Skewed views of science–by QualiaSoup

Very succinctly put…

WHY I am a Skeptic

Being a skeptic is not a glamorous job in today’s woo-promoting infotainment-suffused world, and I have at times been asked what the whole point of it is. After all, there’s no money in it, and little appreciation by the general public for ‘debunkers,’ ‘destroyers of hope,’ ‘cynics,’ ‘pseudoskeptics,’ and ‘naysayers.’

But even so, it pays to be skeptical…

I remember listening to the very first episode of the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe almost three years ago, when the host of the show splendidly stated the very reason that drew me into the skeptical movement, and has kept me there ever since–I’ll paraphrase:

To stand for the truth, though not absolute metaphysical certitude. That the truth is out there, and that the way to the truth is through logic and evidence–real evidence, not just anecdotes and the unverified, struck a chord with me and has stuck with me from then on.

So I decided to start simple, learning the difference between science and pseudoscience, about the psychology of belief, about human fallacies and biases and how to better recognize those in my own thinking and arguments as well as those of others. I began to learn about how science works, it’s purpose, what it is, how it can go wrong, that scientists are no more and no less given to human failings than the rest of us.

I learned how and why science, and its protection, are so valuable, so precious despite its infantile and forever incomplete nature in our increasingly technological and uncertain world.

I read books by skeptics who have been at this for years, even decades, and I still do. After all, the best way to learn is from those whom I have good reason to think that they know what they are talking about, even when there are points of disagreement on matters great and small. To disagree without merely being contrary is skeptical.

I found out that the world was amazingly more complicated than I had been led to believe by paranormal advocates, and far more interesting than the simple and magic easy answers to the big questions that the paranormal and supernatural tried, and failed, to answer to my Troythuluness’s satisfaction. We humans have a tendency to seek easy answers, often favoring what we wish were true to the detriment of finding out what really is.

Did I find this complexity disturbing at first? Of course…then I got used to it. Welcome to reality, Troythulu.

I found out about all the things I was missing out on while wasting my time pursuing paranormal piffle and pixie-dust, when I could instead be not just a student, but a student of the Universe as it truly is, even with the knowledge that no matter how much I learn, I cannot ever attain final Truth™, like a spacecraft flying at nearly the speed of light, getting ever closer as it accelerates, but never actually reaching it.

Does understanding science and scientific reasoning, and finding out the truth behind certain non-scientific concepts and doctrines mean that skeptics have a monopoly on said truth? Do skeptics claim that understanding logical fallacies and heuristics makes us perfectly rational, logical, and objective?

Absolutely not–and as one, neither do I.

But speaking for myself only, I am a wee bit closer in my asymptotic approach to how things really are than I was as a believer.

To me, the whole point to skepticism is my endless search for the way the world truly is, not what I would merely prefer it be in accordance with my hopes and fears, my all too human need for simplicity (seek it, but mistrust it…), for gratification, for comfort, for morality and meaning.

I want to get as close as I possibly can to understanding the world and what’s real, and my skepticism is not an ultimate goal, a final destination. It is a tool, a method to implement my intellectual growth to make me not just a better skeptic, but a better person. I find it much to my benefit to have a worldview grounded in reality, not fantasy–to keep what I like to imagine and what I believe in two separate realms, and nary the two shall meet.

That is why I am a skeptic.

Troythulu’s Top 20 Logical Fallacies #18

Hey, guys. This installment in my series of top 20 errors of reasoning deals with the False Dichotomy, also referred to as the False Dilemma, the Fallacy of Negation, the Bifurcation Fallacy, and the Either-Or Fallacy. A variation of this, the False Choice, will also be briefly dealt with in this post.

This form of specious reasoning involves an argument in which the number of options in any set of choices is falsely constrained, only two in the usual form, three or a similarly restricted number of choices in the False Choice fallacy, when the actual selection of options possible is realistically much greater.

As the names of this form of reasoning suggest, as a rhetorical tool and as a form of black-and-white thinking, it attempts to present too few options, and show that one must be true by discrediting the other(s). The error lies not only in this, but in the fact that the real world is not so conveniently simple as we would like, and such dichotomous thinking can be simplistic to the point of falsity. A few examples of the fallacy are given below:

• If you are not with me, you’re against me…
  

• Either young-Earth creationism is true or Darwinist evolution is true. Since evolution is false, creationism must be true…

• You either have to be pro-choice or pro-life. There’s no middle ground…
  

• You either worship my peculiar notion of God, or you worship the Devil…
  

• You’re either a believer and a theist, or you’re a skeptic and an atheist…

• Anyone who doesn’t support the Patriot Act supports terrorists…

• Either the girl broke her ex-boyfriend’s jaw with that slugger, or it started flying around and fractured his jaw by itself…

• Either your cat stole my burrito or maybe a psychic just teleported in and grabbed it?..suuure…

Note that realistically, not all imaginable options in a set of alternatives need to be considered, only those options that are somehow falsifiable, in accordance with the rule of thumb known as Occam’s razor.

(Last Update 23:13, 11/25/2009, Grammar Correction)

Troythulu’s Nu’z

• Cassini Sends Back Images of Enceladus as Winter Nears…

• …and Two More Awesome Pictures of the Enceladus Flyby…

• Skeptical topic: Global Warming denier not even close on 2009 temperatures…

• Future particle accelerators: beyond the Large Hadron Collider…

• Tech: Smart Armor Learns More With Every Bullet…

• The Milky Way galaxy bulges with cannibalized corpses…

• Skeptical topic: “Climategate” and Other Nonsense…

• Mystery of the Solar Tsunami: Monster Waves on the Sun are Real…

• Hey Kirk, here’s yer crocoduck! Galloping, Dinosaur Eating Crocodiles Found in the Sahara…

• Astronomy Picture of the Day for November 25, 2009…

Skeplinks

Here are links to several articles, the first on the Skeptical teacher Blog..

Global warming Deniers Get a Double-Dose of Pwnage

The Second on NeuroLogica Blog…

Evidence in Medicine: Correlation and Causation

…and Third, on Massimo Pigliucci’s Blog…

The Logic of Skepticism

Cuttlefish Blues…

I saw this on Fark and thought it was pretty cool…Crikey!

Troythulu’s Nu’z

• The International Space Station Transits the Moon!

• Tech: Android’s Rapid Growth Has Some Developers Worried…

• Tech: Young inventor dreams up a gadget to see off insomnia…

• Extinct Goat Tried out Reptilian, Cold-Blooded Living (It Didn’t work)…

• a Dream Interpretation: Tuneup for the Brain…

• NGC 4710 galaxy: Baffling boxy bulge (with video)…

• IBM takes a (feline) step toward thinking machines…

• Tech: 6 Inventors Who Got Jack S—t for Changing the Modern World…

Disappointed, But not Surprised…

Well kiddies, it looks like even over a week after the November Nor’easter fun and games I mentioned two weekends ago, after an exhaustive bit of mucking around on the Wayback Machine and other sources, looking at the archived Web pages of psychic websites, that I have thus far been completely unsuccessful at verifying a single prediction by a major psychic concerning the Nor’easter, neither its timing nor its effects before the storm actually formed (you’d think that those psychics would at least have a heads-up that clueless, blathering meteorologists would be completely blindsided by–but no, it was the psychics who were blindsided…chortle evilly with tentacles waving).

More to the point, after over a week of poking around, I was completely unable to verify a single prediction that was meaningfully specific in content and time of occurrence, that was not added to the site retroactively when it was updated, nor a successful prediction that wasn’t so likely as to almost certainly be fulfilled anyway.

One would think that with so many self-styled psychics in the world that statistically (and statistics are very important in the arcane lore of parapsychology) at least one of them would have verifiably predicted (as opposed to retrodicted…) the 2004 Tsunami, the effects of Hurricane Katrina, the horror of September 11, 2001, or lately, the aforementioned Nor’easter.

But no, not one did on any internet archives that my vile Troythuluness could access.

That doesn’t mean that no psychic predicted these events at all, anywhere, at any time, but that’s not the point. It means that no psychic has ever predicted these tragic events in a way that is subject to meaningful verification using archived sources existing prior to the events themselves. And until that happens, I remain skeptical of such claims.

A Question…and More Thoughts

In considering yesterday’s post at this link, I had been mulling over the argument by some believers that scientific predictions are easier because they involve what a scientist knows, whereas psychics must operate without this source of knowledge and that therefore their predictions should not be held to the same standards.

But it could also be phrased another way…

It could also be argued that a scientist’s predictions cannot be made without this prior existing information and training, that a scientist’s forecasts are only as good as the precision of the mathematics and data used, and knowledge of the field of study the forecast involves. Indeed, many such calculations involve innate uncertainties and statistical probabilities due to the nature of the thing thus predicted, like in chaos theory, meteorology, or quantum mechanics.

It could be argued that, on the other hand, while it is true that a psychic lacks the prior training to make predictions in the manner of a Muggle scientist, that his ‘way of knowing’ is fundamentally different, this in no way justifies giving him a free pass for off-target or even completely wrong predictions.

Rather, it could be argued that said psychic does not need prior training or knowledge to make a prediction, that it just comes to him or her, whether through some divinatory technique, a prophetic vision, a dream, an intuitive ‘flash,’ or what have you. A psychic, not being saddled with the need for prior data in his or her predictions, should have an even easier time of gaining that knowledge of the future, and should be able to know things about the occurrence thus foreseen that a mere scientist simply cannot, due to a lack of training in unfamiliar fields of study or a lack of available data, something which would not hinder an Intuitive who requires no such training.

Thus, my Troythuluness makes the totally indefensible and pseudoskeptical argument that psychics should perhaps be held to even higher standards than scientists, but notes to the great amusement of my evil self that they are not by the vast majority of paranormal believers, who will go on defending them to the last, as they have done for millennia.

It is inconceivable to believers that they could possibly be wrong, so dead-set are they in their certainty that they are right.

Most Excellent!

Here’s a link to something that was forwarded to me on Reuters.Com on (what else?) the LHC…

Big Bang machine achieves first particle collisions

A Link to Something Cool I Found on Fark

Nov. 23, 1963: Doctor Who Materializes on BBC

Awesome–Happy Birthday Doctor, you’re 46 years old, and don’t look a bit over 900.

The LHC is Up and Running…

So far so good, the Large Hadron Collider seems to be working like a charm, even after last year’s delays, and despite the wacky ideas about sabotage not just from the future, but by it, the fears of strangelets, planet-devouring mini black holes, and other amusingness.

It seems that the dire predictions of bad luck by otherwise distinguished Nobel-prize winners haven’t born fruit, and would have happened last Saturday if they were to happen at all.

Sorry, hypothesis falsified.

The idea that this sabotage by the Universe itself works selectively involves too many assumptions to be very likely even without last week’s disconfirmation, but them’s the breaks. Things are lookin’ up for the hunt for the Higgs boson.

(Last Update 11:16, 11/23/2009, Link Added)

A Question…and Some Thoughts

Here’s a question I came across on the JREF forums by one of the members, which I’ll post here as well, just to raise a point:

Scientists can correctly predict astronomical occurrences…down to the minute, and often down to the second. Why should psychics and prophets be held to a lesser standard?

It is true that psychics use a different method than scientists to allegedly gain their knowledge, but this is merely a statement that ‘They are different ways of knowing, therefore they are different ways of knowing,’ which is begging the question and does not serve as a valid excuse for why psychic predictions are not only always a little of target, but often completely wrong (when made beforehand and meaningfully specific in time of fulfillment and content).

Dedicated believers in the paranormal see nothing logically inconsistent with criticizing ‘mere materialistic scientists’ like meteorologists about even slightly inaccurate weather forecasts, and at the same time coming up with all manner of ‘reasons’ to support psychics whose only meaningfully accurate predictions are those made after the fact. Hindsight is 20/20, though most savvy media psychics will tailor their retrodictions to make them just a little off target to avoid suspicion.

Saying that the psychic and science are different provides no valid reason for giving the psychic a free pass no matter how off target its predictions, yet castigating science for even the smallest uncertainty or inaccuracy in the same. As the believers like to say, and as I will now, “…the forest for the trees, people!”

If psychic abilities are even as good as conventional, materialistic ‘ways of knowing,’ much less superior, what is the logic that they shouldn’t be held to at least the same if not better standards of accuracy? I’m gonna pull an Oprah and say, ‘I’m just asking questions.’

Shifting Gears on the Call

Hey, guys. This post marks the end of the final week of my updating this blog on the all-too regular schedule I have been. I’ll continue to publish the ‘regular’ installments on this site, though they will be posted with no-longer-constrained-by-schedule timing with a less crabbed writing style. In short, I’ll still post daily (except most Sundays…my gaming day) and do what should be done on a blog: post what I want, when I want, and strict timing or entry format be damned. I’m doing more frequent updating of this site with original material, more often than once or twice a week, which is always a good thing. I’ve been restricting myself far too much on this site, and it’s time I end that. Woo hoo!

This Week in the Real Universe

November 15th, 2009: Twitter Fans Flock to Space Shuttle Launch… & Space Shuttle Atlantis Poised for Monday Launch…

November 16th, 2009: NASA to Begin Escape Attempt for Stuck Mars Rover… , NASA to Test Drills for Cutting Ice on Mars… , Space Shuttle Atlantis Blasts Off on Delivery Mission… & NASA Hails Fifth Shuttle Launch of 2009…

November 17th, 2009: Astronauts Inspect Space Shuttle for Damage… , Bubbling, Boiling Sun Photographed in Detail… , Vampire Star Is a Ticking Time Bomb… & Stuck Mars Rover Hits Snag In First Escape Attempt…

November 18th, 2009: Shuttle Atlantis Closing In On Space Station… , Hubble Spies Galaxy’s Big Bulge… , New Experiment to Test Super Teflon In Space… , Shuttle Atlantis Arrives At Space Station… , U.S., China, to Explore Cooperation In Space… , Meteor Explosion Lights Up Sky Over Utah… , Cosmic Triple-Play: Asteroid Flyby, Fireball Over Utah, Meteor Shower… , World’s Largest Radio Telescope Network Goes Live… & NASA to Try to Free Stuck Mars Rover Again…

November 19th, 2009: Astronauts Gear Up For First Spacewalk… , Dark Energy Search Could Aid Planet Hunters… , Astronauts Breeze Through Mission’s First Spacewalk… & Teams Compete to Build Better Astronaut Glove…

November 20th, 2009: Astronaut Stuck In Space For Daughter’s Birth… , Giant Cannibal Galaxy’s Last Meal… , New NASA Sky Mapper Heads For Launchpad… , Key Parts Returned from Hubble Telescope Now on Display at Smithsonian… , NASA Recruits ‘Planet 51′ Actor Dwayne Johnson to Spread Message… & Astronauts Unfazed by False Alarms in Space…

Astronomy Picture of the Day: November Twenty-First, 2009

Astronomy Picture of the Week: November 15th to 21st, 2009

Skeptical Quote

Channeling is just bad ventriloquism. You use another voice, but people can see your lips move.

–Penn Jillette

Check It! Modern Parapsychology

Hey, guys. I’m finally back to my regular posting schedule, and this Friday’s installment deals with the science, both legitimate and pathological, of modern parapsychology, since its inception in the 1930s by Dr. J.B. Rhine of Duke University. To be frank, much of the criticism of this field of research is unfair, and argues against straw-people.

Much has been made of fraud in the field, perhaps too much, and it seems to me that no more has been perpetrated by the researchers than has been done in any other area of science. Much of the fraud committed is the doing of test-subjects rather than the majority of parapsychologists themselves.

It is true that the field has been colored and tainted by this though, from its very beginning as psychical research in the mid-19th century, to the genesis of its modern incarnation in 1929 and to the present day, but by and large, it comprises literally thousands of experiments, most conducted by able, honest, and competent researchers.

It is the curious inability of rival laboratories to replicate even the most promising studies that has led to its dismissal by mainstream researchers, and this lack of repeatability is due to a number of methodological, logical, psychological, and statistical errors that can easily produce the appearance of a real phenomenon.

This appearance goes away when controls are tightened and better statistical methods are employed, which has the effect of eliciting elaborate ad hoc hypotheses from believers of psi to explain away the negative results. While absence of evidence is not proof of absence, when in the right context it can be evidence for it. I shall now present the links dealing with this post’s subject for your perusal. Enjoy.

• ..on the Psychology Wiki, a description of this discipline of the paranormal…

• ..and on KnowledgeRush.Com, a discussion of this science of mental phenomena…

• ..on the Oregonians for Science and Reason site, a more critical look at this subject, by Ray Hyman…

• a page by Austin Cline: Why Parapsychology is a Pseudoscience, Not a Science…

• …on the Physics Encyclopedia, a take on this ‘parallel science of mind’…

• ..on the blog site Everything Is Pointless– ‘Why I Quit Parapsychology’…

• ..on Csicop.Org, The Best Case for ESP? by Matt Nisbet…

• ..on the same, Meta-Analysis and the Filedrawer Effect, by Victor Stenger…

• ..a bit on ESP on the Skeptic’s Dictionary…

• ..another likewise on Psychokinesis…

• on the same, more on Meta-Analysis and its problems…

• ..a wee bit on the Experimenter Effect…

• ..and the Decline Effect…

• …two new buzzwords for psi..Anomalous Cognition and Anomalous Perturbation….

• …on Rupert Sheldrake’s Morphic Resonance model of Biology…

• …on the Assumption of Psi…and What if Dean Radin is Right?

• …and because I just couldn’t resist, the JREF $1,000,000 paranormal challenge…

Astronomy Picture of the Day

November Twenty, 2009

Skeptical Quote

I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.

–Johannes Kepler

Troythulu’s Fluxus Quo

• Jon Stewart: Indecision 2009–Reindecision 2008 and Beyond(Video)…

• Ariel Kaminer–In Scientology’s Door, but Not Much Farther…

• 7 Superhero Stories Too Big For Movies…

• Austin Dacey: Putting God out of the Ethics Business…

• Skeptics Vs Believers: 2012–The End of the World?…

• Arguing With an Idiot: Glenn Beck’s Lawsuit Against Parody Site Rejected…

• Police worker fired for backing psychic investigations claims religious discrimination…

• On Wikipedia: A list of notable United States Marines…

• When a child dies, faith is no defense–Why do courts give believers a pass…

• Global warming blamed for giant jellyfish swarms…

• More Americans believe in ghosts than in global warming…

• The largest living land-arthropod in the world–The Coconut Crab…

• Twitter experiment casts doubt on psychic ‘remote viewing…’

• the NYT on The Evolution of the God Gene…

• Scientologists: Did Tom Cruise offer to give a beat-down to disobedient members?…

• New jihad code threatens al Qaeda…

• Steven Novella: Some Muddled Thinking from Bill Maher…

• Australia mulls Scientology probe…