Inventing reality

It's understandable that people get upset when the world turns out to work differently than they wanted or expected.  We all have our preconceived notions and our biases, and it can be jarring when those turn out to be false.

This only becomes a problem, however, when we look at the facts and evidence, plug our ears, and say "La la la la la la la, not listening."

It will come as no surprise that I'm once again talking about climate change, a topic on which I have rung the changes so many times that I've lost count.  But I was more or less forced to return to the subject by not one, nor two, but three news stories that appeared one after another over at the r/skeptic subreddit, and which left me seeing red to the extent that I have to pass along the anger to all of my readers.

You're welcome.

The first article comes from the Orlando Sentinel, and is called, "Voters Need Truth About 'Clean Coal.'"  Those of you who watched the second presidential debate will no doubt recall that the topic came up with respect to energy policy.  We need to restore mining jobs in places like West Virginia and Pennsylvania, because there's "clean coal" which is environmentally friendly and won't cause all sorts of ecological havoc.

Well, the article calls that out for the nonsense it is in no uncertain terms:

Back in this circumstance called reality, what's actually happened in the energy sector is that much of the world has been moving away from coal for decades. U.S. mining jobs have been mostly in decline since the 1980s...  [T]he U.S. needs to take the threat from air pollution and climate change seriously. If we artificially boost demand for coal simply to put miners back to work, the country will pay through the nose — not only in higher energy costs but in human health and lives.  The toxins produced by burning coal, such as sulfur dioxide, ground-level ozone, heavy metals and particulates, contribute to four out of the five leading causes of death, including heart disease and cancer. 

And climate change could prove just as life-threatening as rising sea levels, record-breaking heatwaves, droughts, floods, declining food production and other related effects take hold. 

None of those problems go away if we simply refuse to believe in them.  Coal's decline isn't a product of politics; it's a function of chemistry.

Then we had an article in The Guardian entitled "Climate Scientists Publish a Paper Debunking Ted Cruz," responding to a presentation in a hearing run by Senator Ted Cruz in the Senate Committee on Commerce last year.  Cruz had invited climate change denier John Christy to testify (speaking of having an agenda).  And Christy told the senators two things; that mid-tropospheric temperatures were rising three times slower than climate models predicted, and (more damning still) there had been no measurable warming of the troposphere for the past 18 years.

Well, it would be damning if it were true.  Which it isn't.  The study just released was unequivocal:

[T]his recent paper did a few things. First, they took the contrarian argument that the mid-troposphere temperatures have been rising at only 1/3 the rate predicted by models. They found that Christy’s team neglected the contamination of the cooling in the upper stratosphere. When they applied this correction, they found that Christy’s claim was incorrect. Differences between modeled and observed warming rates were much smaller, and had known explanations.

Next, the authors asked whether it is true that there has been no warming in the lower atmosphere (troposphere) in the past 18 years. They found that for five of the six groups that provide satellite temperature analysis, this claim was also incorrect. 

Finally, they asked whether it is true that the temperature changes in different layers of the atmosphere are in disagreement in models and measurements. Their result is that when temperature changes in different layers of the atmosphere are compared, one of three satellite records is in close agreement with the climate models.

Last, we had Representative Ken Buck of Colorado making the statement that talk of climate change was endangering Americans by deflecting their attention away from more important stuff.  "When we distract our military with a radical climate change agenda," Buck said, "we detract from their main purpose of defending America from enemies like ISIS."  He was explaining why he had introduced an amendment to the Defense Appropriation Bill, asking them to cut funding for a directive called "Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience."

The only problem with this, according to an article in the Denver Post, is that Buck's claim is directly contradicting statements issued from the Department of Defense.  Who would, you'd think, know what they were talking about on the topic.  The DoD has said outright that climate change would lead to "prominent military vulnerabilities," that the Department would "need to adjust to the impacts of climate change on our facilities and military capabilities," and that 18 military installations in the United States are directly threatened by sea level rise.

Worse still -- for Buck's claims, anyhow -- is the statement from James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, who said that climate change is "an underlying meta-driver of unpredictable instability."

[image courtesy of NOAA]

Which is it exactly.  We're perturbing the climate at a rate higher than anything we find in the geological record, and it's no particular surprise that it is responding erratically, and from a human viewpoint, catastrophically.  While no one day of bad weather can be directly attributable to climate change, the pattern we've seen lately of larger storms (and storms taking different tracks than usual), droughts, floods, and other climatic weirdness all adds up to something the climate models have been telling us for years -- that dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the amounts we've been doing for the past hundred years is causing huge climatic changes that may already be beyond our powers to mitigate.

But back to my original point.  I can understand the desire by Cruz, Buck, Trump, and others for the world to be other than it is.  Hell, I get why the coal miners are upset; their jobs are vanishing.  But there are bigger issues at stake here, like the long-term habitability of the planet, and (in the short term) environmental devastation that could compromise the living space and agricultural production for millions of people.

So very sorry that the world doesn't conform to your desires.  That's true for many of us, and the appropriate response is, "Tough shit."  Part of being an adult is facing up to it when things aren't the way we want them to be, not stomping our feet, clinging to our invented version of reality, and saying, "But I want it this way!"  Climate change exists, whether we want it to or not, and the effects are increasingly looking catastrophic.  Best we stop trying to push an agenda based on our desires and tackle the problem head-on.

Speak of the devil

Just because I keep hoisting the banner of rationalism here at Skeptophilia doesn't mean I don't get pretty freakin' discouraged at times.

I suppose it's an occupational hazard.  My spending hours daily seeking out the most bizarre examples of irrational behavior I can find, so I have something to write about, means that inevitably I'm going to come to the conclusion that humanity is pretty much screwed.  It's like people who become addicted to shows like CSI and Cops and Law and Order.  At some point, you're pretty certain to decide that the world is full of criminals who are trying to kill you and get away with it.

So it's an effort at times to remain optimistic.  Especially given stories like the one over at Fusion a couple of days ago describing a poll taken in North Carolina wherein 41% of Donald Trump supporters said that Hillary Clinton is literally the devil.

As I've said before, I'm not here to discuss whether or not you agree with Clinton's politics.  But the idea that 41% of Trump supporters think that his opponent is the incarnation of Satan on Earth is troubling, to say the least.

That, however, is not the strangest thing about the poll.  Apparently, of the currently undecided voters, 15% thought Clinton was the devil.  So I'm thinking: You believe one of the candidates is literally the Prince of Hell (or Princess, in this case), and you're undecided?  What are you planning to do, stand there in the voting booth and say, "Let's see: candidate who is Satan, candidate who is not Satan... how to choose, how to choose?"

The weirdest thing, though, is that on the poll there were three choices: (1) Clinton is the devil; (2) Clinton is not the devil; and (3) Not sure.  And of the people who say they're voting for Hillary Clinton, 6% of them said they were not sure if she was the devil or not.

Now, I realize that this may be because 6% of the respondents thought the question was funny enough that they decided to fuck around with the results.  Or, perhaps, that this represents the 6% of respondents who are actual practicing Satanists, who think that Clinton might be the devil and are happy about it.  But if you look at the results, you will find that 33% of undecided voters are also undecided about whether Clinton is Satan.

So there are people in North Carolina (a lot of them, apparently) who when asked, "Who are you voting for?" said, "I dunno," and when asked, "Is Hillary Clinton the devil?" said, "Um... I dunno about that either."

Some days I feel like I've side-slipped into a bizarro world where this kind of stuff is normal.  Because this isn't the only insane thing that's happened lately.  When a map came out showing that if only men voted, Donald Trump would win, his followers immediately started calling for repealing the 19th Amendment, with one woman saying she would "give up [her] right to vote to make this happen."  Then we had a completely surreal video of Alex Jones making the rounds, wherein he bursts into tears on air and says that not only is Clinton a demon, so is Obama, adding that if you vote for Clinton you're "electing President Linda Blair."

I dunno, President Linda Blair could probably get stuff done, don't you think?  If Mitch McConnell stonewalled President Linda Blair, she could just puke up some pea soup on him.  "Oh, you won't give my Supreme Court nominee a fair hearing?  Well, take this!"  *BARRRRRFFFFF*

At least it would make C-Span more interesting.

So I guess we rationalists have a way to go, and it's an uphill battle.  I'm not ready to give up any time soon, so if you are a loyal reader, no worries: I still have a few posts left in me.  But it'd be nice if we could make more headway in convincing people not to engage in insane magical thinking.

Although it would make it harder for me to find material.  So I suppose I should be glad, in a backhanded way, that these people are keeping me in business.

Send in the clowns

According to an article last week in the Boston Globe, Loren Coleman, the founder and director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine, has been called into investigate the recent rash of clown sightings in the United States.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commona]

I'm not entirely sure what to think about this.  First, despite the fact that the museum has been in operation since 2003, in that time they have demonstrated conclusive evidence of the existence of almost one Sasquatch.  The same goes for all of the other cryptids they study, such as the Loch Ness Monster, the latest sighting of which turned out to be a bunch of seals.

So their track record isn't that great.  Also, I question that scary clowns actually qualify as cryptids, given that no one is really doubting they exist.  Most of us think they're pranksters (or possibly loonies) dressed up in clown suits to scare the piss out of the unsuspecting, and as such are more a concern for local law enforcement than they are for the crew of Finding Bigfoot.

That hasn't stopped people from seeking out Coleman's help. "Everybody [has] jumped on the phantom clown bandwagon," he said in an interview with the Globe.  "I’m always prepared for the next new thing.  It’s a very crisis-oriented field that I [work] in — it could be a new animal discovery, a new Bigfoot report, a new giant snake report... That’s just the way life is."

So I guess he's saying if it wasn't clowns, it would be something else.  Which I can't really argue with.

Me, I'm tired of the whole clown thing already, but unfortunately Coleman says he expects the number of sightings to "increase until Halloween and diminish thereafter."  Part of my annoyance with the phenomenon stems from the fact that our school got put on lockout last week because of a threatening clown-related Instagram page.  The whole thing was completely exasperating, mostly because I spent the day answering clown-related questions instead of talking about aerobic cellular respiration, which (trust me on this) is way more interesting.  So far, there have been no actual clown sightings in our village, at least that I've heard of, but as Coleman correctly points out we still have almost three weeks till Halloween, so there's lots of time for them to make an appearance.

So it's all generated quite a stir.  The Twitter hashtag #IfISeeAClown has been trending for days, and the account @ClownSightingsOnTwitter has gained 335,000 followers in three weeks.  (Which made me say, and I quote, "What the fuck?", as I have struggled for three years to get 2,600 followers over @TalesOfWhoa.  Maybe I need to dress in a funny costume or put on enormous shoes or something.)

The police are taking the phenomenon seriously, in spite of the fact that there hasn't been a verified case of a clown actually attacking anyone.  Mostly they seem to just stand around looking sketchy.  (The clowns, not the police.)  That's enough, though, for Wayne County (New Jersey) Police Chief Laurence Martin.  "If anything is suspicious," Martin told Reuters, "anything, be it somebody verbally or physically acting menacing in any type of costume, notify the police right away."

Which, I suppose, makes sense.  Better safe than sorry.  So perhaps enlisting Loren Coleman is the right idea.  If in 13 years he's yet to find one Bigfoot, maybe he'll be equally adept at making sure no one sees any clowns.

Bee all, end all

That a lot of people would prefer it if the world was simple is hardly an earthshattering claim.  You see it all over, especially in political debates -- the single-cause fallacy, attributing complex phenomena to one ultimate origin.  The mess in the Middle East?  George W. Bush, of course.  The loss of jobs to outsourcing?  Thanks, Obama.  Yesterday's unusually hot afternoon?  Has to be climate change.

Oh, but wait.  Climate change doesn't actually exist.  Almost forgot there for a moment.

I suppose it's understandable enough.  Figuring out complicated cause-and-effect relationships is hard work.  Sometimes even with lots of data, the answers are unclear.  We humans don't tend to like uncertainty, especially when we hear that the experts themselves are uncertain.  Much easier to fall back on the simple explanation and stop thinking about it.

Which, I think, explains the reactions I saw to the Washington Post article entitled "Bees Were Just Added to the U.S. Endangered Species List for the First Time."  Most of the comments I saw fell into one of the following categories:

• We're ruining the Earth and we're all gonna die.
• Farms are going to fold for lack of pollinators and we're going to run out of food.
• It's what we deserve for spraying pesticides all over the place.
• Monsanto sucks.

Never mind that when you actually read the article, it turns out that the additions to the ESL were seven rare species of endemic yellow-faced bees native to Hawaii, and the probable reason for their decline is habitat loss and destruction of native wildflowers, not pesticides or the rest of it.  There are actually an estimated 20,000 species of bees worldwide, so assuming that all bees are going extinct because seven uncommon island endemics are endangered is a little like using the near-extinction of the California condor to conclude that pigeons and starlings are about to go the way of the dinosaurs.  (Actually, it's worse; according to the most recent tallies, there are a few more than 10,000 species of birds in the world, so there's actually twice the biodiversity in bee species than in bird species.)

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

That's not to say that there haven't been problems with declining numbers of more common bee species recently, but as I alluded to in the first paragraphs, it's not as simple as it sounds.  The still-unexplained colony collapse disorder has reduced the populations of western honeybees, the most common bee species in North America -- particularly among captive hives.  But the truth of the matter is, CCD seems to be declining itself, and honeybee numbers are on the rise in most places.

As far as wild bee species, the situation is even less clear.  A study by Insu Koh et al. last year suggested that in some places, wild bee populations had declined by 23%, but if you look at the study itself, you find that there is a huge amount of uncertainty in the data, mostly due to the difficulty of estimating bee populations in the wild.  The numbers Koh et al. used were developed from spatial-habitat models, using subjective information such as the "quality of nesting sites," and generated numbers that sounded alarming.  A review of the study in Science 2.0 was scathing:

How did they count wild bees when no one else has been able to do so? They didn't, which means it adds to the list of PNAS papers that can't possibly have been peer-reviewed.  The team instead identified forty-five land-use types from two federal land databases and asked fourteen hand-picked experts about each type of land and how suitable it was for providing wild bees with nesting and food resources.  They then averaged the experts' input and levels of certainty (no, really) and built a computer model that they think predicts the relative abundance of wild bees for every area of the contiguous United States, based on their quality for nesting and feeding from flowers.  Lastly, they validated their model against bee collections and field observations they also hand-picked.

In other words, they created an academic model that would get them fired from every single company in existence for being wildly suspect and based on too many assumptions. 

The authors then claim the decline they don't know is happening must be due to pesticides, global warming and farmers.

In fact, a study (this one peer-reviewed) in Nature last year suggested that populations of the dominant (and therefore most agriculturally relevant) species of wild bees are actually doing okay:

Across crops, years and biogeographical regions, crop-visiting wild bee communities are dominated by a small number of common species, and threatened species are rarely observed on crops. Dominant crop pollinators persist under agricultural expansion and many are easily enhanced by simple conservation measures, suggesting that cost-effective management strategies to promote crop pollination should target a different set of species than management strategies to promote threatened bees.

So the bottom line is: colony collapse disorder still exists, but seems to be declining in frequency, and we're still not entirely sure what causes it (neonicotinoid pesticides are one possibility, but there are others).  The western honeybee, the most common and important pollinator species in North America, is actually increasing in numbers.  There are a few species (out of the 20,000) of bees that are threatened or endangered, some because of human activities, but the same is true for any taxon you pick.

In short: the situation is complicated, whether you like it or not.  It'd be convenient to have a clearly-outlined problem with a certain culprit and an obvious solution, but the world seldom works that way.  And as far as "Beemageddon" goes; there are a lot of other ways we could self-destruct that are far more likely than the loss of honeybees.

Maybe it's not justified to be an optimist, but at least be a pessimist about the right things.

Hardwired superstition

Despite my frequent railing against superstition and magical thinking, it's not that I don't see its attractions.  As a teenager and twenty-something I was fascinated with such things as Tarot cards (I still own three decks, actually, that I haven't been willing to part with), numerology, astrology, and a host of other kinds of woo.  That I eventually threw it all aside (well, figuratively, in the case of the Tarot cards) I attribute to my commitment to a rationalistic view of the world.  I decided in my mid-twenties that I had to establish some criterion for finding what I considered to be the truth, and that logic and evidence seemed a lot more solid than "I fervently wish this was so."

Since my conversion to skepticism, I've found myself looking at True Believers and wondering how they never made the same transition.  We apply the rules of the scientific method in scores of other ways -- "show me how you know this" isn't some kind of odd, esoteric rule only known to Ph.D. candidates (not that I've ever been one of those, but you get my drift).  So how can a person look at the extremely slim evidence for (say) astrology, and not say, "Okay, this makes no sense whatsoever?"

A study in Applied Cognitive Psychology has given us at least a hint of why some people never leave behind their unsupported beliefs in the paranormal.  Its title -- which breaks the general rule that articles whose titles are questions always should be answered "No" -- is, "Does Poor Understanding of Physical World Predict Religious and Paranormal Beliefs?"  The researchers who conducted the study, Marjaana Lindeman and Annika M. Svedholm-Häkkinen of the Institute of Behavioral Studies at the University of Helsinki, looked at a group of 258 people and examined how real-world knowledge of science correlated with belief in the supernatural.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the researchers found a series of strong correlations:

The results showed that supernatural beliefs correlated with all variables that were included, namely, with low systemizing, poor intuitive physics skills, poor mechanical ability, poor mental rotation, low school grades in mathematics and physics, poor common knowledge about physical and biological phenomena, intuitive and analytical thinking styles, and in particular, with assigning mentality to non-mental phenomena.  Regression analyses indicated that the strongest predictors of the beliefs were overall physical capability (a factor representing most physical skills, interests, and knowledge) and intuitive thinking style.

Note, of course, that correlation does not imply causation; it is by no means certain that the lack of scientific knowledge caused the belief in the supernatural.  In fact, if that were true, one of the other findings of the study would be less likely:

Nonscientific ways of thinking are resistant to formal instruction… which can affect individuals’ ability to act as informed citizens to make reasoned judgments in a world that is increasingly governed by technology and scientific knowledge.

If superstitious beliefs were as simple as stemming from a lack of knowledge of the world around us, you'd think that you could eradicate magical thinking simply by enrolling people in a college-level physics course.  The fact that this isn't so makes me wonder if there is something else underlying a tendency toward belief in the supernatural -- perhaps something in the brain wiring -- that both makes a person likely to have less aptitude at science and technical subjects, and also results in a stronger likelihood of belief in the supernatural.  A previous study by Lindeman et al. suggests that this may be so:

We examined with functional magnetic resonance imaging the brain activity of 12 supernatural believers and 11 skeptics who first imagined themselves in critical life situations (e.g. problems in intimate relationships) and then watched emotionally charged pictures of lifeless objects and scenery (e.g. two red cherries bound together).  Supernatural believers reported seeing signs of how the situations were going to turn out in the pictures more often than skeptics did.  Viewing the pictures activated the same brain regions among all participants (e.g. the left inferior frontal gyrus, IFG).  However, the right IFG, previously associated with cognitive inhibition, was activated more strongly in skeptics than in supernatural believers, and its activation was negatively correlated to sign seeing in both participant groups.

So once again, we have some evidence that what we think and believe might not entirely be a choice -- it might be hardwired into our brains.  If so, despite my toying with paranormal woo as a young person, I might have been destined all along to become the hard-headed skeptic you all know and (I hope) love.

But I'm still not throwing away the Tarot cards.  They're kinda pretty, even if they're almost certainly useless for predicting the future.

Voting for values

By now, everyone with any kind of access to news has heard about the latest horrid thing to come to light about Donald Trump -- that he condones, that he actually bragged about, sexual assault.  That he was entitled to that kind of behavior "because he's a star."

What you may not be aware of is that despite this, many (not all, as you'll see later) of Trump's supporters on the Religious Right have continued in their support of Donald Trump's candidacy.  Tony Perkins, of the Family Research Council, said:

My personal support for Donald Trump has never been based upon shared values, it is based upon shared concerns about issues such as: justices on the Supreme Court that ignore the constitution, America’s continued vulnerability to Islamic terrorists and the systematic attack on religious liberty that we’ve seen in the last 7 1/2 years.

Ralph Reed, of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, agreed:

Voters of faith are voting on issues like who will protect unborn life, defend religious freedom, create jobs, and oppose the Iran nuclear deal. Ten-year-old tapes of private conversation with a television talk show host rank very low on their hierarchy of concerns.

Let me make this plain.  These are men who are adamant in their protection of human embryos, but who would have as their commander-in-chief a man who would without batting an eyelash participate in sexual assault against our daughters, our sisters, our mothers.  These are men who are virulent in their condemnation of loving expression between two people of the same sex in a committed long-term relationship, but think that a man "grabbing a woman by the pussy" is no big deal.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Some of Trump's supporters, not to mention Trump himself, have dismissed this as "lewd locker room talk," and state that "all men talk this way."  The second half is horseshit -- I know plenty of men who speak about women in the terms of the highest respect, and always treat them the same way.  And make no mistake about it; this is not lewd.  "Lewd" is talking to your guy friends about how your girlfriend performs in bed.  It's not nice, it's very likely a breach of privacy, and it's one more example of the objectification of women in our culture.

But that is not what this is.  This is condoning, and in fact suggesting that he has participated in, rape.  This is using your social dominance to commit assault upon a person in a weaker power position simply because you can.

Then there are the people who say, "Well, Bill Clinton did the same thing!"  Perhaps he did, but that is entirely irrelevant, for two reasons.  (1)  Did you condone Bill Clinton's behavior when he was accused of sexual impropriety?  As I recall, he was impeached because of it, to the raucous applause of nearly every Republican in the country.  (2)  Bill Clinton is not currently running for president.

And if you needed a deeper layer of bullshit, just today I've seen more than once posts that said, "If what Donald Trump said was so bad, why did Fifty Shades of Grey sell millions of copies?"  Which is a level of "I don't get it" that is truly mind-boggling.  So as before, let me explain this nice and slowly:

This is not about sex.  This about consent.  Fifty Shades of Grey, from all I've heard -- I haven't read it, and have no intention to -- was a poorly-written hash of a book.  But it was about sexual exploration between two consenting adults.  If you don't see the difference between the subject of this book and what Donald Trump is saying, you are either hopelessly stupid or willfully blind.

As I said earlier, however, there are people on the right who have refused to sell their souls to see this man in the Oval Office, and I find this tremendously heartening.  Just yesterday, an evangelical friend of mine posted an article in The Washington Post by Collin Hansen, editorial director for the Gospel Coalition, who had the following to say:

Trump can maintain nearly all his evangelical support in the voting booth despite unrepentant lying and cheating.  But these same leaders still insist on a traditional, biblical ethic when it comes to views on same-sex marriage in evangelical ministries... 

To the older evangelicals planning to vote for Trump:.. You can say we’re electing a commander in chief and not a Sunday school teacher.  You can say that God often raises up pagan leaders to deliver his people from their enemies.  But no one is fooled by your arguments. 

They can see you will apparently excuse anything in a Republican nominee...  And they will conclude that they don’t really need to listen to you when it comes to "traditional, biblical ethics."

Which is exactly correct.  Hansen and I may not agree on a lot, philosophically, but he at least is clear about what values and ethics are.  And he sees Trump for what he is -- a narcissistic compulsive liar who will do anything, say anything, to achieve whatever position of power he currently wants.

A lot of people don't like Hillary Clinton.  I'm fine with that.  She was far from my first choice, too.  But it is appalling that because of that you would cast your vote for a man who talks about sexual assault upon a stranger as blithely as most of us talk about what to have for dinner.  And this makes one thing crystal clear:

If you vote for Trump, you have no right to claim that you are a "values voter."

Skeptic's curriculum

Thanks to a forward-thinking principal about ten years ago, my high school developed an electives program based on the philosophy that there needs to be more than one path to graduation.  He said to the teachers, "If there's a topic you're passionate about and have always wanted to teach, now's your chance.  Put together a proposal for the school board.  If it flies, go for it!"

This was the genesis of the Critical Thinking class that it is my privilege to teach.  I was given the green light to develop the curriculum, and (if I can indulge in a moment of self-congratulation here) it has become one of the most popular electives in the school.

Critical thinking is a skill, and like every skill, it (1) doesn't necessarily come naturally, but (2) becomes easier the more you do it.  As humans, we come pre-programmed with a whole host of cognitive biases we have to learn to work around -- dart-thrower's bias (the tendency of people to pay more attention to outliers), a natural bent for magical thinking, the unfortunate likelihood of our memories being malleable, inaccurate, or outright false.  But with time and effort, you can learn some strategies for sifting fact from fiction, for detecting it if you're being hoodwinked or misled.

In other words, a skeptical approach can be taught.

I'm delighted to say that great strides are being taken in this area outside of my little rural school district.  Right now, a pilot program in Uganda, led by Sir Iain Chalmers of the Cochrane Foundation, has tested a new curriculum for critical thinking with respect to health and medicine with 15,000 grade-school children.  Chalmers is unequivocal about the program's intent; what he wants, he says, is for kids to be able to "detect bullshit when bullshit is being presented to them."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

It's an essential skill.  Here in the west we have such purveyors of health woo as Dr. Oz, Joel Wallach,  Joseph Michael Mercola, and Vani "The Food Babe" Hari persuading people that their food is contaminated by "chemicals," their prescription medications are poisoning them, and that diseases are caused by everything from not having enough "natural minerals" to disturbances in quantum vibrations.  Modern medical practitioners, they tell us, are being held hostage by "Big Pharma" to fool us all and make money hand over fist, and all the while we get sicker and sicker.

Yes, I know that in the industrialized world we have the highest human life expectancy the world has ever seen, and we've virtually eradicated dozens of infectious diseases using exactly the sort of "allopathic" medicine that Oz and his cronies rail against.  This isn't about fact; it's about being swung around by your fears and emotions.

But we're not the only place in the world that has this problem.  Central Africa, where Chalmers's trial is being run, is a hotbed of superstition, with people rejecting vaccines and antibiotics in favor of "herbal remedies" based on fear.  Quack cures are common -- for example, putting cow dung on burns.  Allen Nsangi, a researcher in Uganda who is working with Chalmers on the project, said that this practice is "almost the best-known treatment."

The Uganda project was the brainchild of Andy Oxman, research director at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. "Working with policymakers made it clear most adults don’t have time to learn, and they have to unlearn a lot of stuff," Oxman said.  "I’m looking to the future. I think it’s too late for my generation... My hope is that these resources get used in curricula in schools around the world, and that we end up with the children ... who become science-literate citizens and who can participate in sensible discussion about policy and our health."

All of which I find tremendously encouraging.  (Not the part about my generation being a lost cause, because I don't really think that's true, honestly.)  If we can equip children with a good skeptical toolkit, they'll be much less likely to get taken advantage of -- not only in the realm of health, but in every other way.  These skills aren't limited to one discipline.  Once you've adopted a skeptical outlook, you'll find that you apply it to everything.

At least that's my hope.  It's certainly what I've seen in my own classes.  As one of my students told me not long ago, "I thought at first that it was impossible to do what you were asking us to do -- to read and listen to evaluate, not just to memorize and regurgitate.  But now I can't help myself.  When I read something, I think, 'Okay, how do I know this is true?  What's the evidence?  Could there be another explanation?'"

Which is it exactly.  Skepticism isn't cynicism; disbelieving everything out of hand is as lazy as gullibility.  But it's essential that we learn to consider what we're hearing rather than simply trusting that we're being told the truth.  As Satoshi Kanazawa put it: "There are only two legitimate criteria by which you may evaluate scientific ideas: logic and evidence."