skepticism and Anti-Science:
“There’s just so much we don’t know…”
Skepticism is a questioning attitude and doubt in the face of unsupported evidence. There may be a large amount of unsupported evidence gathered over many years, such as the fuzzy flying saucer pictures or Bigfoot footprints, but no tangible, corroborated, repeatable, scientific evidence. In scientific circles, the general rule is, “The plural of anecdotal stories is not evidence”.
Pseudo-Skepticism is a questioning attitude and doubt in the face of overwhelming, supported and converging scientific evidence. For example, in discussing telepathy, a pseudo-skeptic might say, “There’s just so much we don’t know…about the human brain/mind/psyche, etc.” Nonsense. Telepathy/clairvoyance has been continually disproven during routine experimentation in university psychology programs since the introduction of Zener cards in the 1930’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zener_cards).
Pseudo-Skepticism is a way of pretending to have reasonable and logical doubt about a scientific subject. “There’s just so much we don’t know…about the stars and the universe and their influence on our lives here on earth…so I will continue to think that astrology produces a real effect on my life”. While astronomers are only just beginning, in the words of Carl Sagan, to touch, “…the shores of the cosmic ocean” and there is a “universe” of information to be learned about astronomy, we do know that astrology has a lot more to do with wishful thinking and personal psychology than it has to do with the stars.
In our society, today, there are three major pseudo-skeptical and anti-science movements: creation “science”, climate change pseudo-skeptics and the anti-vaccination movement.
Young Earth Creationists (YEC) say that the earth is around 6000 years old and that the Bible should be taken as literally true with no metaphor, symbolism or mythology involved. Absolutely nothing wrong with these beliefs except that, for some reason, the YEC people also want their religion accepted as accurate science and taught in public school science classrooms. Creationism should have a respected place in our society just as all other religions are respected. Creation “Science” and Intelligent Design, however, are political movements, disguised as science and designed to circumvent our American ideal of the separation of church and state. This obvious deception is not working: the Supreme Court has twice struck down attempts to have the Creationist/ID religion taught in public school science classes.
Twenty years ago, having questions about global climate change being influenced by humans and their technology might have been reasonable. However, climate science has been around for over 40 years now and the last 20 years has seen an incredible amount of scientific focus, money and excellent research in this relatively new field of study. The result is that there is a preponderance of evidence and multiple lines of converging evidence that the earth is in a warming period and a certain percentage of it is human caused. “The scientists examined 4,014 abstracts on climate change and found 97.2 percent of the papers assumed humans play a role in global warming (ClimateWire, May 16, 2013).” Yet there is a significant portion of the population (approx 32%) who are skeptical about human caused climate change and are distrusting the massive amounts of scientific evidence on this issue. Why?
The science is good, in fact, it’s damn good. The problem is not the science: it’s the politics. The American public can easily tell that climate science is being misused to further a political agenda. The politics of climate change has a very real potential to control and over control every person and organization in our society. The real start of our current focus on climate change began with the inception of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. This “marriage” of science and political advocacy has been a disaster for science: politicians seduced scientists with an amount of money and media attention for their work never before seen in the halls of academia. Scientists were now partners in a political cause célèbre and gradually became advocates. During this process over the last twenty years, many scientists lost their impartiality. Scientists made a deal with the devil to their detriment: if science is not impartial, it’s not science.
Where does this leave us? The planet is warming and repeatable evidence can identify that the source of a certain percentage of the warming is human caused. There’s no denying it with pseudo-skepticism. However, what we do with that information and how much we should spend for how much temperature change are political questions. Scientists should stay far away from politicians (and the IPCC) and sever all connections with advocacy lest they trade the respect and impartiality of science for political expediency.
Vaccination began as a documented, modern medical procedure in 1796 with Edward Jenner’s use of smallpox vaccine. There are reports of earlier use of inoculation technique in India and China dating back to the 12th century. Vaccination, since 1796, is arguably the best medical technique ever devised and its use has come close to wiping out or greatly reducing several horrible diseases (polio, smallpox, typhoid, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, measles, mumps, hepatitis A/B, chickenpox, meningitis, pneumonia, HPV/cervical cancer and influenza ) and prevented the suffering and death of millions upon millions of people worldwide (the lives of six million people saved every year). The article below by WHO, details the benefits of vaccinations: http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/2/07-040089/en/
The anti-vaccination movement is a tribute to how much damage one MD’s fraudulent study (ex MD Andrew Wakefield), media frenzy and one celebrity mom’s misconceptions (Jenny McCarthy) can do to hundreds of years of beneficial medical science.
In 1998, ex Dr. Wakefield published a fraudulent study of only twelve test subjects. He concluded, based on this too small sample size, that the MMR vaccine demonstrated a connection to autism. Not only was the sample size to small to draw this conclusion but he manipulated the data. There was zero connection between the vaccine and autism but his fraudulent “research” in The Lancet medical journal played into the fears that mothers naturally have for the health of their children. The media whipped up frenzy and Jenny McCarthy jumped on board. Her 11-year-old son, Evan, was diagnosed with autism in 2005. After that, McCarthy publicly suggested that vaccinations may have triggered his disorder. Wakefield published a book in 2010, “Callous Disregard”, attempting to justify his fraud and McCarthy wrote the forward praising him repeatedly.
During this time, vaccination rates began to drop due to the efforts of the anti-vax movement and some illnesses like whooping cough and measles, held in check by our “herd immunity”, began to make a resurgence. The LA Times front page story on 9/3/14 describes how parents are seeking vaccine exemptions for school attendance requirements at twice the rate (8%) then they did seven years ago.
The Anti-Vax movement continues to play on the fears that vaccines cause autism and the conspiracy theory that pharmaceutical companies and the government can’t be trusted to produce or administer a beneficial medical product.
Pseudo-Skepticism in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence is willful ignorance. In addition to this personal willful ignorance, these larger Anti-Science movements have the potential to harm many people in our society. Question everything, learn the science and find out where the preponderance of evidence points.
Victor Dominocielo, M.A., 9/4/14
Victor Dominocielo, M.A., a California-credentialed teacher for 37 years, is the human biology and health teacher at a local middle school. He earned his Master of Arts degree in Education from UCSB. Leave a comment here or a question at, “Scienceeducator.org”. The opinions expressed are his own.