shooting fish in a barrel: the work of professional skeptics

7/29/2019 Shooting Fish in a Barrel: The work of professional skeptics

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Shooting Fish in a Barrel:

The work of professional sceptics

Malcolm Ashmore


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Professional sceptics; who are they?

Main USA organisation: Committee for the ScientificInvestigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP);renamed 2006: Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI)http://www.csicop.org/

CSI(COP) Fellows and ex-fellows:James the amazing Randi, Elizabeth Loftus, JohnMaddox;Richard Dawkins, Stephen Toulmin, Steven Weinberg,

Steven Pinker, Stephen J. Gould, Marvin Minsky,Francis Crick, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, B.F. Skinner,W.V.O. Quinealso many stage magicians, professional and amateur
http://www.csicop.org/http://www.csicop.org/


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Other organisations

Skeptics Society (USA) Publications: SkepticMagazine

Promoting Science and Critical Thinking;Skepticality - podcast

Director: Michael Shermer

Focus: on the young

Other sceptical organisations all over the

world, including Argentina, Brazil,Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela (but notColombia; is this good or bad?)


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Targets and objects

Targets: the paranormal, the occult, astrology, alternativemedicine, fringe science, pathological science (includingN-Rays, memory of water, cold fusion), recovered memory,

psychodynamic therapy, scientific frauds, religion,irrationality, science studies All the Enemies of Reason

Object: to protect the vulnerable population who are fooledby the false claims of charlatans and quacks

Positive belief: in Science and Rationality

Creed: CSICOP "does not reject claims on a priorigrounds,antecedent to inquiry, but examinesthem objectively and carefully."


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Sceptics as Defenders ofHigh Epistemic Culture

The barbarians are at the gates

The high-valued goods are in danger frompollution (watering-down, dumbing-down)

The agents of the threat are promoters of lowepistemic culture (irrational beliefs, junkscience), aided and abetted by fashionablerelativists for whom anything goes

The general public are gullible fools

The professional sceptics role is a combinationof border guard and high priest


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Anti-Skeptic Scepticism

Skeptical Investigations:A counter-organisation staffed largely bypsi believers

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org

A tricky case:

Skeptical Science - Examining the science ofglobal warming scepticismhttp://www.skepticalscience.com/
http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/http://www.skepticalscience.com/http://www.skepticalscience.com/http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/


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Richard Dawkins, FRS Ethnologist and evolutionary biologist Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of

Science, Oxford University, 1995-2008

Now Britains most prominent full-time media sceptic andpopular science author of 11 books Darwins pit-bull:

Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond seriousdoubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyonddoubt evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution is at leastas strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing foreye witnesses to the Holocaust.

People who reject the theory of evolution should beplaced on a level with Holocaust deniers, argues[Dawkins] in his controversial new book.http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article6805656.ece

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade theneed to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of,even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.

Richard Dawkins has long proclaimed his conviction thatThe paranormal is bunk. Those who try to sell it to us arefakes and charlatans. Enemies of Reasonwas intended topopularize this belief. But does his crusade really promote thepublic understanding of science, of which he is the professorat Oxford? Should science be a vehicle of prejudice, akind of fundamentalist belief-system? Or should it bea method of enquiry into the unknown?

Rupert Sheldrake, Richard Dawkins comes to callhttp://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/New/Examskeptics/Dawkins.html
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article6805656.ecehttp://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article6805656.ecehttp://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article6805656.ecehttp://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article6805656.ecehttp://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article6805656.ece


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Dawkins summarised

Dawkins Atheism: faith-based, fundamentalist,evangelical, missionary

Dawkins Science: self-evidently true, a matter

of (current) facts, lacking doubt or uncertainty Dawkins Reason: an attribute only possessed by

those who agree with him

Dawkins Role: High Priest of Reason, Defender

of the Faith Dawkins Reflexivity: non-existent; leading to

smug self-righteousness


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shooting fish in a barrel The work of professional sceptics is easy and cheap

Targets often already lack much authority or credibility(e.g. alien abduction, UFOlogy, astrology)

The standards of evidence and demonstration are low;often lower than those obtaining in the area beingdebunked (e.g. proto-revolutionary science) No need for peer review

No need for replication

No need to produce evidence for claims

Reliance on a prioriargument

Debunking methods include: sarcasm, bald assertion,use of hearsay, trickery, deception,

Crude understanding of what they claim to defend orendorse, i.e. Science/Reason/Rationality

Cultural Politics: Authoritarian, conservative, patronising


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Questions, problems

Why am I so critical (and asymmetric) aboutDawkins and professional scepticism in general?

Possible answer: to redress the balance; toattempt to add symmetry to a highly asymmetricsituation in which professional scepticism claimsall the high ground while already possessingmost epistemic credibility.

Is this a good enough reason for engaging inthis rant?

shooting fish in a barrel: the work of professional skeptics

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