Weird Research, Anomalous Physics
Other Websites: Skeptic's pages
Some 'Skeptical' sources are filled
with shameless emotional bias and intolerance of dissenting opinion.
They adopt a stance of hostile apriori disbelief, they fill their
arguments with logical fallacies, and they cultivate an
attitude of sneering disgust for their so-called 'gullible' opponents.
At the same time they hop on the coattails of science by presenting
themselves as the voice of "reason." And despite their constant use of
fallacies
and rhetoric, they are convinced that they're supporting rationality. In
a word, they display behavior which is the very definition of
"pseudoscience."
However, we need to remain aware that MANY SKEPTICS ARE NOT LIKE
THIS. Many skeptics PRACTICE reason and critical thinking, rather than
simply giving them lip service and then ignoring them. Some examples are
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"I am not very skeptical... a good deal of skepticism in a scientific man
is advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met not a few men,
who... have often thus been deterred from experiments or observations
which would have proven servicable." - Charles Darwin
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LOSING FACE
The noble art of losing face
may one day save the human race
and turn into eternal merit
what weaker minds would call disgrace.
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- Piet Hein
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"In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a
really
good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually
change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They
really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists
are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I
cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or
religion." -Carl Sagan |
SKEPTIC FORUMS
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"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which
cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance--
that principle is
contempt prior to investigation." - Herbert Spencer, British philosopher
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"The enemy of knowledge and science is irrationalism, not religion" -
Stephen Jay Gould
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"Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and simple, however cruel;
our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt."
-Graham Greene
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"A danger sign of the lapse from true skepticism into dogmatism is an
inability to respect those who disagree." - Dr. Leonard George
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"You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of
all those other people who don't see things as clearly as you do. We
have to guard carefully against it." - Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP meeting
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"People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The
last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent
people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their
beliefs." - Carl Sagan
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...The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its
polarization:
Us vs. Them -- the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those
other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if
you're sensible, you'll listen to us; and if not, to hell with you. This
is nonconstructive. It does not get our message across. It condemns us to
permanent minority status. - Carl Sagan
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"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that
you would lie if you were in his place." - H. L. Mencken
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"The right to search for the truth implies also a duty; one must not
conceal any part of what one has recognized to be the truth." -
Albert Einstein
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"However, even someone who is a 100% knee jerk pseudoskeptic is still
right 99% of the time by accident."
- A. Erple, PhACT group
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EVEN MORE QUOTES
The 'frontier' scientists must admit that the skeptics have a point:
pseudoscience and "pathological science" are very real. Free energy and
Antigravity and Psychic phenomena might be genuine. This doesn't mean
that the world isn't filled with self-deluded
scientists and with crackpots, to say nothing of Creationists and
Holocaust
revisionists, etc.
If we truely desire to understand the world, then we are forced to fight
constantly for clear vision. We must fight constantly against our
expectation bias, against our
human tendency to see only what we want to see. Researchers who assume
it's easy to avoid self-delusions and wishful thinking... are probably
the victims of self-delusions and wishful thinking. It takes
quite a bit of effort to avoid these pitfalls. The effort starts with a
painfully honest self-examination, wherein we discover just how large our
personal capacity for self-delusion can be.
The best article I've ever encountered on this topic is Richard Feynman's
CARGO CULT SCIENCE, in
the paper's second half where he discusses the
integrity, humility, and unusual honesty which is required of everyone who
pursues science.
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"The World is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of
those who look at it without doing anything" - Albert Einstein
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WORTHWHILE ARTICLES
"The man who cannot occasionally imagine events and conditions of
existence that are contrary to the causal principle as he knows it will
never enrich his science by the addition of a new idea." - Max Planck
It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet
hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young. -- Konrad
Lorenz
Do extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence? No. That
well-known phrase about "extraordinary claims" contains a formula for
rejecting
any new idea or discovery on the grounds that the evidence is never
"extraordinary" enough.
Instead,
we should distrust anyone who has any agenda besides the quest for truth.
This goes for the
"skeptics" and "believers" both. Our enemy is not credulous delusion,
our
real enemy is bias of any kind. Huxley says it well (although I would
add that HATRED of the marvelous is an equally biasing force)...
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"Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interest, his
passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvelous is strongly
concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in
exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified."
- T. H. Huxley
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MORE QUOTES
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