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"The Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs,
Amusing Deceptions, & Dangerous Delusions," by Robert Todd Carroll.
John Wiley, 2003, 446 pages.
The Incomplete Skeptic
by Gary Jason
Robert Todd Carroll's enjoyable new book is a concise
dictionary of pseudo-sciences and other nonsensical belief systems, and the
people who promulgate them. Carroll, who is chairman of the Philosophy Department
at Sacramento City College, is well-versed in critical thinking and logic, having
published a critical thinking text ("Becoming a Critical Thinker: A Guide for the
New Millennium").
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Jason is a professor of philosophy at Cal State University Fullerton.
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In this book, Carroll takes on trendy tabloid pseudo-sciences and cults. We
meet relatively recent absurdities, such as hollow Earth theory, alien abduction,
creation science, Falun Gong, the Indigo Children, SRA (Satanic ritual abuse),
biorhythms, holistic medicine, transcendental meditation, Uri Geller, and reverse
speech. And he includes many favorite oldies, such as palmistry, Nostradamus, the
Loch Ness monster, astrology, numerology, Gurdjieff, haunted houses, Bigfoot, the
Illuminati, reincarnation, Noah's Ark, fairies, vampires, zombies, phrenology,
the shroud of Turin, mesmerism, and parapsychology — not to mention Roswell
(we all know what happened there!). Well represented too are various pop
therapies such as EST, dianetics, New Age psychotherapies, NLP (neuro-linguistic
programming), and orgone energy, which never acquired scientific respectability,
along with some that have gotten some mainstream support, such as the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (used to classify personalities), the Rorschach
inkblot test, RMT (repressed memory therapy), and TFT (thought field therapy).
There are nearly 400 entries, a veritable grab bag of the inane, the insane, the
asinine and the delusional. If all Carroll did was debunk the usual
suspects, his book would not be better than similar books, such as James Randi's
primer "An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and
Supernatural." But Carroll covers some more recent and interesting specimens of
intellectual dreck. He includes the nasty phenomenon of Holocaust denial, for
instance. He also discusses the much-hyped use of subliminal messaging and mind
control (brainwashing), both of which have been proven ineffective, despite
popular fears to the contrary. |
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delusions with some mainstream support, like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the
Rorschach inkblot test, and repressed memory therapy.
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Even more valuable are his pithy essays on logic and scientific method, which
identify the nature of pseudo-science as well as logical fallacies (such as
begging the question) that underlie it. For example, he succinctly discusses the
Forer effect (also called the Barnum effect), which is the use of such vague
language (in psychological surveys, or predictions by astrologers) that it
describes everyone. His discussion of entrenchment, or what he calls "the
sunk-cost fallacy," is a delight — we keep flying the Concorde not because
it makes a profit, but because we don't want to admit our initial investment was
wasted. He discusses confirmation bias (the tendency to seek only evidence which
will support one's theory), ad hoc hypotheses, positive-outcome bias (the
tendency to publish positive outcomes rather than negative outcomes), the post
hoc fallacy, control group experiments, memory (false and veridical), the placebo
effect, pseudo-history, pseudo-science, and Occam's razor. All these make the
book a good reference book for a critical thinking class. My admiration
for his book is lessened by omissions that in my view are all too characteristic
of contemporary academic skeptics. There are dozens of books lampooning the usual
suspects such as astrology and parapsychology, but these books (including
Carroll's) never mention, say, Marx or communism. Now, don't get me wrong —
astrology and parapsychology are nonsense, of course. But so is Marxism. I've
been in philosophy departments where astrology is ridiculed ("Oh, the stupidity
of the plebs is so hard to endure!"), but where Marx is held in high esteem ("A
soaring genius!"). Yet while the devotees of astrology haven't killed anyone,
devotees of Marxism were responsible for as many as 100 million deaths in the
20th century. Again, while Carroll's book has entries on such obscure figures as
Edward Bach (a British physician who devised a therapy using flowers) and
Frederic Lenz (a Zen entrepreneur who calls himself "Rama"), you don't see an
entry on Margaret Mead, whose pseudo-scientific anthropological research (based
upon a hoax by her key source) helped persuade people that all gender differences
are culturally constructed. Nor is there any entry in Carroll's book on Alfred
Kinsey, the hyper-sexed poster boy for bias in sampling. Again, one searches in
vain for any mention of "Black Athena" (or its author Martin Bernal), which
propounded the theory that the Greeks (the ultimate in dead white males) stole
philosophy, math, art, and science from Africa. Again, I surely commend Carroll
for discussing the oft-forgotten Lysenko affair, in which a rank pseudo-scientist
was able to exploit political ideology to destroy genuine biological science in
the Soviet Union, but what about the current attempt by feminists to stamp out
research on gender differences in cognitive psychology?
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Margaret Mead, whose pseudo-scientific research persuaded people that all gender
differences are culturally constructed. |
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My suspicion is that skeptical academics are more apt to debunk the belief
systems of the hoi polloi than deal with the absurdities so prevalent in
contemporary academia for a number of reasons. First, although the average man is
usually modest about his intellectual abilities, academics are usually less
modest, if not positively hubristic. Second, the degree of vapidity of
belief is often greater with academics. As Orwell observed, there are some ideas
so stupid that only intellectuals can believe them. Suppose someone tells me he
believes in reincarnation. While I think this belief is silly, I confess that
nothing in my experience directly refutes it, so my mind simply rolls along. But
to hear someone — with a Ph.D., no less — argue that paying everyone
equally will maximize production, or that there are no innate differences between
men and women, or that criminals don't choose to commit heinous crimes, but
commit them because of ignorance, so profoundly offends my daily experience that
my mind boggles. Third, there is simple pusillanimity. Tell believers in
astrology that they are fools, and nothing happens. But if a university professor
tells feminists or diversity scholars that their arguments are specious, they
will demonstrate outside his office or torment feckless administrators until he
is sacked. Finally, there is sympathy. As Solzhenitsyn observed long ago,
if you're a left-liberal, you have to have a sneaking sympathy for socialists, so
in turn for communists. If you believe social justice requires confiscating most
of what a productive person earns, why not all? The vast majority of academics
are politically and socially liberal, as well as secular, and this colors even
their skepticism. Carroll's book is delightful, but not revolutionary.
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