---

---

ReligionNewsBlog.com • Item 366 • Posted: Wednesday August 14, 2002  

---

Rarely does anyone weigh facts before deciding what to believe
Scientific American, Aug. 12, 2002
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0002F4E6-8CF7-1D49-90FB809EC5880000&c\atID=2
By Michael Shermer

In April 1999, when I was on a lecture tour for my book Why People Believe Weird Things, the psychologist Robert Sternberg attended my presentation at Yale University. His response to the lecture was both enlightening and troubling. It is certainly entertaining to hear about other people’s weird beliefs, Sternberg reflected, because we are confident that we would never be so foolish. But why do smart people fall for such things? Sternberg’s challenge led to a second edition of my book, with a new chapter expounding on my answer to his question: Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for nonsmart reasons.

Rarely do any of us sit down before a table of facts, weigh them pro and con, and choose the most logical and rational explanation, regardless of what we previously believed. Most of us, most of the time, come to our beliefs for a variety of reasons having little to do with empirical evidence and logical reasoning. Rather, such variables as genetic predisposition, parental predilection, sibling influence, peer pressure, educational experience and life impressions all shape the personality preferences that, in conjunction with numerous social and cultural influences, lead us to our beliefs. We then sort through the body of data and select those that most confirm what we already believe, and ignore or rationalize away those that do not.

This phenomenon, called the confirmation bias, helps to explain the findings published in the National Science Foundation’s biennial report (April 2002) on the state of science understanding: 30 percent of adult Americans believe that UFOs are space vehicles from other civilizations; 60 percent believe in ESP; 40 percent think that astrology is scientific; 32 percent believe in lucky numbers; 70 percent accept magnetic therapy as scientific; and 88 percent accept alternative medicine.

Education by itself is no paranormal prophylactic. Although belief in ESP decreased from 65 percent among high school graduates to 60 percent among college graduates, and belief in magnetic therapy dropped from 71 percent among high school graduates to 55 percent among college graduates, that still leaves more than half fully endorsing such claims! And for embracing alternative medicine, the percentages actually increase, from 89 percent for high school grads to 92 percent for college grads.

The siren song of pseudoscience can be too alluring to resist.

We can glean a deeper cause of this problem in another statistic: 70 percent of Americans still do not understand the scientific process, defined in the study as comprehending probability, the experimental method and hypothesis testing.
[...]

The key here is teaching how science works, not just what science has discovered.
[...]

Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com) and author of In Darwin’s Shadow and Why People Believe Weird Things, just reissued.

---

What You Can Do From Here

---

Read More Articles On These Topics Categories: Superstition Share, Blog About, Bookmark, or Email This Article Subscribe Religion News Blog RSS feed [What is this?] RSS by topic: Superstition Read Another Article Previous entry: Psychic Surgery – Magic or Science? Next entry: ‘Transformation’ in a Weekend? RNB Homepage with latest headlines Find Related Information Use our custom search engines to find additional research resources on religions and cults Find Related Books Superstition Most Popular Today ‘World’s biggest animal sacrifice’ begins Suicide soldier’s family calls for Scientology probe UK man fears cult leader release Scientology church rejects allegations in death of 14-month-old girl

---

Share This Article

---

To share this page simply copy and paste one of these URL's:

• Post a link on your blog or website:
  
• Send in an email or IM:
  
• Post on a forum:
  

Search for information about (religious) cults, cult-like organizations, -- as well as paranormal-, New Age, and pseudoscientific claims -- across 260+ websites, blogs and forums dedicated to cult research, spiritual abuse, ex-cult counseling & support.

Note: results are listed on another domain -- CounterCultSearch.com -- from which you can easily return here.

Search for apologetics articles, books, videos, and other research resources across 135 Christian apologetics websites and blogs.

Note: results are listed on another domain -- ApologeticsSearch.com -- from which you can easily return here.