Skeptify me: Skeptics and their skepticky ways

Recently I pointed you toward an interesting article at the HuffingtonPost which spoke of finding textual indicators of fear in the writing of many skeptics. Now, as many of you know, this is right down my alley. I was "trained" as a literary critic in grad school, where I focused on psychological theories of literature. Using those techniques, as the author at HuffPo did, one can often discover the author's motive and intent (or at least make a coherent argument that this is what you have done).

That got me started thinking about skeptics and skepticism again. The HuffPo piece spoke of motive: skeptics are motivated by their deep-seated fear of what they cannot control. And that is interesting and something worth thinking about. But today I mainly want to talk about technique, because skeptics have a definite toolset that they use in their debunking. By recognizing these tools, you can also learn to recognize when you are being skeptified. Here's a short list that occurs to me at this moment:

• 1. Skeptics will use terms to name and devalue the position of their adversaries, to marginalize and ridicule them. I think of this as "naming and shaming," because once the position is named, you find yourself ashamed to be in that number. In skeptical critiques of bigfoot researchers, the most obvious example is the way they like to call us "believers," implying that our acceptance of the fact that people see and experience bigfoot is an expression of faith, like religious faith. We believe in things unseen. The problem with that, of course, is that many believers have seen. It's what made them believers in the first place. Now, while it's true researchers are engaging in the same rhetoric by labeling people as skeptics when they criticize our side of the argument, there is that one difference -- we've got experiences that lead us to think a certain way. Skeptics do not.
• 2. Skeptics assume as a matter of uncontested fact that their view of the way the world works is unquestionable, although the last 100 years of modern science shows quite clearly that the view we get of reality in our every day lives is hopelessly naive. If you have been paying attention to the material I write with the label "your weird world," then you know about some of the things that imply quite strongly that our perceptions of the world are at odds with the deepest levels of reality as they are revealed to scientists. This has been true for many years, but the conventional wisdom about the world has been slow to catch up. Which prompts this question, taking us back to #1 -- isn't it a matter of faith now to insist that the world is the way we naively think it is based on our senses? When faced with the knowledge that it probably isn't, wouldn't that be the time to start speculating and looking at anomalies, knowing from past experience that this is what will cause science to progress?
• 3. Skeptics find the weakest point of an argument and use that to declare the whole thing null and void. Did someone ever hoax a bigfoot sighting? Then it's all hogwash, end of discussion.
• 4. Skeptics make a blanket denial that there is "not one shred of evidence" to support the existence of bigfoot, ignoring the evidence that there is. It may not be good evidence, or persuasive evidence, but it is evidence. It seems silly to lie about that. Why not make a statement like, "the evidence they have doesn't amount to a hill of beans." You'd still be dismissive, but you wouldn't be lying. I wonder if they think they aren't lying? I don't know what else you'd call it when you make a judgment (ie, footprints and witness stories are all bunk) and then speak as if your judgment is a fact. So I have to go with lie.

Now as it happens, I had gotten to right about here in writing this post, thinking I'd have to go find a skeptical take on bigfoot to gather examples of my non-scientific, but legitimate literary criticism of skeptical thought and writing. Coincidentally, however, a piece just came out on the OregonLive.com blog, bookmarks, which will suit us very well. The blog post introduces us to Michael McLeod and his new book Bigfoot Believers: Faith and Fakery, which is presented by the writer as a clear-headed examination of the bigfoot phenomenon.

I had previously noted that in these skeptical polemics one can often find the skeptic railing about something that he or she will be guilty of elsewhere in the body of the piece. There's a fine example of this in the article in question. This would have been the next number in our list, so let me put it out here:

• 5. The skeptic will often expose their own hypocrisy in the body of their skeptical writing, actually doing something themselves that they claim believers do.

Now in this case, here's the naughty thing that bigfoot believers do: they fail to realize the problem with Patterson finding what he set out to find. The author writes, "Skeptics point out that Patterson set out to find and film Bigfoot and did, in broad daylight." In science this is a no-no because if you set out with an end point in mind, you may, indeed almost certainly will, color your evaluation of the evidence. But this isn't what the skeptic means in this case. I am sure he only means to say that seeking and then finding would indicate fraud on Patterson's part. As you can see, the rule (which is a reasonable one in science, though it's a problem that doesn't have an easy solution, since human beings like to follow their passions), has been appropriated and generalized. In fact, there is no logical reason that one cannot achieve what one sets out to do. But let's put that aside for a moment and focus on the original scientific truism which has been generalized to a sciency-sounding canard.

Would you be surprised at this point if our skeptic had broken this very rule? Certainly not, because I wouldn't have any reason to ask if he hadn't. So let's bring it out and look at it, shall we? (The bolding is mine):

McLeod said "'UFology' is nutzoid, but I'm not entirely dismissive of the possibility of aliens out there somewhere. It's a big universe. But the idea of an 8-foot-tall, 700-pound beast walking through the forests of the Pacific Northwest is ludicrous."

Well then! Let's just start "investigating" and we'll prove what we already believe! And I think that must be what he did, because he says

"there's never been any evidence, physical or any other kind" to prove its existence, McLeod said. "It's folk art. A lot of people have been mistaken in what they've seen, and others have been faked out."

You may remember that in #4 I mentioned he would do that, say "no shred of evidence." In fact, there is evidence. He could be thought to imply that this evidence is all hoaxed by his next sentence, but don't lose sight of the fact that he has once again substituted his judgment for the facts here. The evidence exists. We may decided it isn't good enough and reject it, but we cannot thereby make it cease to exist.

This unintentional hypocrisy is called irony, and, as I say, I have always found it in the writing of skeptics. Perhaps it is simply a feature of just about anyone's writing when they are working in a polemical vein, but I think it is interesting in any case. So I'll give you another example of irony from the piece. "People want to believe in something.." the author of the post writes, but presumably following Mr. McLeod, "..and selectively use evidence to support their belief while ignoring anything that contradicts it."

Oh they do, do they? Like when Skeptics want to believe bigfoot doesn't exist and selectively use evidence to support their belief while ignoring anything that contradicts it, even?

Irony was big in the literary circuits back in the mid 20th century, and was still a staple in university English classes when I attended, so I'm well rehearsed at finding it. When you find it in an accomplished author's writing, it's often used as a marker of a problem or obsession for the character. When you find it in the work of a lesser writer, the problems and obsessions usually redound to the author himself (which is really true even with the most skilled writers). I'm not trying to denigrate either the writer of the article or Mr. McLeod by saying this -- surely neither of them thinks they are James Joyce. Great authors have a meta-awareness of their texts and so they can arrange the ironies to serve their artistic interests, but we lesser powers rarely have such insight, so when ironies are exposed, they are by and large unintentional, and quite often revealing. I believe it was Freud who said something along the lines of, "that which we hate most in others is what we despise in ourselves." He called it Projection. (Jung liked this idea so much he took it and made The Shadow out of it.) In other words, we like to beat up others for doing what we ourselves do without consciously realizing it.

Returning to the matter at hand, I'm struck by Mr. McLeod's obvious disdain for bigfoot believers. You've already seen some examples of it in what I've quoted above, but here's a striking quote:

"You're not going to shake these people," Michael McLeod said. "They don't want to admit anything. "

"Believers" are refered to as "these people," which singles them out in a way we often hear in everyday speech. There, "these people," "you people," or "those people" is used to denigrate, devalue, and separate. To McLeod, "these people" are "ludicrous" folk (even beneath the "nutzoid" who believe in UFOs), who will conceal truths for motives left unstated by McLeod (and, check, truth concealing -- that's another irony). Now I don't know Micheal McLeod personally, but from what he's written here I can see that he's not a kind fellow, at least in his approach toward people who believe in bigfoot. What causes him to take such an attitude?

What a person believes should normally not impinge upon our natural respect for that person, unless those beliefs cause harm to others. As an example, one of my favorite bands, Yes, is fronted by Jon Anderson, who believes in fairies. I know this about him, but I also know that he is a lovely person who has made some great music. I don't hold it against him that he believes in fairies. For all I know, fairies exist somehow, someway. I think I would respect Mr. Anderson even if he never sang a note in his life. He's got beliefs, and reasons for those beliefs. (And my lack of interest in fairies pretty well assures I won't learn enough to debate the topic with him.) So I just respect his right to believe that and go my way. It's not really a big deal.

That's the way it should be, especially now that we know the world is weird. But that's not the attitude of the skeptic. This sort of thing makes me think again of Philip Slater's argument at HuffingtonPost, that the skeptic's motivation is to control his or her own fear. It's my feeling that we don't normally abuse people who haven't harmed us in some way (real or imagined). I don't think that's part of human nature. But if the person in question has beliefs which frighten us, and evidence to back that up, we certainly might think of that as a harm. One can see an equation here, which gives the skeptic a motive to abuse the believer. What the believer believes threatens the skeptic. It's a theory and I think it bears looking into.

Now we've covered most of the items I enumerated above. I think #2 can only be inferred from the article in question. I may revisit that later when I sweep through here to revise and tidy things (and I'll let you know if I do) but we can illustrate #3 fairly well, with two examples from the post.

First comes this, from the introductory paragraphs of the essay:

After Ray Wallace died in 2002, his children revealed that he had a pair of carved wooden feet he used to stomp around the woods in Northern California, leaving tracks that he claimed belonged to Bigfoot.

The disclosure should have been a blow to Bigfoot hunters everywhere, because Wallace's stories about a huge, hairy humanoid are credited with starting the Bigfoot movement. If Wallace was a practical joker, shouldn't that make those who believe in Bigfoot think twice?

Yeah, because Wallace must've faked all those bigfoot encounters across the USA and also in Australia, Asia, and Europe! And the yeti! Wallace had to be in on that. I don't like to ridicule too often, but really, this is a ridiculous point. Even if "Wallace's stories.. are credited with starting the Bigfoot movement," that does not mean that in fact Wallace's stories created bigfoot. Bigfoot stories have been around for centuries. I suppose it's possible that neither the writer of the article, nor the author of the book, is aware of this fact, but it is bad scholarship on their part if they are not, and dishonest scholarship if they are. But the point for the skeptic is simply to prop up a straw man to beat. Put up Wallace and wail on him for awhile. For good measure, the writer also picks on Patterson and his cronies in Yakima:

McLeod did enough digging to confirm, to his satisfaction, that Patterson's friends in Yakima knew all about his Bigfoot schemes and more than likely one of them wore an ape suit for the movie.

Yeah, we've heard that. And if it turns out the Patterson/Gimlin film is a hoax, then that's it, it's all over. Because every bigfoot account relies upon that film being as pure as the driven snow! Even the accounts that occurred before the filming! Ahem. Where was I? These are examples of that #3 category I proposed above: take a weak spot in the case and make that stand for the whole case. Make a straw man and beat the stuffings out of him.

The kinds of rhetorical tactics I am discussing here are not what we would use if what we wanted to do was engage in a healthy and honest debate. These tactics are designed to make the opponent appear ridiculous, strange, and beneath our notice. And these tactics work. I don't go a week without hearing how bigfoot doesn't exist, because, "Didn't that guy admit he faked it?" It would be a great thing if skeptics would simply approach the topic with an intellectually honest attitude, but for some reason they don't seem to be able to do that. Maybe Phillip Slater is on the right track.

UPDATE: Over on Snarly Skepticism, Regan Lee picks up on this post and adds her perspective. Have a look.