Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (6 page)

In the five years since we founded the Skeptics Society and
Skeptic
magazine, my partner, friend, and wife, Kim Ziel Shermer, has provided countless hours of feedback during meals, while driving in the car and riding bikes, and on our daily jaunt up the mountain with the dogs and our daughter, Devin. My other
Skeptic
partner, Pat Linse, has proved to be far more than just a brilliant art director. She is one of a rare species, an artistic and scientific polymath, whose prolific reading (she doesn't own a television) enables her not only to converse on virtually any subject but to make original and constructive contributions to the skeptic movement.

I also wish to acknowledge those who have been most helpful in producing
Skeptic
magazine and putting on our lecture series at Caltech, without which this book would not exist. Jaime Botero has been there with me since I taught the evening course in introductory psychology at Glendale College a decade ago. Diane Knudtson has worked nearly every Skeptics Society lecture at Caltech for nothing more than a meal and food for thought. Brad Davies has produced videos of every lecture and provided valuable feedback on the speakers' many and diverse ideas. Jerry Friedman constructed our database, organized the Skeptics Society survey, and provided valuable information on the animal rights movement. Terry Kirker continues to contribute to the promotion of science and skepticism in her own unique way.

Most of the chapters began as essays originally published in
Skeptic
magazine, which I edit. Skeptical readers may then reasonably ask, Who edits the editor? Who is skeptical of the skeptic? Every essay in this volume has been read and edited by my publisher's editors, Elizabeth Knoll, Mary Louise Byrd, and Michelle Bonnice; by my partners, Kim and Pat; by one or more of
Skeptic
magazine's contributing editors; and, where appropriate, by a member of
Skeptic
magazine's editorial board or by an expert in the field. For this, I heartily thank David Alexander, Clay Drees, Gene Friedman, Alex Grobman, Diane Halpern, Steve Harris, Gerald Larue, Jim Lippard, Betty McCollister, Tom McDonough, Paul McDowell, Tom Mclver, Sara Meric, John Mosley, Richard Olson, D'art Phares, Donald Prothero, Rick Shaffer, Elie Shneour, Brian Siano, Jay Snelson, Carol Tavris, Kurt Wochholtz, and especially Richard Hardison, Bernard Leikind, Frank Miele, and Frank Sulloway, for not allowing friendship to get in the way of brutal honesty when editing my essays. At W. H. Freeman I wish to thank Simone Cooper who brilliantly organized my national book tour and made it a joy rather than a chore; Peter McGuigan for bringing the book to audio so people can hear it as well as read it; John Michel for his critical feedback on this and the transition to my next book,
Why People Believe in God.
A special thanks to Sloane Lederer who maintained the progress of the publishing and promotion of this book throughout numerous personnel changes at the publisher, as well as for understanding the deeper importance of what we skeptics are trying to accomplish through writing books such as this. Thanks to my agents Katinka Matson and John Brockman, and their foreign rights director Linda Wollenberger, for helping to bring about the book in this and other languages. Finally, Bruce Mazet has made it possible for the Skeptics Society,
Skeptic
magazine, and Millennium Press to battle ignorance and misunderstanding; he has pushed us well beyond what I ever dreamed we were capable of accomplishing.

In his 1958 masterpiece,
The Philosophy of Physical Science,
physicist and astronomer Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington asked about observations made by scientists,
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?—Who will observe the observers?"
"The epistemologist," answered Eddington. "He watches them to see what they really observe, which is often quite different from what they say they observe. He examines their procedure and the essential limitations of the equipment they bring to their task, and by so doing becomes aware beforehand of limitations to which the results they obtain will have to conform" (1958, p. 21). Today the observers' observers are the skeptics. But who will observe the skeptics? You. So have at it and have fun.

PART 1

SCIENCE

AND

SKEPTICISM

Science is founded on the conviction that experience, effort, and reason are valid; magic on the belief that hope cannot fail nor desire deceive.

—Branislaw Malinowski,
Magic, Science, and Religion,
1948

1

I Am Therefore I Think

A Skeptic's Manifesto

On the opening page of his splendid little book
To Know a Fly,
biologist Vincent Dethier makes this humorous observation about how children grow up to be scientists: "Although small children have taboos against stepping on ants because such actions are said to bring on rain, there has never seemed to be a taboo against pulling off the legs or wings of flies. Most children eventually outgrow this behavior. Those who do not either come to a bad end or become biologists" (1962, p. 2). In their early years, children are knowledge junkies, questioning everything in their purview, though exhibiting little skepticism. Most never learn to distinguish between skepticism and credulity. It took me a long time.

In 1979, unable to land a full-time teaching job, I found work as a writer for a cycling magazine. The first day on the job, I was sent to a press conference held in honor of a man named John Marino who had just ridden his bicycle across America in a record 13 days, 1 hour, 20 minutes. When I asked him how he did it, John told me about special vegetarian diets, megavitamin therapy, fasting, colonics, mud baths, iridology, cytotoxic blood testing, Rolfing, acupressure and acupuncture, chiropractic and massage therapy, negative ions, pyramid power, and a host of weird things with which I was unfamiliar. Being a fairly inquisitive fellow, when I took up cycling as a serious sport I thought I would try these things to see for myself whether they worked. I once fasted for a week on nothing but a strange mixture of water, cayenne pepper, garlic, and lemon. At the end of the week, John and I rode from Irvine to Big Bear Lake and back, some seventy miles each way. About halfway up the mountain I collapsed, violently ill from the concoction. John and I once rode out to a health spa near Lake Elsinore for a mud bath that was supposed to suck the toxins out of my body. My skin was dyed red for a week. I set up a negative ion generator in my bedroom to charge the air to give me more energy. It turned the walls black with dust. I got my iris read by an iridologist, who told me that the little green flecks in my eyes meant something was wrong with my kidneys. To this day my kidneys are functioning fine.

I really got into cycling. I bought a racing bike the day after I met John and entered my first race that weekend. I did my first century ride (100 miles) a month later, and my first double century later that year. I kept trying weird things because I figured I had nothing to lose and, who knows, maybe they would increase performance. I tried colonics because supposedly bad things clog the plumbing and thus decrease digestive efficiency, but all I got was an hour with a hose in a very uncomfortable place. I installed a pyramid in my apartment because it was supposed to focus energy. All I got were strange looks from guests. I starting getting massages, which were thoroughly enjoyable and quite relaxing. Then my massage therapist decided that "deep tissue" massage was best to get lactic acid out of the muscles. That wasn't so relaxing. One guy massaged me with his feet. That was even less relaxing. I tried Rolling, which is
really
deep tissue massage. That was so painful that I never went back.

In 1982 John and I and two other men competed in the first Race Across America, the 3,000-mile, nonstop, transcontinental bike race from Los Angeles to New York. In preparation, we went for cytotoxic blood testing because it was supposed to detect food allergies that cause blood platelets to clump together and block capillaries, thus decreasing blood flow. By now we were a little skeptical of the truth of these various claims, so we sent in one man's blood under several names. Each sample came back with different food allergies, which told us that there was a problem with their testing, not with our blood. During the race, I slept with an "Electro-Acuscope," which was to measure my brain waves and put me into an alpha state for better sleeping. It was also supposed to rejuvenate my muscles and heal any injuries. The company swore that it helped Joe Montana win the Super Bowl. Near as I can figure, it was totally ineffective.

The Electro-Acuscope was the idea of my chiropractor. I began visiting a chiropractor not because I needed one but because I had read that energy flows through the spinal cord and can get blocked at various places. I discovered that the more I got adjusted, the more I needed to get adjusted because my neck and back kept going "out." This went on for a couple of years until I finally quit going altogether, and I've never needed a chiropractor since.

All told, I raced as a professional ultra-marathon cyclist for ten years, all the while trying anything and everything (except drugs and steroids) that might improve my performance. As the Race Across America got bigger—it was featured for many years on ABC's
Wide World of Sports
—I had many offers to try all sorts of things, which I usually did. From this ten-year experiment with a subject pool of one, I drew two conclusions: nothing increased performance, alleviated pain, or enhanced well-being other than long hours in the saddle, dedication to a consistent training schedule, and a balanced diet; and it pays to be skeptical. But what does it mean to be skeptical?

What Is a Skeptic?

I became a skeptic on Saturday, August 6, 1983, on the long, climbing road to Loveland Pass, Colorado. It was Day 3 of the second Race Across America, and the nutritionist on my support crew believed that if I followed his megavitamin therapy program, I would win the race. He was in a Ph.D. program and was trained as a nutritionist, so I figured he knew what he was doing. Every six hours I would force down a huge handful of assorted vitamins and minerals. Their taste and smell nearly made me sick, and they went right through me, producing what I thought had to be the most expensive and colorful urine in America. After three days of this, I decided that megavitamin therapy, along with colonics, iridology, Rofing, and all these other alternative, New Age therapies were a bunch of hooey. On that climb up Loveland Pass, I dutifully put the vitamins in my mouth and then spit them out up the road when my nutritionist wasn't looking. Being skeptical seemed a lot safer than being credulous.

After the race I discovered that the nutritionist's Ph.D. was to be awarded by a nonaccredited nutrition school and, worse, I was the subject of his doctoral dissertation! Since that time I have noticed about extraordinary claims and New Age beliefs that they tend to attract people on the fringes of academia—people without formal scientific training, creden-tialed (if at all) by nonaccredited schools, lacking research data to support their claims, and excessively boastful about what their particular elixir can accomplish. This does not automatically disprove all claims made by individuals exhibiting these characteristics, but it would be wise to be especially skeptical when encountering them.

Being skeptical is nothing new, of course. Skepticism dates back 2,500 years to ancient Greece and Plato's Academy. But Socrates' quip that "All I know is that I know nothing" doesn't get us far. Modern skepticism has developed into a science-based movement, beginning with Martin Gardner's 1952 classic,
Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.
Gardner's numerous essays and books over the next four decades, such as
Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus
(1981),
The New Age: Notes of a Fringe Watcher
(1991a), and
On the Wild Side
(1992), established a pattern of incredulity about a wide variety of bizarre beliefs. Skepticism joined pop culture through magician James "the Amazing" Randi's countless psychic challenges and media appearances in the 1970s and 1980s (including thirty-six appearances on the
Tonight Show).
Philosopher Paul Kurtz helped create dozens of skeptics groups throughout the United States and abroad, and publications such as
Skeptic
magazine have national and international circulation. Today, a burgeoning group of people calling themselves skeptics—scientists, engineers, physicians, lawyers, professors, teachers, and the intellectually curious from all walks of life—conduct investigations, hold monthly meetings and annual conferences, and provide the media and the general public with natural explanations for apparently supernatural phenomena.

Modern skepticism is embodied in the scientific method, which involves gathering data to test natural explanations for natural phenomena. A claim becomes factual when it is confirmed to such an extent that it would be reasonable to offer temporary agreement. But all facts in science are provisional and subject to challenge, and therefore skepticism is a
method
leading to provisional conclusions. Some things, such as water dowsing, extrasensory perception, and creationism, have been tested and have failed the tests often enough that we can provisionally conclude that they are false. Other things, such as hypnosis, lie detectors, and vitamin C, have been tested but the results are inconclusive, so we must continue formulating and testing hypotheses until we can reach a provisional conclusion. The key to skepticism is to navigate the treacherous straits between "know nothing" skepticism and "anything goes" credulity by continuously and vigorously applying the methods of science.

The flaw in pure skepticism is that when taken to an extreme, the position itself cannot stand. If you are skeptical about everything, you must be skeptical of your own skepticism. Like the decaying subatomic particle, pure skepticism spins off the viewing screen of our intellectual cloud chamber.