I am a skeptical apatheist, strict materialist, and avid follower of the likes of P. Z. Myers and James Randi. I also believe in the effectiveness of acupuncture and other traditional Chinese medicine.
I admitted it. Then, I thought ‘Now what?’.
It took me a while to reconcile these positions. The first thing I realized, immediately, is that excuses for how skeptical I can be in all other cases won’t do. To the skeptic who is convinced I am holding a belief irrationally, my willingness to follow the evidence in other cases doesn’t justify the case in which I don’t. I hold that antivaxxer nonsense is dangerous, faith healing illusory, and homeopathy a waste of time. I don’t believe in any New Age superstitions. I’m a strict materialist (everything is either physical or information on a physical medium), and I disagree with any explanations of TCM or concepts of chi that involve magical energies. While I agree that most explanations of the phenomena behind TCM are unscientific, I do believe that there is an actual phenomena there that can be exploited for medical purposes (and eventually explained scientifically). I even have a very limited amateur hypothesis attempting to explain how it can work, that is consistent as I can make it with my layman’s understanding of the science. I have standards and heuristics for evaluating TCM practitioners, and only visit those who are both well versed in Western medicine and referred by members of the martial arts community whom I trust. All of this is besides the point. Those who insist on the strictest consistent standards of proof must say I’m cheering on a placebo. That I degrade other placebos does not change that fact. Moreover, without objective and rigorous evidence, I cannot prove them wrong. There’s still a debate on the efficacy of TCM going on in the academic circles, but in this case “still in debate” means “not enough objective proof yet”.
So, then, why do I not change my opinion? I came to believe in the efficacy of TCM for a reason, after all. A personal history of effective TCM treatment, as well as similar histories with people I knew personally, was where I first became convinced. My practice with the internal (‘soft’) martial arts and studies in cognitive science eventually led me to form a hypothesis of my own on how the mind interacted with the body, and how TCM utilized this. I do have evidence - but it’s anecdotal. I do have an explanatory framework - but it’s personal. What I can use to make sense of the phenomena in a way that convinces myself is utterly inadequate for convincing others. Yet I have no reason so far to doubt my own judgment or senses. Is there a solution? (more…)
Review: Denialism
With a title like Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, how could I resist? I dove right in, expecting an interesting discussion on the subject and hoping it’d be more substantive and useful than Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future.
I’ll be brief. Don’t bother. While Unscientific America was vapid and shallow, it at least provided an effective overview of the subject. Denialism, on the other hand, is nothing but case studies of health-related antiscience scares (from Vioxx to GMOs). Even the section on antivaccination is strangely lacking - I’ve seen blog posts and magazine articles that do a better job on the subject (irony alert: That second link is authored by Chris Mooney, who also wrote Unscientific America). Oh, and they do it without citing Gavin Menzies as an authority on Chinese history. (If you’ve never heard of the fellow, he’s as much a Chinese historian as Immanuel Velikovsky is an astrophysicist.)
There’s precious little discussion on denialism in Denialism, except by example - and all of the examples have a narrow focus (mistrust of medical and agricultural science). There’s nothing on your traditional denial movements (a parting shot on AIDS deniers and one mention of moon-landing hoaxers, but nothing on creationism) and, surprisingly, a dearth of information on the most well-known contemporary denial-orchestration movement of our time (the tobacco fiasco), nor the most dangerous (climate denial). There’s nothing prescriptive in it except an even more vapid cry for better scientific communication - in other words, Unscientific America, only even less clear (at least Mooney and Kirshenbaum had the courtesy to discuss the role of journalism here). The only positive thing I can say about it is that it spends ample time reminding us that antiscience denialism is not isolated to one side of the political spectrum - while the majority of the non-antivax denial movements nowadays are predominantly right-wing, anti-health denialism has always had its claws stuck in the left, which is quoted from extensively.
Save your time and money. If this material interests you, Doubt Is Their Product is a far, far better book on the subject, even without trying to be - it actually discusses not only the tactics involved, but the path of information and the methods used by professionals to reshape debate. (It even has a strong medical denialism bias, and it *still* outperforms Denialism as an overview!) I suppose Denialism might have a place on a health policy wonk’s bookshelf, but as for a student of denialism, give it a pass.
See also: Tom Philpot: ‘Denialism’ Misses Its Targets.