What's the harm? Skeptics and scholars respond.

What's the harm? What does it hurt if I don't accept your principles of critical thinking and continue to accept weird thing x (some urban legend, piece of pseudoscience, New Age belief, or conspiracy theory) as true? 

This line is trotted whenever skeptics and lovers of science elucidate a culturally, though not scientifically, controversial fact like evolution, global warming, or the safety of vaccines. It is also used to thwart our bullish dismissal of dangerous nonsense, like holocaust denial, HIV denial, and the denial of the cancer-cigarette link, and silly fluff, like haunted houses, Bigfoot, astrology, and UFO abductions. I've been a skeptic for over eight years, but I have never had a rock solid response to "what's the harm." I usually just point to What's the Harm. This website chronicles examples of physical, psychological, and financial harm incurred by believers in weird things and is an invaluable resource if someone says something like "calling psychics doesn't harm anyone." The problem with over relying on this resource, however, is that it does not address what is the harm in having poor critical thinking skills and believing in weird things in general?"

While attempting to come up with a better rebuttal, I messaged the authors of many of my favorite books on science, critical thinking, and/or weird things. If anyone has a better answer to "what's the harm," I thought, it should be them. Despite not knowing me, they were very generous with their time and, upon my request, sent in thought provoking responses. I originally intended on placing their words throughout this article to fortify and strengthen my own points. Their points were so good, however, that I concluded I could add nothing of value to them. Instead, I am simply going to shut up and let these thinkers shed some light on this issue.

Noam Chomsky on postmodernism

Poe's Law and postmodernism

Warning: If you do not enjoy face palming, I suggest not reading this article. 

Over the last five decades, the most infamous school of philosophy has been postmodernism. This movement argues that science is a "power structure" and does not report any actual truth (many postmodernists also have a problem with the concept of truth, too). Instead of being motivated by a desire to know the world, scientists are imperialistic, white chauvinists who desire to suppress other belief systems. To back up their claims postmodernists attempt to apply literary criticism to scientific theories. For example, feminist Luce Irigaray attacked the general theory of relativity by saying: 

Is e=mc2 a sexed equation? Perhaps it is. Let us make the hypothesis that it is insofar as it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us. What seems to me to indicate the possible sexed nature of the equation is not directly its uses by nuclear weapons, rather it is having privileged what goes the fastest.

If you think that Irigaray is alone, here is feminist Sandra Harding's thoughts on science's epistemology: 

One phenomenon feminist historians have focused on is the rape and torture metaphors in the writings of Sir Francis Bacon and others (e.g. Machiavelli) enthusiastic about the new scientific method. …But when it comes to regarding nature as a machine, they have quite a different analysis: here, we are told, the metaphor provides the interpretations of Newton’s mathematical laws: it directs inquirers to fruitful ways to apply his theory and suggests the appropriate methods of inquiry and the kind of metaphysics the new theory supports. But if we are to believe that mechanistic metaphors were a fundamental component of the explanations the new science provided, why should we believe that the gender metaphors were not? A consistent analysis would lead to the conclusion that understanding nature as a woman indifferent to or even welcoming rape was equally fundamental to the interpretations of these new conceptions of nature and inquiry. In that case, why is it not as illuminating and honest to refer to Newton’s laws as “Newton’s rape manual” as it is to call them “Newton’s mechanics”? 

And science theorist Bruno Latour denying that Ramses II died of tuberculosis because he lived thousands of years before the disease was discovered:  

 Let us accept the diagnosis of “our brave scientists” at face value and take it as proved that that Ramses died of tuberculosis. How could he have died of a bacillus discovered in 1882 and of a disease whose etiology, in its modern form dates only from 1819 in Laennec’s ward?  Is it not anachronistic? The attribution of tuberculosis and Koch’s bacillus to Ramses II should strike us as an anachronism of the same caliber as if we had diagnosed his death as having been caused by a Marxist upheaval, or a machine gun, or a Wall Street crash.  Is it not an extreme cause of “whiggish” history, transplanting into the past the hidden or potential existence of the future? 

One of the attributes that seemingly all postmodernist literature shares is using nonsensical language in a virtually incoherent way.  This pattern greatly resembles the way that quantum spiritualists like Deepak Chopra use words like energy, non-locality, and quantum to mean things that no scientists would ever mean by them. 

A physicist named Alan Sokal saw the way that postmodernists used babel to attack science and decided the play a trick. In 1998, he submitted a fake postmodernist paper to the journal Social Text to see if he could get it published. His article, which was titled Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, argued that quantum gravity was a social construct (you can read the paper for yourself here). One of my favorite quotes from the article criticizes set theory as being chauvinistic and hegemonic : 

Just as liberal feminists are frequently content with a minimal agenda of legal and social equality for women and ``pro-choice'', so liberal (and even some socialist) mathematicians are often content to work within the hegemonic Zermelo-Fraenkel framework (which, reflecting its nineteenth-century liberal origins, already incorporates the axiom of equality) supplemented only by the axiom of choice. But this framework is grossly insufficient for a liberatory mathematics, as was proven long ago by Cohen (1966).

The most hilarious thing about Sokal's submission, however, is that it was published. That's right. The editors of Social Text published an article in it that argued gravity is a social construct, set theory is sexist, and contains more that six meaningless sentences.

One of my theories on this incident is that Poe's Law came into effect. If you are unfamiliar with Poe's law, it is when parody cannot be distinguished from a sincere article because the belief structure has no grounding in reality. For creationists. it is difficult to tell a person imitating a Young Earth Creationist from the real deal because sincere creationists sound like a bad parody. Since postmodernism, like creationism, entails a certain kind of jargon, it is hard to tell when someone is serious or they are just trolling. 

For example, take this piece of artwork which implies that the big bang theory was created by Satan. Before reading on, try to tell if if was done by a troll or a serious creationist. You probably can't.

This inability to distinguish sincere belief from parody is what made it possible for Alan Sokal to commit his hoax against postmodernists.  If you do not believe me, try to find someone who is a postmodernist and has not read Sokal's hoax. Copy and paste the quote I mentioned about abortion and set theory and tell them that it is one of the featured postmodernists. I guarantee them that they will take the bait and won't be able to distinguish the two. 

On a side note, I also recommend that you check out the Postmodern Generator. It randomly generates a new, postmodernist-sounding essay every time you click on it. It does this task by combining words that postmodern scholars like to use with references from art and political science. Like Sokal's hoax, you literally cannot tell the difference between these articles and the work of people like Derrida and Foucault. If you are in a class where postmodernism is being taught, see if you can trick your friends into thinking you wrote the essay (don't turn it in though, that's plagiary). 

Red flags to beware of

Philosopher Harry Frankfurt begins his treatise, On Bullshit, with an observation about the amount of baloney out there and how we take for granted our ability to detect it.

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves.

I agree with this sentiment. While most people think that they can easily spot a con artist, few (at least in the United States) have highly calibrated baloney detectors. Like it or not, your neighbors and your loved ones have probably been snowed by at least a few charlatans. If you think I am exaggerating, please look at the alarmingly large number of people who are taken in by baseless occult and paranormal beliefs.

I, however, do not think the battle against nonsense is lost. Critical thinking can be learned and we can make our baloney detectors more highly calibrated. A great first step towards for anyone who is trying to become a better critical thinker is to learn the warning signs that usually accompany baloney. While spotting these red flags does not guarantee that a claim is false, they should make you skeptical of whatever is being sold or proposed.

1. Appeal to illegitimate authority. You can hardly turn on the tv without seeing an add with men in lab coats endorsing a male enhancement product. Likewise, almost every strange claim on the internet is seemingly backed by the late electrical engineer, Nikola Tesla. These appeals, however, are worthless. A product's soundness can only be judged by the supporting evidence, not by appealing to a man in a commercial in a lab coat or a figure in the history of science. If we do not know enough about the claim to say something intelligent, then the proper authority to consider is the consensus held by the contemporary, relevant experts.  
2. Appeal to political correctness. Many claims argue that you should accept them because it is the moral or or politically correct thing to do. For example, many have charged that it is immoral to accept the theory of evolution because it means that we are apes. It is irrelevant, however, how warm and fuzzy these ideas are. All that matters is if the preponderance of evidence supports them. If it does, then you are simply denying reality by dismissing them. It should be noted that it is equally wrong to accept a claim because it is politically incorrect or considered shocking.
3. Appeal to ancient wisdom. Whenever anyone appeals to the wisdom of ancient people in an effort to seal their claim off from scrutiny, be skeptical. Despite their deep desire to learn, the most advanced ancient people only knew a fraction of one percent of what we know today. Their knowledge about medicine, engineering, and astronomy was limited at best and they were completely oblivious to fields like virology. Even worse, they practiced things that we know to be a waste of time like astrology and feng shui. While an idea they proposed may be correct, they cannot be excused from a critical examination. 
4. Appeal to nature. Many proponents of alternative medicine try to promote their ideas by appealing to the fact that they are natural. They say things like "holistic medicine is better for you because it consists of all natural ingredients." The problem with this is that while there are many natural things that are good for you, there are just many that are harmful. Jellyfish neuro-toxins and botulism are both natural. So are poison ivy and e. coli. The only way to know if a natural remedy is good or bad for you is to examine the evidence and look at what the relevant medical experts have said about the issue.
5. Appeal to energy. One of the favored ideas of New Age proponents is using the word energy to describe some sort of supernatural force or entity. The problem with this is that, scientifically speaking, energy can be defined as "the ability of something to do work." If you substitute this definition into sentences about how energy somehow has something to do auras, ghosts, and telepathy, these claims become nonsensical or meaningless. Whenever someone uses energy in a way that bucks against this traditional usage, be skeptical. 
6. Forgetting the misses.  Many psychics want you to believe that they can talk to the dead because they can accurately predict many details about your life (an accurate prediction is called a hit). When they are trying to convince you, however, you need to also keep track of how many inaccurate predictions they made (misses). Since mankind is predisposed to want to believe, we tend to forget to do this and end up being stunned that a psychic could get twelve hits out of seventy probing guesses. When these are factored together, we need to ask ourselves "is this any better than if someone was just making educated guesses based on previous information and my physical appearance?" 
7. Shotgun method. This is a popular debate tactic employed by hucksters (the most notable being creationist Duane Gish). The shotgun method is used when one makes more claims than you could possibly ever refute in a given time period. When you fail to sufficiently address 30 claims in 30 minutes, the huckster states that their claim must be right because you have not word-for-word refuted them. Stacking baloney, however, does not make a claim true. Only solid evidence that is skeptically examined, not parlor debating tricks, can  support to a claim. If the huckster really wants their claims to be taken seriously, then they have to submit them for sustained scrutiny by experts.
8. Appeal to the absence of evidence. It is a favored tactic of hucksters to argue that the lack of evidence for their claim makes it more plausible. This is seen when UFO proponents hold up documents with big black lines through it or charge that the government is "covering it up." The problem with this is two-folds: First, it eliminates the ability for a claim to be tested because "the evidence is being covered up" can be used to get out of almost any objection. (testability is also a key property of science and lacking it makes a claim less plausible). Second, not having evidence gives you no positive reason to accept something. After all, if we had to accept claims with no evidence, we would have to believe in Santa Claus, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the invisible, undetectable dragon in Carl Sagan's garage, and Bertrand Russell's Teapot. Since this is absurd, the burden is on the believer to provide positive evidence.    
9. Appeal to the middle road. A typical line used by people who hold centrist positions is that they must be right because they are in the middle of two extremes. "Evangelical Christians and atheists are both fundamentalists. I, on the other hand, hold the moderate position of being spiritual." Being in "the center", however, does not automatically make something correct. (Keeping with our example,) if Christianity or atheism were shown to be very plausible, then the spiritualist would be wrong to hold their position because the evidence would go against it.
10. World salad. Whenever you hear words like quantum consciousness, poststructuralism, quantum entanglement, and hermeneutics used to defend some sort of anti-scientific or spiritual belief, your baloney detector should immediately go off. This is because postmodernist philosophers and proponents of Quantum Mysticism tend to use words like these to make their ideas sound more sophisticated. While this may sound impressive to the lay person, their use of these words is almost always nonsensical or semantically meaningless. They are doing nothing more than randomly inserting words into sentences to make them sound complicated. This is attested to by the Deepak Chopra generator and the postmodern generator. Both of these websites run on engines that randomly assemble words into sentences that are impressively sounding, but meaningless.  

This list is certainly incomplete, but it is an excellent starting point for those learning how to think critically. When you memorize these and other red flags, you will notice that your baloney detector will start to go off all the time.  If you are having a conversation with someone who is trying to convince you of a natural remedy or that one of Oprah's guests have psychic powers, pointing them out will help you explain to your family and friends why they should not waste their money and time on supporting hucksters.  

Excellent skeptical documentary

The Enemies of Reason is a 2007 skeptical documentary that was hosted by Richard Dawkins and produced by the BBC. It covers many anti-scientific and pseudoscientific beliefs like homeopathy, astrology, spiritualism, dowsing, and postmodernism. If you are looking for a way to get your friends into skepticism, this documentary is fun to watch and highly informative.