The Smug Baldy Speaks

In part of one True Believer’s drive by on my Sylvia Browne piece, in which the commenter admitted that I amaze her, she said:

Of course, I’m one that doesn’t believe the human race ever had a tail or gills too.

Although she went on to say how she wasn’t, “so closed minded that I refuse to believe there’s much more intelligent life on other planets or even at deeper levels of Earth”, I never really doubted her open mindedness. Instead, it’s her critical thinking that is atrophied. On the one hand, I’m glad she agrees with every evolutionary biologist about the fact that during evolution, the human race never had gills or tails. Yes, the facts of evolution are such that our species evolved from other, earlier species. While you might find tails, and maybe even gills among those species if you trace our evolutionary lineage back far enough, the commenter is absolutely correct to assert that tails and gills are not characteristic of homo sapiens.

Of course, it’s most likely that her agreement with evolutionary theory is serendipitous. I think she really meant to say that she didn’t believe in evolution, but she was still open to the idea of space aliens and Mole Men.

It must be a wonderful thing, to be able to stare at something and to deny it while still retaining an unflappable certainty about things unseen. When it comes to to subjects like Evolution, or whether Sylvia Browne really has magical powers, or whether the Earth is flat, a great many people’ like our commenter, display a bias for the fantastic. I wonder where that comes from. Some people have a willingness to consider the possibility of mole men beneath their feet, while denying the fact that species evolve into new species over time. It’s the same thing that empowers someone to defend the notion that Sylvia Browne has magical superpowers while denying the fact that she’s demonstrably wrong more often than right in her predictions. Writing for Scientific American in 2002, Dr. Michael Shermer, President of The Skeptics Society and noted author of such works as Why People Believe Weird Things, reasoned that many Americans tend to place extra emphasis on information that reinforce, or confirm, their strange beliefs. Long known in psychological circles as confirmation bias, Shermer writes:

Rarely do any of us sit down before a table of facts, weigh them pro and con, and choose the most logical and rational explanation, regardless of what we previously believed. Most of us, most of the time, come to our beliefs for a variety of reasons having little to do with empirical evidence and logical reasoning. Rather, such variables as genetic predisposition, parental predilection, sibling influence, peer pressure, educational experience and life impressions all shape the personality preferences that, in conjunction with numerous social and cultural influences, lead us to our beliefs. We then sort through the body of data and select those that most confirm what we already believe, and ignore or rationalize away those that do not.

This phenomenon, called the confirmation bias, helps to explain the findings published in the National Science Foundation’s biennial report (April 2002) on the state of science understanding: 30 percent of adult Americans believe that UFOs are space vehicles from other civilizations; 60 percent believe in ESP; 40 percent think that astrology is scientific; 32 percent believe in lucky numbers; 70 percent accept magnetic therapy as scientific; and 88 percent accept alternative medicine.

Shermer goes on to the important point that scientific knowledge is not enough to keep even very smart people from believing weird things. Yup - even smart people are subject to the confirmation bias.

To counter this, we should work to improve science education in America, and emphasize the teaching of the scientific method over simple scientific facts. It’s the scientific method that involves the crucial critical thinking skills that have shriveled up so badly in my commenter above, as well as in many who defend bizarre claims. And it’s the ability to think critically, using reason and available evidence, is what lets us say, with a very high degree of confidence, that Evolution occurred, Sylvia Browne is as unpsychic as everyone else, and that Mole Men live only in our imaginations and nightmares.

Now, space aliens though …