The myth of the moral high ground

I had a big sign on my classroom wall that said, "Don't believe everything you think."

It's an important rule-of-thumb to keep in mind.  Far too many people become completely convinced that whatever has popped into their brain must be the truth -- sometimes to the point that they don't question it.  Especially if the "truth" under consideration appeals to a conjecture that they've already fallen for.

It's our old friend confirmation bias again, isn't it?  But instead of using slim evidence to support the claim, here you don't need any evidence at all.  "That seems obvious" is sufficient.

Which brings me to two studies that blow a pair of neat holes into this assumption.

In the first, a study by IBM's consulting arm looked into whether it's true that millennials -- people who reached their majority after the year 2000 -- are actually the entitled, lazy twits that many think they are. Because that's the general attitude by the rest of the adult world, isn't it? The stereotype includes:

• having been taught by an emphasis on "self-esteem" that there's no reason to push oneself, that "everyone should get a prize" just for showing up
• being idealists who want to save the world without doing any actual work
• being narcissistic to the point of unwillingness to work on a team
• having a severe aversion to criticism, and an even stronger one to using criticism constructively
• having no respect for authority

And the study has shown pretty conclusively that every one of these stereotypes is wrong.

Or, more accurately, they're no more right about millennials than they are about any other generation.  According to an article on the study, reported in The Washington Post:

The survey... didn't find any support for the entitled, everybody-gets-a-trophy millennial mindset.  Reports of their doting parents calling bosses to complain about performance reviews may be out there, but, on the whole, IBM's survey shows a different picture.  Millennials list performance-based recognition and promotions as a priority at the same rate as baby boomers do, and they cite fairness, transparency and consistency as the top three attributes they want in a boss.  Someone who "recognizes my accomplishments," meanwhile, comes in at only sixth place... 

If there's any big takeaway about millennials from IBM's study, it's that they want pretty much the same thing most employees want: an ethical and fair boss, inspirational leadership and the opportunity to move ahead in their careers.  Where there were differences, they tended to be relatively small.

At the risk of sounding cocky -- because I'm as prone to this bias as anyone else is -- I have to say that I wasn't surprised by its findings.  I worked with teenagers for 32 years, and despite the frequent "kids these days!" and "we never got away with that when I was in school!" grousing I heard from my colleagues, my general attitude has always been that kids are kids.  Despite the drastic differences in cultural context between today and when I started teaching, there have always been lazy kids and hard-working kids, motivated kids and unmotivated kids, entitled kids and ones who accepted responsibility for their own failings.  The stuff around us changes, but people?  They remain people, with all of their foibles, no matter what.

The second study hit near to the quick for me.  It revolved around a common perception of atheists as angry ranters who are mad at the whole world, and especially the religious segment of it.  I've been collared about this myself.  "Why can't you atheists be more tolerant?" I've been asked, more than once.  "You just don't seem to be able to live and let live."

But according to a paper in The Journal of Psychology, the myth of the angry atheist is just that -- a myth.  The study's authors write:

Atheists are often portrayed in the media and elsewhere as angry individuals.  Although atheists disagree with the pillar of many religions, namely the existence of a God, it may not necessarily be the case that they are angry individuals.  The prevalence and accuracy of angry-atheist perceptions were examined in 7 studies with 1,677 participants from multiple institutions and locations in the United States.  Studies 1–3 revealed that people believe atheists are angrier than believers, people in general, and other minority groups, both explicitly and implicitly.  Studies 4–7 then examined the accuracy of these beliefs.  Belief in God, state anger, and trait anger were assessed in multiple ways and contexts.  None of these studies supported the idea that atheists are particularly angry individuals.  Rather, these results support the idea that people believe atheists are angry individuals, but they do not appear to be angrier than other individuals in reality.

Of course, there's a logical basis to this stereotype; it's the militant ranters who get the most press.  And not only do the angry individuals get the greatest amount of publicity, their most outrageous statements are the ones everyone hears about.  It's why, says Nicholas Hune-Brown, the public perception of Richard Dawkins is that he's the man who "seems determined to replace his legacy as a brilliant evolutionary biologist with one as 'guy who’s kind of a dick on Twitter'"

Once again, we should focus on the outcome of the study -- that atheists are no more likely to be angry than members of other groups.  It isn't saying that there aren't angry atheists; it's saying that there are also angry Christians, Muslims, Jews, and so on.  The perception of atheists as more likely to be intolerant and ill-tempered is simply untrue.

[Image courtesy of photographer/artist Emery Way]

So back to my original point.  It behooves us all to keep in mind that what we assume to be true may, in fact, not be.  How many times do we all overgeneralize about people of other political parties, religions, genders, sexual orientations, even appearance and modes of dress?  It's easy to fall into the trap of saying "All you people are alike," without realizing that what seems like an obvious statement of fact is actually simple bigotry.

It may be impossible to eradicate this kind of bias, but I'll exhort you to try, in your own mind, to move past it.  When you find yourself engaging in categorical thinking, stop in your tracks, and ask yourself where those beliefs came from, and whether they are justified.  And, most importantly, whether there is any hard evidence that what your brain is claiming is true.

And if the answer to either of the latter questions is "No," then take a moment to suspend your certainty.  Look at the people you'd been judging without needing to make a judgment.  Get off the moral high ground.  I think you'll find that empathy and tolerance are, in general, a far better perspective from which to view the world.

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Stretching the boundaries

Be honest, can you tell me anything about the following people?

• Annie Jump Cannon
• Jocelyn Bell Burnell
• Henrietta Swan Leavitt
• Willamina Fleming
• Maria Mitchell
• Ruby Payne-Scott
• Nancy Roman
• Vera Rubin

Okay, what about the following?

• Nikolaus Copernicus
• Johannes Kepler
• Neil DeGrasse Tyson
• Stephen Hawking
• William Herschel
• Christiaan Huygens
• Carl Sagan
• Edwin Hubble

My guess is that the typical reader recognized six or seven people on the second list, and could probably have named a major contribution for at least five of them.  I'd also wager that the average recognition for the first list is one or two -- and that most people couldn't tell you what the accomplishments were for the ones they did recognize.

Okay, I admit, it's pretty obvious what I'm driving at, here.  I'm not known for my subtlety.  And lest you think I'm deliberately comparing some chosen-to-be-minor female astronomers with a list of male Big Names, here are the major contributions for the women on the first list.

Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941) is responsible for the current stellar classification system, in which stars are categorized by their spectral output and temperature -- an achievement that was critical for our understanding of stellar evolution.  So when you're watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and Commander Data says, "It is a typical M-class star" -- yeah, that was Annie Jump Cannon's invention.  Oh, and did I mention that she wasn't just female in a time when women were virtually prohibited from becoming scientists, but she was almost completely deaf?  Remember that when you think about the obstacles you have to overcome to reach your goals and dreams.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell (b. 1943) is an astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who was responsible for the discovery and explanation of pulsars in 1967.  Her claim that they were rapidly-rotating neutron stars was at first dismissed -- some scientists even derided the data itself, calling her discovery of the flashing star "LGM" (Little Green Men) -- and she wasn't included in the 1974 Nobel Prize awarded to scientists involved in the research that confirmed her hypothesis.  (Her other awards, though, are too numerous to list here, and she showed her typical graciousness in accepting her exclusion from the Nobel, but it pissed off a slew of influential people and opened a lot of eyes about the struggles of women in science.)

Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921) was an American astronomer who discovered a seemingly trivial fact -- that the bright/dark periodicity of a type of variable star, Cepheid variables, is directly proportional to its intrinsic brightness.  She very quickly realized that this meant Cepheids could be used as "standard candles" -- a light source with a known actual brightness -- to allow astronomers to figure out how far away stars are.  This understanding was half of the solution to the question of the age of the universe, which added to red shift proved that the universe is expanding, and ultimately led to the Big Bang theory.

Willamina Fleming (1857-1911) was a Scottish astronomer who discovered (literally) thousands of astronomical objects, including the now-famous Horsehead Nebula.  She was one of the founding members of the "Harvard Computers," a group of women who took on the task of doing mathematical calculations using data from the Harvard Observatory -- after Fleming noted that the work their male counterparts had been doing could have been bettered by her housekeeper.

Maria Mitchell (1818-1889) was an American astronomer whose accomplishments were so many and varied that I could go on for pages just about her.  She was the first female professor of astronomy at an American college (Vassar), the first female editor of a column in Scientific American, was director of Vassar's observatory for twenty years, came up with the first good explanation for sunspots, pioneered investigations into stellar composition, and discovered (among other things) a comet before it was visible to the naked eye.  She was an incredibly inspiring teacher -- twenty-five of her students went on to be listed in Who's Who.  "I cannot expect to make astronomers," she once said to her class, "but I do expect that you will invigorate your minds by the effort at healthy modes of thinking.  When we are chafed and fretted by small cares, a look at the stars will show us the littleness of our own interests."

Ruby Payne-Scott (1912-1981) was an Australian scientist who became the first female radioastronomer, who was responsible for linking the appearance of sunspots with radio bursts from the Sun and was also instrumental in developing radar for detecting enemy planes during World War II.  She was not only an astronomer but a gifted physicist and electrical engineer, and made use of all three in her research -- but opportunities for women in science were so limited that in 1963 she resigned as an astronomer and became a secondary school teacher.  But she never ceased fighting for women's voices in science, and in 2008 the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization began the Payne-Scott Award in her honor to support women in science, especially those returning to the research world after taking time for maternity leave.

Nancy Roman (1925-2018) was an American astronomer who was one of the first female executives at NASA, and who has been nicknamed the "Mother of Hubble" for her instrumental role in developing the Hubble Space Telescope.  She did pioneering work in the calculation of stellar velocities -- all this despite having been actively discouraged from pursuing a science career, most notably by a high school counselor when she suggested she'd like to take algebra instead of Latin.  The counselor sneered, "What kind of lady would take mathematics instead of Latin?"  Well, this lady would, and went on to be the recipient of four honorary doctorates (as well as the one she earned), received an Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal from NASA and a fellowship with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was the recipient of many other awards.

Vera Rubin (1928-2016) was an American astronomer whose observation of anomalies in galactic rotation rates led to what might be the weirdest discovery in physics in the last hundred years -- "dark matter."  Her work, according to the New York Times, "usher[ed] in a Copernican-style change in astronomy," and the Carnegie Institute said after her death that the United States had "lost a national treasure."

Honestly, it's Rubin who got me thinking about all of this gender inequity, because I found out that last month the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope was renamed the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, and when I posted on social media how awesome this was, I had several people respond, "Okay, cool, but who is she?"  We like to pride ourselves on how far we've come in terms of equity, but man, we have a long way to go.  Famous straight white male scientists become household names; equally prestigious scientists who are women, LGBTQ, or people of color often become poorly-recognized footnotes.

Don't you think it's time for this to change?

The amazing Vera Rubin in 2009 [Image is in the Public Domain]

I know this is a battle we won't win overnight, but the dominance of straight white males in science has resulted in the stifling of so incredibly much talent, hope, and skill that we ought to all be working toward greater access and opportunity regardless of our own gender, skin color, or sexual orientation.  My little exercise in considering some female astronomers probably won't count for that much, but I'm hoping that it might open a few eyes, invert a few stereotypes, and stretch a few boundaries -- and whatever motion we can have in that direction is nothing but positive.

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This week's Skeptophilia book of the week is simultaneously one of the most dismal books I've ever read, and one of the funniest; Tom Phillips's wonderful Humans: A Brief History of How We Fucked It All Up.

I picked up a copy of it at the wonderful book store The Strand when I was in Manhattan last week, and finished it in three days flat (and I'm not a fast reader).  To illustrate why, here's a quick passage that'll give you a flavor of it:

Humans see patterns in the world, we can communicate this to other humans and we have the capacity to imagine futures that don't yet exist: how if we just changed this thing, then that thing would happen, and the world would be a slightly better place. 

The only trouble is... well, we're not terribly good at any of those things.  Any honest assessment of humanity's previous performance on those fronts reads like a particularly brutal annual review from a boss who hates you.  We imagine patterns where they don't exist.  Our communication skills are, uh, sometimes lacking.  And we have an extraordinarily poor track record of failing to realize that changing this thing will also lead to the other thing, and that even worse thing, and oh God no now this thing is happening how do we stop it.

Phillips's clear-eyed look at our own unfortunate history is kept from sinking under its own weight by a sparkling wit, calling our foibles into humorous focus but simultaneously sounding the call that "Okay, guys, it's time to pay attention."  Stupidity, they say, consists of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results; Phillips's wonderful book points out how crucial that realization is -- and how we need to get up off our asses and, for god's sake, do something.

And you -- and everyone else -- should start by reading this book.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Opting out of tribalism

Well, it's 2016, and given that this is an election year, seeing the turn of the calendar page makes me want to crawl in a hole and pull a blankie over my head until the second week of November.

It's not the political advertisements, nor the signs that spring up like fungus after a summer rain all along the roadside.  Those are bad enough, of course.  What I hate most of all about election years is the nasty vitriol a lot of people spew not only at candidates they don't like, but at the slice of the citizenry who support the opposite political views.

Let me give you an example, in the form of something a cousin of mine posted yesterday on Facebook:

Now, let me say right up front that my cousin posted this as a bad example, and followed it up with the following trenchant comment:

Almost all the people I know want mostly the same thing and care about the same things.  In fact, unless you asked, you wouldn't know what political party they belonged to. It's the stereotype that people are angry with, yet the individual people living their daily lives are very very rarely the stereotypical enemy we are told they are.

Which is it exactly.  Any time you paint your own tribe as the honorable and courageous and compassionate and rational ones, and the other tribe as the evil and devious and cowardly and two-faced ones, you are subscribing to a lie that would be shown up for what it is if you simply took the time to talk to a few of the people you're tarring with that brush.

But can't you find liberals who are this determined to foist beliefs on everyone?  Who, for example, are vegans and would like to ban all meat products?  Sure you can.  In fact, I know one.

One.  Out of all of the liberals I know, I know one who is so off the beam about the issue that she would like nothing better than to make sure no one ever eats meat.  And the conservatives I know?  I know one or two who are irrational, closed-minded xenophobes.  But by far, the majority of the people on both sides of the aisle just want what everyone wants -- a good job, a secure home, a safe place to raise children.  We may disagree on how to achieve those goals, but the number on either side who want to get there by shutting down all dissent by any means are (fortunately) few in number.

So I'm going to make a plea with all of you, whether you are conservative, liberal, or completely apolitical.  Stop posting blind rhetoric, because it is factually incorrect nearly 100% of the time.  Take the time to listen to people you disagree with.  Chances are, you'll find they're just as human as you are, even if you don't see eye to eye on the issues.  Stop demonizing people who belong to a different political party, ethnic group, or religion.  Those kind of blanket statements are not only unfair, they serve as a road block to thinking.  The kind of foolishness exemplified by the post from my cousin accomplishes nothing but dividing us, stopping dialogue and further fracturing the country along ideological lines.

I'd like to ask each of you to commit  for the next eleven months to backing off on the fist-shaking and saber-rattling, and (especially) think about what you post, forward, or "like" on social media.  Just remember what Oliver Wendell Holmes said: "No generalization is worth a damn.  Including this one."

Accentuating the positive

Having grown up in the Deep South (as my dad used to say, any Deeper South and your hat would be floating), I'm frequently asked why I don't have more of an accent.  I think there are several answers.  First, my dad was a career Marine, and retired when I was seven, so I spent the first few years of my life moving from military base to military base, amongst people who came from all parts of the United States.  Second, although my mom was what they call "full-bleed Cajun," my dad was a complete mutt -- his father was born in Louisiana and was of French, German, Scottish, and Dutch descent, and his mother was a Scotch-Irish Yankee from southwestern Pennsylvania.  The third reason, though, I think is the most interesting; when I moved north (to Seattle) when I was 21, I got teased out of my accent.  To this day my voice can assume the south Louisiana Cajun swing in no time at all -- all I have to do is talk to one of my cousins on the phone, or better yet, go back down to visit.  It's like I never left.

To this day I still find it rather appalling that I was teased for having a southern accent, but I've found (having lived in YankeeLand USA for almost thirty years) that the perception of southern accents as being comical, or worse yet, a sign of ignorance, is common across the north.  Of course, the media is partially to blame; witness television shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and Petticoat Junction, and the comic strip and Broadway show Li'l Abner -- all four of which, I must point out, were produced and written by Northerners, and all of which portray Southerners as ignorant, backwards bumpkins.  However, if that stereotype had not already existed, no one would have found them funny.  The South was already considered an uneducated backwater beforehand.

The fact that the Southern accent is considered a sign of ignorance was highlighted a few years ago with an experiment in which groups of college students were shown different video clips of a pre-recorded speech.  It turned out that the content of the speech in each clip was identical; the only thing that differed was the accent.  The students were then asked to rate the speaker on articulateness, presentation, and content, and to guess the speaker's educational level.  Across the board, the clip that featured someone speaking with a Southern accent was rated lower -- even when the experiment was performed in Georgia, and the students themselves were from the South!

I recall some years ago hearing students in the high school where I teach talking about watching some clips from Ken Burns' The Civil War, and they referred to one of the historians interviewed as "that hillbilly dude."  "That hillbilly dude" turned out to be the late Shelby Foote, a highly educated man whose expertise on the Civil War allowed him to author a number of outstanding books, both fiction and non-fiction, on the subject.  To my ears, his graceful Mississippi accent sounds cultured; to my students', it apparently sounded foolish enough that they hardly listened to what he said.

All of this is just a preface to my telling you about a study recently released by Portfolio magazine, identifying the ten brainiest cities, and the ten least brainy cities, in the United States.  (The determination was done using the average number of years of education for adults in the city.)  While the brainiest cities were scattered about fairly randomly -- the five highest were Boulder, Colorado; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Washington DC; Durham, North Carolina; and Bridgeport, Connecticut -- the ten least brainy showed a distinct grouping.  Anyone care to guess what state hosts four of Portfolio's least-brainy cities in the United States?

California.

Interesting, no?  Furthermore, while a couple of the least-brainy cities were in Texas, none of them were in the states of the "Old South" -- Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.

It's nice to know that I have a little more hard data to use when I lambaste my students for laughing when I say "y'all."

I guess it's time to revise some stereotypes, eh, Yanks?