I offer this document as a skeleton to anyone who wishes to introduce the philosophy of skepticism.
Persecution of scientologists in Germany? Attempting to register as for charitable status in Britain.
Rochdale children going home after five years
Re-opening of Biosphere II
Mystic Meg failed to forecast the immediate failure of the lottery machine
"The occult believer or pseudo-scientist often asks his antagonist, 'What would convince you, anyway? How much evidence does it take to prove that UFOs land/ghosts walk/dowsers find water etc?' The question is beside the point, for the two factions can never agree on a definition of 'evidence'. There is ample evidence (of a kind) that the sun is a flaming chariot driven against the sky.
"In order to arrive at the scientific and the magical definitions of evidence, it's necessary to sketch answers to two questions: How do we use our senses to collect evidence? Why do we believe in what we have collected?" John Sladek p324
1.2 scientific literacy SI Jan 95 p 5 and general levels of education With current levels of education what can we expect? How much have people learned? Jan 97 reports 1 in 5 cannot make sense of a timetable ** George Bernard Shaw on common powers of thinking?
1.3 Selling a pseudoscience SI JA 95
1.3.1 Create a phantom eg meet a dead relative, contact an alien, overcome inferiority by listening to a tape
1.3.2 Set a rationalisation trap - make them make a commitment early on
1.3.3 Manufacture source credibility and sincerity - eg doctorates in bogus medicine, head of research centres
1.3.4. Establish a granfalloon - join a meaningless association of human beings (even randomly), sharing: rituals, jargon, shared goals, shared feelings, specialised info, enemies
1.3.5 Use self-generated persuasion - buy for yourself and confirm its value by persuading others to buy the same thing
1.3.6 Construct vivid appeals
1.3.7 Use pre-persuasion - create the argument: 1) health freedom 2) set expectations 3) set decision criteria
1.3.8 Frequently use heuristics (scarcity, consensus, bandwagon, representativeness, natural commonplace, goddess-within, science commonplaces)
1.3.9 Attack opponents through innuendo and character assassination - 1) innuendo changes agenda of discussion 2) raises doubt 3) chilling effect/ cost of law
1.4 Eyewitness Testimony and the paranormal SI ND 95 - sheep and goats, sheep see less of sleight of hand etc
Dianetics and scientology - became a church in 1955 "This is no wild theory. It is not mysticism. It is a coldly precise engineering description of how the human mind operates and how to go about restoring correct operation tested and used on some two hundred fifty cases. And it makes only one overall claim: the methods logically developed from that description WORK. The memory stimulation technique is so powerful that, within thirty minute of entering therapy, most people will recall in full detail their own birth. I have observed it in action, and used the technique myself." John Campbell ASTOUNDING SF April 1950
Black helicopters and the New World Order
2.2 Individual science?
World Ice - never a valid theory. Actually Hitler never accepted either the world ice theory or read Rosenburg on myth and race
2.3 A scientific view superseded?
Phlogiston - a theory superseded
The magnet - action at a distance.
Continental drift - now accepted, but always promoted by scientists.
Required later theory/evidence of plate tectonics to explain it. Similarly Darwin's theory of evolution needed DNA to account for it.
Ulcer bacteria - accepted very quickly, but contrast opposition to Spallanzani and Lister
Development of medical diagnosis
2.4 On the edge - the Gaia hypothesis (Lovelock) and morphic resonance (Sheldrake)
2.5 Women and Science - are feminists anti-rationalists?
Female input into hidden memories and satanic abuse
"Children are naturally credulous (ie they accept everything they are told - LJH). Of course they are, what else would be sensible? They arrive in the world knowing nothing, surrounded by adults who know, by comparison, everything. So much of what a child is told turns out to be true and wise. It is certainly true that fire scorches, that snakes bite, that if you are white and walk unprotected in the noonday sun you will go red and raw. Moreover, learning by trial and error -- the other, and apparently more scientific way to gain useful knowledge -- is often a bad idea because the errors are too costly. If your mother tells you never to paddle in the lake because of the crocodiles, it is no good coming over all skeptical and scientific and 'adult' and saying 'Thank you, Mother, but I prefer to put it to the experimental test.' Too often, an experiment like that would be the lat thing a child ever did. It is easy to see why natural selection -- the 'survival of the fittest' -- might penalize an experimental and skeptical turn of mind and favour simple credulity in children.
"But this has an unfortunate by-product that can't be helped. If your parents tell you something that is not true, you will believe that too. How could you not. A child isn't equipped to know the difference between a true warning about crocodiles if you paddle in the lake and a false warning about going blind if you 'sin'. Credulity, as a survival device, comes as a complete package. You believe everything, the false with the true." Richard Dawkins "Putting Away Childish Things" SI JF 95 pp 32-33
3.2 Representativeness and sympathetic magic
A big problem must have a big cause?
3.3 Antidote SI MA 95 p45 -
3.4 does science welcome criticism? Medawar on Mass Observation, Spotted Mice p 35