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Weird Research, Anomalous Physics
Other Websites: Skeptic's pages
Some 'Skeptical' sources are filled
with shameless emotional bias and intolerance of dissenting opinion.
They adopt a stance of hostile apriori disbelief, they fill their
arguments with logical fallacies, and they cultivate an
attitude of sneering disgust for their so-called 'gullible' opponents.
At the same time they hop on the coattails of science by presenting
themselves as the voice of "reason." And despite their constant use of
dishonest rhetorical techniques and fallacies of logic, they're convinced
that they support rationality. In
a word, they display the behavior which is the very definition of
"pseudoscience."
However, we need to remain aware that many skeptics are not like
this Many skeptics actually practice reason and critical thinking,
rather than simply giving them lip service and then ignoring them. Some
examples are below. |
"I am not very skeptical... a good deal of skepticism in a scientific man
is advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met not a few men,
who... have often thus been deterred from experiments or observations
which would have proven servicable." - Charles Darwin
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LOSING FACE
The noble art of losing face
may one day save the human race
and turn into eternal merit
what weaker minds would call disgrace.
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- Piet Hein
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"In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a
really
good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually
change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They
really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists
are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I
cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or
religion." -Carl Sagan |
SOME SKEPTIC FORUMS
- SGU Skeptics Guide to the Universe
- JREF skeptic wwwboard
- SFN skeptic friends wwwboard
- Eric Kreig's Yahoo e-list
- Pacific Northwest Skeptics e-list
- OSSCI board (Ontario skeptics)
- Yahoo e-lists:
- Delphi Forums
Brian of Nasareth: "No, no! You have to think for yourselves!"
Crowd: "Yes! We have to think for ourselves!"
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- Monty Python "The Life of Brian"
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"It isn't the media's responsibility to print the truth. It's the media's
responsibility to quote liars accurately."
- news editor
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- USENET:
0.6.1: Why are skeptics so keen to rubbish fringe ideas?
Skeptics vary on the attitude they take towards a new fringe idea, varying
from the "wet" to the "dry". The question of which attitude is better is
very much a live issue in the skeptical community. Here is a brief summary
of the two extremes:
DRY:
There is no reason to treat these people seriously. Anyone with half
an ounce of sense can see that their ideas are completely bogus. Time
spent trying to "understand their ideas" and "examine their evidence"
beyond that necessary for debunking is wasted time, and life is short.
Furthermore, such behaviour lends them respectability. If we take them
seriously, so will other people. We must ridicule their ideas so that
others will see how silly they are. "One belly laugh is worth a thousand
syllogisms[1]" (H.L. Mencken, quoted by Martin Gardner).
WET:
If we lay into these people without giving them a fair hearing then we
run two risks:
We might miss someone who is actually right. History contains many
examples.
We give them a weapon against us. Ad-hominem attacks and sloppy
logic bring us down to their level. If we are truly the rational,
scientific people we claim to be then we should ask for their evidence,
and then pronounce our considered opinion of it.
The two extremes are perhaps personified by Martin Gardner (dry) and
Marcello Truzzi (wet). Note that no particular judgement is attached to
these terms. They are just handy labels.
People who read articles by dry skeptics often get the impression that
skeptics are as pig-headed as any fundamentalist or stage psychic. I think
that this is a valid criticism of some skeptics on the dry end. However,
an article which ridicules fringe beliefs may also contain sound logic
based on careful investigation. As always, you have to read carefully,
distinguish logic from rhetoric, and then make a judgement.
[1]Note that this is a statement that: ridicule is far more
effective than reasoning. I think "Belly Laugh" signifies the "Dry
Skeptic" as
pursuing pseudoscience, where their fundamental goal is to
persuade, not to drill down to the actual truth, nor to abandon
personal bias and instead determine who here is actually correct. "Belly
Laugh," stated differently, is "Don't question our own position, and
instead attack our opponent using dishonest logical fallacies." An
obvious political position, and if put forth as scientific, becomes the
very definition of pseudoscience. -billb
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which
cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance--    
that principle is
contempt prior to investigation." - Herbert Spencer, British philosopher
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"The enemy of knowledge and science is irrationalism, not religion" -
Stephen Jay Gould
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"Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and simple, however cruel;
our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt."
-Graham Greene
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"A danger sign of the lapse from true skepticism into dogmatism is an
inability to respect those who disagree." - Dr. Leonard George
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"You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of
all those other people who don't see things as clearly as you do. We
have to guard carefully against it." - Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP meeting
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"People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The
last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent
people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their
beliefs." - Carl Sagan
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"...The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its
polarization:
Us vs. Them -- the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those
other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if
you're sensible, you'll listen to us; and if not, to hell with you. This
is nonconstructive. It does not get our message across. It condemns us to
permanent minority status." - Carl Sagan
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"The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in
politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for
it in the endeavor of science." - Carl Sagan
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"arguments about the personality of somebody who disagrees with you -- are
irrelevant; they can be sleazeballs and be right, and you can be a pillar
of the community and be wrong. " - Carl Sagan
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"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that
you would lie if you were in his place." - H. L. Mencken
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"The right to search for the truth implies also a duty; one must not
conceal any part of what one has recognized to be the truth." -
Albert Einstein
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"However, even someone who is a 100% knee jerk pseudoskeptic is still
right 99% of the time by accident." - A. Erple, PhACT group
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EVEN MORE QUOTES
The 'frontier' scientists must admit that the skeptics have a
point: pseudoscience and "pathological science" are very real. Some small
part of Free Energy and Antigravity and Psychic phenomena could be genuine
...but this doesn't mean that the world isn't filled with self-deluded
scientists and with crackpots, to say nothing of Young Earth Creationists
and Holocaust revisionists, Phrenologists and Flat-Earthers
If we truely desire to understand the world, then we are forced to fight
constantly for clear vision. We must fight constantly against our
expectation bias, against our fooling ourselves, against our human
tendency to see only what we want to see. Researchers who assume it's
trivially easy to avoid self-delusions and wishful thinking ...are
probably the constant victims of self-delusions and wishful thinking. It
takes quite a bit of effort to avoid the pitfalls. Each effort starts
with a painfully honest self-examination, wherein we discover just how
large our personal capacity for self-delusion can be.
The best article I've ever encountered on this topic is Richard Feynman's
CARGO CULT SCIENCE, in
the paper's second half where he discusses the
integrity, humility, and unusual honesty which is required of everyone who
pursues science. This applies to skeptics and crackpots alike. Also
beware of "Cargo-Cult Skepticism" produced by those who just don't get it
about the need for bend-over-backwards honesty, even when dealing with
those whose habits are the opposite.
"The World is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of
those who look at it without doing anything" - Albert Einstein
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WORTHWHILE ARTICLES
"The man who cannot occasionally imagine events and conditions of
existence that are contrary to the causal principle as he knows it will
never enrich his science by the addition of a new idea." - Max Planck
It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet
hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young. -- Konrad
Lorenz
Do extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence? No. That
well-known phrase about "extraordinary claims" contains a formula for
rejecting
any new idea or discovery on the grounds that the evidence is never
"extraordinary" enough.
Instead,
we should distrust anyone who has any agenda besides the quest for truth.
This goes for the
"skeptics" and "believers" both. Our enemy is not credulous delusion,
our
real enemy is bias of any kind. Huxley says it well (although I would
add that HATRED of the marvelous is an equally biasing force)...
"Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interest, his
passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvelous is strongly
concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in
exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified."
- T. H. Huxley
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MORE QUOTES
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