Why Are (Some) Scientists So Cruel
The difference between being “cruel” to ideas, and being a cruel person
By MARTIN REZNY
I’m not psychic, so I can’t say that I know for sure what made Ethan write the article that I’m responding to, but I have a difficulty coming up with any options that I would consider great. Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a personal attack or an attempt to “prove” my pet fringe theory, but I feel I have to respond to what I see as a troubling trend in scientific skepticism.
I have already been considering writing about the problems with such displays of what could most aptly be called “epistemic arrogance” and related, let’s say, human issues within the academia, or between the academia and researchers on the fringe. Ever since I saw Michael Shermer on Joe Rogan defend skeptics acting like assholes to people like Graham Hancock.
It was a show where Shermer and Hancock were doing the unthinkable, engaging together in actual discussion, moderated by a neutral, reasonable person. In case you don’t know, Hancock has spent many years writing books about the possibility of ancient civilizations going much further back in time and being wiped out by one or more cataclysms, which included evidence.
Experts in the field, mainstream archaeologists, have always laughed at and mocked any such suggestions, harassing anyone who tried to investigate them. Popular skeptics, as usual, followed the lead of mainstream experts and have been doing the same. As of right now, however, there appears to be sufficient evidence for both much longer history and some cataclysms.
Throughout the debate, Shermer was ultimately forced to accept the new facts, and that mainstream archaeologists may be full of shit (breaking Ethan’s rule that one must not be ideological about science). Which is great progress and a good sign that Shermer acts in good faith, but what irked me was that his last defense was that being an asshole skeptic is normal.
He told Hancock that it wasn’t personal, that scientists behave like that to each other within the academia. Which presumably referred to arrogance, mockery, humiliation, aggressive battles over funding, ideological and political machinations, peer pressure to conform, cheating and lying for the cause, and so on. Well, as a trained scientist and a human person, I disagree.
Oh all of this is happening alright, but fulfilling a different definition of the word “normal”. It’s certainly not, how to put it delicately, “fucking normal”. Arrogance is anti-scientific, ideology and politics are anti-scientific, cheating and lying are anti-scientific, and mockery and humiliation are anti-scientific. Being like that makes you both a bad scientist, and worse, a bad person.
So, technically, most of what Ethan says is correct. Technically. Ideas have to be testable and tested, a lot, most of all by the people who bring them up. Reinventing the wheel (or worse, re-failing at it in the same old ways) is pointless. One should never start an inquiry from what they want to prove. The problem lies in the prevailing skeptical interpretation of these rules.
When Ethan, or other scientific authorities, say things like “In science, we have accumulated an enormous body of knowledge — a set of experimental and observational data — and a set of theories that provides a framework to accurately describe the governing rules of our reality.”, do you think it leads skeptics to question more, or less, what we think we know about reality?
The general problem displayed here is explaining a rule in such a way that it will make people actually break it more without realizing it. Especially in how the first rule is phrased, I find the lack of self-awareness disturbing. Believing that you work every day with “the real McCoy” and that you’re therefore immediately able to spot “impostor’s” shortcomings is a legit delusion.
As a scientist, you should never *believe* that. That’s what being critical, skeptical, non-ideological, and rigorous means. It’s not scientifically rigorous to dismiss anything out of hand only because you believe that it can’t possibly be right because it conflicts with established theories. You may believe that Ethan isn’t telling people to do that, but I’m telling you they will read that.
The problem with many fringe theories is not that there isn’t intriguing experimental evidence of them working. It’s that the experimental evidence of theories that are incompatible with mainstream paradigms doesn’t get rigorously looked at. Most commonly, the researchers get personally attacked by skeptics (not science), or the skeptics do shallow armchair criticism.
They do that because they a) sometimes are bad people and b) almost always are sure what can or cannot possibly be right, before (and often ultimately without) rigorously researching the new theory, or often evidence. This is tied into rule number two, Ethan’s suggestion to not reinvestigate “discredited” theories. In case you’re wondering, I put in quotes politically charged terms.
To many skeptics, reading this Ethan’s rule would mean, in a literal sense, that the scientific authorities have decreed that anything on the existing superstition shitlist (psi, astrology, alternative medicine, UFOs, etc.) is forever taboo, which should be enforced dogmatically. It must mean that to them, because that’s how they often collectively behave as a group, on purpose.
If I have ever come up with a law of my own, it’s that the surefire way to determine that something is an unscientific position is when following it would lead in practice to less or worse science. How do you know that in light of new data, an old theory cannot become viable? How do you know that we are in any way currently close to fundamentally understanding existence?
The whole belief, especially when held by a prominent scientist, that our current scientific understanding is sufficiently complete, is the most ideologically motivated position in all of contemporary science (as institution, not method). It implies that the further back in time you go, the more wrong people were, that we haven’t become more wrong over time with science.
Which again, you don’t know. Maybe our current interpretation of scientific facts, powerful as it is in some areas, is fundamentally flawed in a more fundamental sense. I’m not sure how that would be, of course, but to give you one example, maybe there’s a reason why we have such a hard time explaining consciousness and psyche at the moment within materialism.
The ideological position of the superiority of our current scientific understanding and the inferiority of everything else can of course be debated and possibly defended. But as an experienced debate judge, I don’t know that is the case. Skeptics tend to attack the weakest opposing speakers and arguments and strawman or ignore the strongest, denying they do that.
To some of them, rigorous, intellectually honest skepticism seems to be a waste of time. Some seem to be honestly unable to see and absorb any stronger arguments that are incompatible with their paradigm, much like the more delusional fringe theorists seem to be immune to legitimate scientific criticism. What I’m saying is that articles like the one from Ethan don’t help.
Members of Team Skeptic don’t need to hear from science cardinals that all of our current science is basically correct and done. Especially not when there’s next to no solid science or a lot of politically motivated “science” in areas like psychology, history, or politics, as well as anomalies galore zipping around the atmosphere and our solar system. The fringe needs to be scienced more.
What skeptics need to be told by the authorities they respect (uncritically, ironically) is where they’re failing to meet the awesome responsibility of being a legitimate scientific skeptic, and how to address their failings. Just as much as many fringe researchers need to get their shit together and start treating their pet projects seriously. More seriously than average scientists treat theirs.
Again, I’m not a psychic, but I’m reasonably sure that scientists like Ethan Siegel mean well when they try to popularize science. However, the lack of self-awareness or general awareness of problems within science as a human enterprise within such communications between scientists, skeptics, and the general public has not led to great results so far. I believe we can do better.
