Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole by Stephen Law Read Free Book Online Page B

knowing? A survey of crystal healing literature and websites suggests a combination of gut feeling and intuition (see “ I Just Know! ”) and heavy reliance on various anecdotes about the effects of crystals, such as people being supposedly cured, and so on (see Piling Up the Anecdotes ).
    This is a fairly typical example of how people Play the Mystery Card in order to deal with compelling scientific evidence against their beliefs in miraculous or supernatural phenomena. The scientific method has a fantastic track record when it comes to revealing what lies beyond the visible spectrum of light and is hidden from our ordinary five senses. As I say, scientists have discovered notonly X-rays, but also subatomic particles, distant galaxies, and so on. We are given no reason to think the scientific method is not suitable when it comes to investigating the alleged powers of crystals. Indeed, many of the claims made about crystals clearly are scientifically investigable because they have observable, empirically testable consequences. Moreover, science has produced good evidence that at least some of these claims are false.
    Still, our commentator sweepingly dismisses such scientific findings, misrepresenting them as a mere “absence of evidence.” On no grounds whatsoever, and in the teeth of evidence to the contrary, our commentator insists that scientific methods are far too “narrow” to refute the various claims made about crystals. And of course, his dismissal of such scientific evidence is delivered with an air of humility and superior wisdom in contrast to the implied know-it-all attitude of the scientific critics.
    THE SKEPTIC DAMPING EFFECT
    A version of “it's beyond science to decide” that often crops up in defense of supernatural claims is an appeal to the so-called skeptic damping effect. When those claiming to have extrasensory perception (ESP)—for example, a supernatural ability to psychically read minds, to view things remotely—are tested under rigorous, experimental conditions, their claimed abilities tend to mysteriously vanish. Why is this? Those who insist ESP is real sometimes claim that the presence of skeptical observers has a damping effect on ESP, as Geoffrey Munroe, a psychologist working in this field, notes in his paper “The Scientific Impotence Excuse: Discounting Belief-Threatening Scientific Abstracts”:
Proponents of extrasensory perception (ESP) sometimes discount failed attempts to support the existence of ESP by claiming that the phenomenon disappears when placed “under the microscope,” especially the cold microscope of ESP nonbelievers.That is, there is a kind of observer effect where ESP is changed or eliminated when attempts to observe and measure it are taken. Thus, scientific methods, including careful observation and measurement, are impotent to reveal answers to the question of whether or not ESP exists. 5
     
    The skeptic damping effect provides a convenient excuse for the failure of experimental studies to produce convincing evidence of such abilities. But does the suggestion that the presence of skeptical observers somehow suppresses ESP really succeed in immunizing the claim that it exists against scientific refutation? Not necessarily. In fact, if it is merely the presence of skeptical observers that supposedly has the damping effect, then, interestingly, a controlled scientific experiment could be conducted to establish this. Those claiming ESP could be tested, sometimes with a hidden skeptic observing them, and sometimes not, to see if their ability varied in the way they claim (as my friend Jon Cohen pointed out to me). If, on the other hand, it is the involvement of controlled laboratory conditions designed to minimize the chances of trickery, and so on (whether or not a skeptic happens to be present) that supposedly produces the damping effect, well, that excuse would then place ESP beyond the ability of such laboratory-based studies to either confirm or refute.