Letters

From the February 1998 issue

(Page 5 of 5)

Skeptic About Skeptics

Brian Doherty's review of my book, Why People Believe Weird Things ("Critique of Pure Skepticism," November), is one of the most intelligent and thoughtful of the 50 or so reviews that have been published to date. He correctly points out that many of the "weird things" in my book are not explained by the generalization of "hope springs eternal" (in the attempt to answer the "why people believe" question). I tried to make the point in my final chapter that the specific reasons for belief obviously will vary with the belief system.

Doherty also notes that I spend some time "indulging in ad hominem assaults on the racist motives of Wycliffe Draper," founder of the Pioneer Fund, a major backer of research on racial differences in IQ. True, but I am a historian and I am interested in extra-scientific issues like who does the funding and what biases in one's research this might create. So, the question is, how can one explore this interesting and (I think) important aspect of science without being accused of the ad hominem attack?

Two minor corrections: 1) The magazine I edit is Skeptic, not The Skeptic; and 2) The proof that I really did think I was abducted by aliens during the 1983 bicycle Race Across America (due to sleep deprivation and riding 1,280 miles nonstop), as I noted in the book, is that it was filmed by ABC's Wide World of Sports, which aired a segment in which Eric Heiden interviewed me about my bizarre hallucinations. If I made it up in order to support my skeptical position 14 years later, I really must be a psychic!

Two significant corrections: 1) My "proof" that Satanic cults are panics and not real is the fact that there is no evidence that they exist. True, skeptics cannot prove a negative--I can't prove Satanic cults don't exist--but the burden of proof is not on me to disprove the cults' existence, it is on those who claim they exist to prove that they do. 2) My statement that "science became my belief system, and evolution my doctrine" was not a slip. Believe me, every editor at Freeman asked me if I really wanted to say it that way. Yes, I did, because science is a belief system--different from all others in its self-correcting nature--but a belief system nonetheless.

However, my statement that it is our job "to investigate and refute bogus claims" was a slip. Doherty is right. We should not go into an investigation with the preconceived idea that we are going to refute a given claim. But, being human, with years of experience of encountering similar claims that turn out to be bogus, we sometimes do. That is one of the human aspects of science that does make it a belief system.

Doherty is also right that sometimes we skeptics react "uncharitably" to some claims and claimants. All I can say in our defense is that when the hundredth person calls with a perpetual motion machine or a theory that explains absolutely everything in the universe, it is damned hard not to chortle a bit.

Michael Shermer
Publisher, Skeptic
Altadena, CA

Brian Doherty replies: Correction noted on the title of Mr. Shermer's magazine, and my apologies for the error. My point about the tale of hallucinated alien abduction was not that he was necessarily lying, but that application of his Humean maxim might lead one to leap to that conclusion without a thorough check of the evidence. Sometimes, the seemingly improbable can turn out to be true.

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