I’ve always been a lover of science and I’ve had my early bouts with pseudoscience. I think if you talk to most science lovers, we all investigated several topics in pseudoscience. Let’s face it, I would love for UFO’s to be space aliens. And who wouldn’t want to have a superpower? But they aren’t and we don’t.
As a teacher, I was originally amused by it. Now I battle it head on. Many people take a “what’s the harm” view of these topics. I think that is dangerous. We need to teach our students to use critical thinking skills. My wife doesn’t get this. She thinks the Eagles will lose if she is in the room where the TV has the game on. I usually respond by telling her that the Eagles management called before the game started and they asked her to please not watch. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? If we believe in one form of hocus-pocus, we fall prey to the next one.
Check out the website whatstheharm.net. You will get a sense of what happens when we sit by and allow mysticism to rule instead of science. The page comes off a bit militant, but the underlying facts should at least make you think. Perhaps one of the more dangerous trends are the anti-vaccination groups. They want us to think there is a mass conspiracy and vaccines are bad. What they are doing is actually causing outbreaks of diseases by reducing the “herd immunity.” The herd immunity, if I understand it correctly, essentially doesn’t give a disease enough places to gestate and grow. When the population reaches a certain vaccination level, say 95%, then the entire population is basically protected from epidemics. If the population gets under that threshold, we are opening ourselves up to serious problems. Don’t trust me, do your own research. In other words …
Be a skeptic. I don’t like the word because most people don’t understand what it means. They think a skeptic is a nay-sayer. A skeptic simply insists on proof. The more outrageous the claim, the more proof is required. A skeptic changes their position if the facts lead them down a different path. My skeptical radar goes off any time someone says, “they say….” It’s as simple as someone telling me, “they say it’s going to snow 12 inches tonight.” Rather than take the store clerk’s weather knowledge on faith, my response is to check the weather forecast when I got home. Not an outrageous claim for January, so it doesn’t require much proof. I just want the facts directly from the experts, not second, third, or fourth hand.
There are a number of outstanding skeptical podcasts that are highly entertaining, educational, and just plain fun to listen to. You can find them on iTunes for free. If you aren’t listening to podcasts, you are missing a world of excellent quality entertainment.
I highly recommend:
- Skepticality
- A Skeptics Guide to the Universe
- Are We Alone? SETI Science and Skepticism
- Science Talk: The Podcast of Scientific American
These are a few of my favorites. There are more, but these will get you started. After listening to a few of these shows I realized I’ve been a skeptic my entire life. I didn’t know there was a name for it, and more importantly, I didn’t know there was a whole community of people out there just like me.
You are not alone.
I love magic. Being a scientist doesn’t take away from the amazement created by a well executed trick. My father sent me a clip of Chris Angel doing a trick where he not cuts, but pulls a woman in half right on a park bench. The trick is incredibly shocking, the people on the set are screaming in fear and surprise. You can see they are visibly shaken.
