…[W]hen we recognize some emotional vulnerability regarding a claim, that is exactly where we have to make the firmest efforts at skeptical scrutiny. That is where we can be had.
…[One letter I received] said that as an inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I haven’t ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and then rejected it. There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can’t be perfect of course; you may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.
…If science were explained to the average person in a way that is accessible and exciting, there would be no room for pseudoscience. But there is a kind of Gresham’s Law by which in popular culture the bad science drives out the good. And for this I think we have to blame, first, the scientific community ourselves for not doing a better job of popularizing science, and second, the media, which are in this respect almost uniformly dreadful. Every newspaper in America has a daily astrology column. How many have even a weekly astronomy column? And I believe it is also the fault of the educational system. We do not teach how to think. This is a very serious failure that may even, in a world rigged with 60,000 nuclear weapons, compromise the human future.
I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.
The argument from ignorance basically states that a specific belief is true because we don’t know that it isn’t true. Defenders of extra-sensory perception, for example, will often overemphasize how much we don’t know about the human brain. It’s possible, they argue, that the brain may be capable of transmitting signals at a distance. UFO proponents are probably the most frequent committers of this fallacy. Almost all UFO eyewitness evidence is ultimately an argument from ignorance – lights or objects sighted in the sky are unidentified and are therefore alien spacecraft.
Intelligent design is almost entirely based upon this fallacy. The core argument for intelligent design is that there are biological structures that have not been fully explained by evolution, therefore a powerful intelligent designer must have created them. In this context, arguments from ignorance are often referred to as ‘god of the gaps’ arguments, because God is offered as the explanation for any current gap in our knowledge.
Often the argument from ignorance is defended with the adage ‘Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’ While this sounds pithy, it’s not strictly true. Absence of evidence is, in fact, evidence of absence. It’s just not absolute proof of absence.
A more scientific way to look at this question is this: How predictive is the absence of evidence for the absence of the phenomenon in question? Well, that depends on how thoroughly we’ve looked and with what sensitivity. You can’t ever prove a negative, but the more you look for something without find it, the less likely it is to exist. We haven’t found alien signals yet, but it’s a big universe out there and we have only surveyed a tiny slice. On the other hand, we have scoured Loch Ness for decades without any signs of Nessie, so I am not holding my breath that a giant creature is lurking beneath the waves.
In any case, in order to make a positive claim, positive evidence for that specific claim must be presented. The absence of another explanation only means that we don’t know – it doesn’t mean that we get to make up a specific explanation.
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Closed-Minded
Perhaps the most routine ad hominem fallacy directed at skeptics is the claim that we are closed-minded (which functions exactly like accusing someone of lacking faith or lacking vision). Using the charge of closed-mindedness to dismiss valid criticism is a fallacy, but it’s also often an incorrect premise.
Skepticism isn’t closed-minded, and the opposite of skepticism is not open-mindedness (it’s gullibility). Scientists, critical thinkers, and skeptics can and should be completely open-minded, which means being open to the evidence and logic whatever it says. If the evidence supports a view, then we will accept that view in proportion to the evidence.
But being open-minded also means being open to the possibility that a claim is wrong. It doesn’t mean assuming every claim is true or refusing to ever conclude that something is simply false. If the evidence leads to the conclusion that a claim is false or a phenomenon does not exist, then a truly open-minded person accepts that conclusion in proportion to the evidence. Open-mindedness works both ways.
Ironically, it’s usually those accusing their critics of being closed-minded that tend to be the most closed. They are closed to the possibility that they are wrong.
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Tautology
A tautology is an argument that utilizes circular reasoning, which means that the conclusion is also its own premise. The structure of such arguments is A=B therefore A=B, although the premise and conclusion might be formulated differently so the tautology is not immediately apparent. For example, saying that therapeutic touch works because it manipulates the life force is a tautology because the definition of therapeutic touch is the alleged manipulation (without touching) of the life force.
This fallacy is often called ‘begging the question,’ meaning that the premise assumes the conclusion, or that an argument assumes an initial point. Perhaps the most common example is to argue that we know the Bible is the literal word of God because the Bible says so.
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The Moving Goalpost
The moving goalpost is a method of denial that involves arbitrarily moving the criteria for ‘proof’ or acceptance out of range of whatever evidence currently exists. If new evidence comes to light meeting the prior criteria, the goalpost is pushed back further – keeping it out of range of this new evidence. Sometimes, impossible criteria are set up at the start – moving the goalpost impossibly out of range for the purpose of denying an undesirable conclusion.
Anti-vaxxers claimed that the MMR vaccine caused autism. When scientific studies shot down that claim, they moved on to thimerosal (a mercury-based preservative in some vaccines, but not in the MMR). They predicted that when thimerosal was removed from standard vaccines in the US in 2002, autism rates would plummet – they didn’t. So they claimed that mercury from other sources, like coal factories, made up for the drop in mercury exposure from vaccines. When the evidence did not support that claim, they moved on to aluminum as the cause (nope). And now they just reference vague ‘toxins.’
No amount of safety data on vaccines is ever enough. They just keep moving the goalpost.”
thejqcorner 