Is Pseudo-Scholarship Good For Anything?

This is a subject I have been mulling over for a while. It was sparked by a casual comment on the excellent podcast Life, The Universe and Everything Else by the Winnepeg Skeptics. One of the panel said that they were addicted to pseudoscience and supernatural books when they were young. Then I read that Jason Colavito, an excellent debunker of Ancient Aliens, began his interest as a believer and gradually realised it was all bollocks. I must say, I was an omnivorous reader when I was young and I used to buy all kind of nonsense at jumble sales – Dennis Wheatley, T. Lobsang Rampa, Erich von Däniken, Carlos Castañeda, John M. Allegro.

I grew out of it by the time I was in my early twenties and it certainly never did me any harm. But could you make a case that exposure to this kind of dim-witted rubbish is actually a good thing for young minds?

The thing is, teenagers don’t think like adults. Teenagers are alive to a thousand possibilities. They are still looking for who they are and what they think about the world. The behaviour of teenagers is frequently a challenge for older people because it is often irrational and contradictory but in a sense, that’s because it needs to be. In many ways, it’s like the process of brainstorming. The first stage is to generate ideas uncritically, without rejecting anything. And one thing you can say about pseudoscientists is that they are also open to all kinds of irrational nonsense. No idea is too stupid to be rejected out of hand by a follower of pseudoscience. As a kid, I can remember reading Erich von Däniken’s books and the sense of wonder and of infinite possibility that his absurd theories gave me.

Another thing is that pseudoscientific books frequently cherry-pick exciting facts. They home in on things which are surprising, anomalous and interesting in mainstream research, as well as generous dollops of made-up nonsense. If you can work out which is which, pseudoscience can sometimes lead to some genuinely interesting material. (Of course, one common complaint is that these people make money by riding on the back of good research and distorting its conclusions, a criticism which is entirely justified.)

And last but not least, if I only read respectable and accurate works of scholarship as a child, would I have such an acute ability to detect bullshit now? Somehow I doubt it. I think that exposure to the illogical arguments and non sequiturs and random prejudices of pseudoscience actually works like an inoculation (for some people, at least). It makes them think about the nature of truth and dishonesty and it makes them develop the antibodies of skepticism and doubt.

However, if people still believe in this nonsense when they’re fully grown up, that’s a problem. But let’s face it, while it’s a problem for the wider society, it’s far more of a problem for these individuals themselves. They are the ones who are really missing out by preferring woo to true. As adults, they should be looking for that buzz of awe and wonder in the amazing amount we now know about the universe around us instead of watching Ancient Aliens. They should be impressed at the incredible amount that medical science has achieved rather than putting their faith in expensive water.

At the very least, I think that this kind of dross should be read and discussed in schools, because people need to be taught to recognise bad thinking and to develop good thinking and the easiest way to do that is to look at the worst examples of bad thinking around.

The Weird World of Ancient Aliens

I have been watching Ancient Aliens on the History Channel recently, as research for this post. If you have never watched Ancient Aliens, it is hard to describe just how bad it is. It is essentially a bunch of cranks looking at statues of gods or stone circles from the ancient world and making bizarre assertions about their links to little green (or grey) men. Any god with big eyes is an alien, anything disc-shaped is a UFO, etc. etc. The whole thing is narrated by a man who sounds a little like E.L. Wisty. Here is a piss-take of a typical item, which is only slightly sillier than the real thing.

 

A typical rock, you might think. [Picture of rock.] A rock like any other rock on earth. A rock picked up and brought to the USA by a young back-packer at an ancient Inca site in Peru. [Picture of someone picking up rock.] Within weeks, the young tourist was convinced that the rock was speaking to her. Mental illness, or was she driven to madness by alien voices, as many ancient alien theorists believe? [Picture of young woman covering ears with anguished expression.] 

[Cut to respectable scientist explaining about current thinking on other dimensions.]

“The current belief is that there are more than just the dimensions we can see around us in the ordinary world. These extra dimensions are hidden,  folded up in the interstices of our everyday reality.”  

[Cut to ancient alien author with crazy hair and a Greek name.]

“So, these aliens who have the technology to travel vast distances across space, they understand the multi-dimensional nature of the universe. We all know the Tardis effect of science fiction, something is bigger on the inside than the outside, right? So how do we know that this rock is not a whole spaceship? It wouldn’t surprise me. It wouldn’t surprise me at all. There could be whole fleets of spaceships inside it.”

[Cut to badly-designed graphic of alien spaceship.]

 

Why am I having a go at Ancient Aliens on cassidyslangscam? Well, I’m sure many people have wondered why I have expended so much time and effort on someone as marginal and unimportant as Daniel Cassidy. Partly, of course, the reason for this is that Cassidy is treating the Irish language with contempt and I happen to love the Irish language. However, there is a more serious aspect to all this.

The world is awash with pseudoscience and pseudoscholarship. Cassidy’s nonsense is just one example of people believing in any old shite without following scientific methodology, without seeking evidence. People who believe rubbish like this are just as likely to believe in graphology or the MMR link to autism, or AIDS denial, or Hancock’s nonsense about ancient civilisations. They believe in these things for the same reasons – arrogance, hubris, a desire among badly-educated people to be ‘in on’ some arcane story which the ivory-tower scholars have supposedly missed.

However, there is a big difference between these other idiotic theories and Cassidy’s nonsense. They haven’t had positive articles in the New York Times and the Irish Times. The people who peddle AIDS denial and Hancock’s rubbish about ancient civilisations under the ice caps haven’t been given receptions at New York University. They aren’t treated with respect among genuine scholars and intellectuals and quoted in history books and on television programmes.

Cassidy was, in spite of the fact that his ‘research’ was every bit as ridiculous as the worst pseudo-scholarship out there. That’s why the Cassidy Scandal is part of something bigger. And that’s why this story needs to be told.