Woo and Nonsense

I think one of the pressing issues of our time is the public’s antipathy to critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science in general. The public is central of course because of their role in forming policy, funding for science and engineering, and these two aforementioned affect the general welfare of society. There are several vocal groups in society today who reject the conclusions of peer-reviewed and accepted science, claiming that the scientists are corrupt and under the influence of biased interests, or just plain wrong. Their arguments and reasoning show the bent of fallacies and outright fabrication, and of course there are the organizations which help perpetuate the outrage wax rambling. These groups wield political power furthermore making them more dangerous to science and (recently) even public health. Some of the more major ones I will involve in this discourse are creationists, climate change skeptics, the anti-vaccination crowd, homeopathy and naturopathy advocates, and the general American public.

The American people are chiefly who I am addressing, as they elect the leaders, which shape the policy, which guides world affairs. In America, there are the most potent groups. To take the theory of evolution as our starting point, a Gallup Poll taken on February 6-7 2009 revealed that: Just 39% believe in the theory; and the results peter off by education level, church attendance, age, and awareness of what Darwin studied (further broken down by education). It turns out that higher education generally implied higher acceptance of the theory, with postgraduate the very highest at 74 percent acceptance. By weekly church attendance, just 24 percent acceptance, monthly attendance ranked at 30 percent, and seldom/never in attendance at 55 percent. The 18 to 34 age group was 10 percent more likely than the 35 to 54 age group, and 18 percent above the 55 and up group. Conversely, acceptance of the theory in most European countries is very high (with the exception of Turkey)

What I draw from this is that Americans have a fundamental misunderstanding of the biological sciences, and that there are correlations between religious attendance and creationism (which aside from Intelligent Design, is the only mainstream opponent). With great relevance to this discussion, I stumbled upon this paper, “Public debates driven by incomplete scientific data: the cases of evolution theory, global warming and H1N1 pandemic influenza” The author discussed inflexibles (as the people in a debate who refuse to change their narrative or beliefs) and their roles in driving public opinion instead of data. He also asserts that evolution and climate change models cannot make predictions so far therefore they are not like chemistry or physics (which are more accepted). There is also another category called the floaters (who are neutral but may be convinced by an inflexible) according to the Galam sequential probabilistic model of opinion dynamics. This is all evaluated by a mathematical approach with even and odd sized groups, and along a scale where an opinion has disappeared or has invaded the whole population. From all the aforementioned, a surprising strategy reveals itself. To win the debate, one needs about 45 percent of the population initially supporting the proposition, with a sizable amount of inflexibles. The conclusions are then that public debates should use the shouting-down method as it is more effective than fair discourse, or that perhaps public opinion shouldn’t be so responsible for policy. This is all based on mathematical models relating to sociological subjects, so it is not as reliable as something in a hard science. It does give an interesting insight into dynamics however.

Another topic which I’d like to graze upon is homeopathy and naturopathy. I suspect one of the reasons that homeopathy is so popular would be the amount of time a patient is with the physician (if I may use that word). There are usually in sessions, questions asked of the patient about their emotional, mental, and et al states. This is where the term holistic medicine has been applied. This doesn’t happen in a normal doctor’s office, and to someone who isn’t aware of what homeopathy’s methodology, history, and knowledge base are, this is perfectly legitimate. Indeed, perhaps superior because of the “we care about you as a person jibe” which any person (including myself) could find delightful. Homeopathy was introduced by Samuel Hahnemann, who was a German physician in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. While he was experimenting with Cinchona bark (which contains quinine, a treatment for malaria) and he ingested the bark. Afterwards, he experienced symptoms similar to the ones of Malaria (reportedly).

Law of Similars or Law of Similia is one of the most important and building blocks of Homeopathy. It was propounded by Hahnemann while experimenting with Cinchona bark. Cinchona bark was used as a treatment for Malaria as it contained quinine. To see what effect it would have on a healthy individual, he ingested the bark. After ingestion, Hahnemann experienced symptoms similar to the ones of Malaria. From this applied (rather flawed) inductive reasoning by postulating the law of similar—which is to say that like cures like. That’s like saying because I have a headache, I should bang my head against a concrete wall to alleviate it. Furthermore, it is claimed that water retains the memory of drugs so that the tiniest dilutions (not even a few molecules left) will yield cures for everything because water remembers all the curing drugs that it has ever been in contact with. Shouldn’t it also remember all the poisons? As if ridicule were not appropriate, there is no scientific consensus on these statements.

Speaking of the absence of science, the other medical aberration is naturopathy. Whereas homeopathy can be traced to a single person, naturopathy just happened. It is a belief in nature’s healing powers; it opposes drugs and stresses vitalism (there is a vital force that keeps us healthy and concerns such as cellular growth and food intake are the periphery). The earliest doctors who practiced it lived in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe, and naturopathy and homeopathy are closely linked. Both Hahnemann and modern proponents of the naturopathy assert that modern medicine is allopathic (which is just a term Hahnemann used to refer to physicians who practiced differently than he did, treatment different than the symptoms of the disease) Again, these groups do not rely on science but seemingly both new-age and old age woo, superstitions, and grabbing at metaphysical conceptions of “oneness” singularity and so forth as a shoddy substitute for empirical evidence. As I mentioned before, naturopathy is against drugs, and thus vaccinations.

The benefits of vaccinations have gone largely unsung as several generations of Americans have not experienced small pox, polio, and other diseases that now affect less fortunate regions of the planet. Anti-vaccination advocates use the saying “too many, too soon” and warnings about antigens in vaccines to scare away parents from protecting their kids. When in reality, the number of antigens is only 5 percent of what it was 30 years ago. Also, their treatments for Autism (which they claim is caused by vaccines when statistically speaking, the cases of autism is not linked to the now absent and harmless thimerosal) range from naturopathy type suggestions to testosterone suppression drugs. It’s interesting though that despite the best efforts of experts to quell their fears, they shout even louder.

Now we move onto to our next group, the creationists, who when faced with the evidence for evolution contend that scientists are quelling dissidents. There are a number of other objections, ranging from ignorance of what the word theory means in a scientific sense; suggesting humans are descended from apes (No, we have a common ancestor), to the tautologously and straw man diatribes on the statistical improbability of self-replicating molecules turning into humans. These stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of the science, as well as an ignorance of those concepts. Then we could contend that the science and the evidence isn’t what they take offense to, it’s an attack on a religion or faith. In that context, theirs is righteous indignation. However, creationist flood geology has not accounted for the fossil record, the evidence of common descent, DNA coding redundancy (we share x% of genes with other species), and the age of the Earth. Modern cosmology furthermore is taken as absurd, and no evidence exists that the speed of light was at any time significantly faster than it is now. At any rate, why would a god who wanted to establish credibility make his inerrant word appear false by your observation?

There are other implications of these phenomena in American society. Sadly, funding for space exploration and science is vastly dwarfed by entitlement programs and budget exploding items. What I believe could help alleviate these vast misunderstandings is for the mainstream media to have an accredited staff of fact checkers. Indeed, I place some blame on the media, yes it is passé and overdone, it still deserves it. In place of objectivity, science is treated as if a non-scientist’s words are more important than what an entire community of experts has to say. On reporting all views, the one that counts is put on par with the one that relies on gossip and obscurantism.

In addition to the mainstream media’s overhaul of how it treats scientific results, the science bloggers (and I think anyone who can debunk fraud should) are an important instrument. Just as the politic of today pay attention to the DailyKos and twitter. Another solution is to provide awareness about these issues so that school boards are not ruled by anti-evolutionists. Indeed, if there were a controversy in the scientific community, teach the controversy would apply. Though there isn’t, therefore I say teach the science. To counter the anti-modern medicine groups, education (as the earlier polls suggested), ‘inflexibles’, and the current medical community should be employed to guide the public. Only with the proper education (critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and so forth) can we make democracy work.

A few words on skeptical inquiry: Don’t accept anecdotal claims of strange phenomena as fact without evidence, and a critical dissection of that evidence. Be not afraid of asking inconvenient questions, fact check something if you’re not absolutely sure, and be careful of words like, “quantum, field, frequency” Be careful of something which doesn’t have peer review, enmity towards change or double-blind trials, and ideas that are not capable of being proved or disproved.

Hopefully this all of this in mind, the measures of change for the media’s attitude toward science, education, and personal initiative America can become slightly less addicted to nonsense.