How to behave virtuously in an irrational world — Part I
[This essay was recently published in the journal Disputatio. I present here a version adapted to a more general public because I think it may be of interest.]
Introduction: the problem with pseudoscience is not that people are stupid
I have been active in the area of science popularization, and in particular in public outreach about pseudoscience, since the mid 1990s, when I started one of the first “Darwin Day” celebrations in response to yet another attempt by the Tennessee legislature (I was then a faculty at UT-Knoxville) to pass a law that would mandate equal teaching of evolution and creationism in public schools.
As a young evolutionary biologist I initially approached the problem like most of my colleagues did, assuming that I was dealing with a bunch of country bumpkins, ignorant or stupid people, who just needed a few well presented scientific facts to see the light, so to speak, and reject their medieval nonsense. It quickly became clear that it was a bit more complicated than that. Here is what I mean, by way of a few select examples.
A study conducted on upper secondary school students in Sweden quantified the relationships between general science education, education about human biology, and skepticism about pseudoscientific beliefs. While the first two…
