A few thoughts on the scope of skepticism
Jim Lippard put up an entry on the scope and nature of skepticism at his blog the other day. I agree in general lines with most of the things he wrote with a couple of exceptions which I will outline below.
1-On the question of skeptics deferring to scientific consensus on a given issue, Jim says:
I think skeptical organizations and their leaders should defer to experts on topics outside of their own fields of expertise on pragmatic and ethical grounds, but individual skeptics need not necessarily do so.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t elaborate so I hope I’m not misunderstanding what he’s trying to say. I do not see how it is acceptable for a skeptic to not defer to scientific consensus, although I can see how a skeptic doesn’t have to defer to an expert (if there is a real controversy in a given field, thus lacking consensus). In that case though, I tend to agree with what Daniel Loxton said in his entry a while back, which was that if there is no consensus among the experts and they are fighting it out, a non-expert outsider should basically sit it out. I think that was the gist of Daniel’s point.
However, so far as a consensus exists among the experts, a skeptic person or skeptical organization must, in my opinion, defer to the consensus, with the only possible exception being if the person is also an expert on said field and can in effect make a valid counterargument to the consensus. Nevertheless, I would also argue that the person in that case would be acting out in his capacity as an expert in the field not as a skeptic.
2-The Atheism issue – Jim and I do not agree on this point. We’ve gone back and forth on Twitter on his blog’s comments on my blog etc. Here’s Jim’s position:
Does skepticism imply atheism? No, regardless of which definition you choose. It is reasonable to argue that proper application of philosophical skepticism should lead to atheism, and to argue that scientific skepticism should include methodological naturalism, but I prefer to identify skepticism with a commitment to a methodology rather than its outputs. That still involves a set of beliefs–which are themselves subject to reflection, criticism, and evaluation–but it is both a more minimal set than the outputs of skepticism and involves commitment to values as well as what is scientifically testable. My main opposition to defining skepticism by its outputs is that that is a set of beliefs that can change over time with access to new and better information, and shouldn’t be held dogmatically.
I fail to see the distinction between skepticism implying atheism and proper application of skepticism leading to atheism. I regard the two as saying the same thing, that skepticism, if consistently applied should lead to atheism. I am not sure what Jim means by philosophical skepticism, and maybe that’s where he draws the difference, but I refrain from using qualifiers in front of the word skepticism, be it philosophical or scientific. Skepticism is skepticism, we evaluate if a given claim is supported by the evidence.
As far as his claim that Skepticism->atheism is a no, “regardless of which definition you choose” I couldn’t disagree more. I’ve already made the case for a (in my opinion the most appropriate) definition of atheism. And since I’ve put up the entry I haven’t heard any counterarguments, or any flaws in my logic pointed out (so long as we agree on the definition of atheism I used). I agree that skepticism is best understood as a committment to a methodology, but does that imply that we can’t reach conclusions or “outputs”. If an output, such as rejection of homeopathy, is a valid output of the rigorous skeptical methodology what are we to do with such output? Are we not to say that skepticism, if properly applied to homeopathy, ought to lead one to reject the homeopathy hypothesis?
Skepticism is based on evidence, if the evidence is satisfactory, by our standards, we accept the claim; if it isn’t we don’t, we temporarily reject the claim. I dont’ think we withhold judgement on the claim, that would not be consistent nor intellectually honest in my opinion.
I only take this process one step further and argue that just like with homeopathy, the god hypothesis also fails the evidence test, if skepticism is properly applied to it and as such skeptics must reject it, at least until better evidence is provided. No special buckets needed, and definitely not a special bucket just for the god issue.
I am not saying that there are no religious skeptics; I am aware they exits. What I am saying is that these people are not applying skepticism consistently to their religious beliefs; that they are in a certain sense choosing not to scrutinize their faith as they do other topics. If they honestly did they would be forced to accept that the god hypothesis doesn’t stand up to scrutiny and they would be faced with the choice of either giving up god or giving up skepticism. It seems they’ve rationalized this contradiction away by applying the non-overlapping magisteria idea to skepticism. God is outside of the scope of skepticism they say, so there you go contradiction solved. Talk about cognitive dissonance! And I can’t let that pass unchallenged, not in the midst of skeptics at least, who are committed to evidence and the rules of logic above all.
Help bring skeptical question to the attention UK conservative party leader
I received an e-mail from Tom, a reader from England, with a request for help. The conservative party in the UK is accepting questions over the web about the future of the NHS, and Tom has put in a question about homeopathy which is of a skeptical nature. The questions will be answered by the party leader on 01/08/10. Here is the question we hope to have talked about publicly:
“Given the lack of scientific evidence for the efficacy of homeopathic products, does the Conservative Party have a view on the continued funding of such products by the NHS, or on current labeling policy regarding such products? If so, what is it?”
The way this works is that the question must be voted up high enough, via clicking the check mark, to be one of the ones picked up for answer. In order to do that you need a Google account. You login with that account and click the check mark. That’s all. Since I have two Google accounts I voted for it twice. And the good news is that someone else has posted a question along the same lines, also pointing out the lack of efficacy. I voted for both. I encourage everyone to take the 30 seconds it takes to do the same. Here are the instructions:
Go to the following website: http://www.conservatives.com/draftmanifesto/
There is a search box at the middle of the page , on top of the video. To the right of the search box you’ll see a “Sign In” link. Click that and sign in with your Google credentials. After signing in enter “homeopathic” on the search box and hit search. The two questions will come up. Click the check mark on both and you’re done. You’ve thus helped further the skeptical cause. Thank you.
PS: The even is in two days, on January 8th, so I need to ask you to vote and link to this entry on your blog, Twitter or Facebook, as much as you possibly can.
Nigerian sceptic Leo Igwe held on trumped up charges
READ THE FULL ENTRY AT DON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN
Nigerian sceptic and humanist leader Leo Igwe was detained this morning, apparently on trumped up charges, and at the behest of a man he has accused of raping a ten-year-old girl – Leo had been campaigning for justice on the girl’s behalf.
In response to this appeal I phoned the Police who were holding Leo, to ask what the basis was for his detention, and emphasise the international interest and concern around the case. If you would like to support Leo Igwe at this difficult time, this is the appeal from his family:
Leo and his father risk being tortured or murdered in police custody for his role seeking for justice for Ms Daberechi whose parents are very poor and cannot afford two meals in a day not to talk about paying legal charges.
We need to call the Police authorities in Nigeria about the risk of additional international outrage now that this fertile ground of religious bigotry and suppression of justice and human rights has already misled a citizen of ours to suicide in the name of God!
The numbers to call are : AIG Ringin: +2348033225349
PPRO Umuahia: +2347030988278
Com Aloy Okoro: +2348037217361
A doctor’s view: ‘The MMR vaccine was a godsend’
READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT THE GUARDIAN
I’m old enough to have practised medicine before we had vaccines against measles, mumps and rubella. I still remember the 13-year-old girl dying of sudden and severe measles in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham when I was a final year medical student. And the 11-year old boy with mumps encephalitis (a swelling of the brain), whom I looked after when I was a house officer in the Birmingham Children’s Hospital.
In my early years in practice I had to cope with outbreaks of measles every few years. It was a horrible disease. Children suffered greatly from painful wracking coughs for days on end, for which we could do very little. Then there were the unlucky children with hearing, sight and brain impairments because their mothers had caught rubella during their pregnancies.
The MMR vaccine was therefore a godsend; most of the doctors who have graduated in the last two decades have never had the misfortune to see measles, mumps or rubella. It is taken for granted that these illnesses won’t return and now people have forgotten how distressing they are. As time passes, there’s an impression that they were only mild diseases, and that immunisation against them is now more damaging than the illnesses themselves. It is a dangerous development.
Since we started vaccinating people against diseases in the 18th century we have always had an anti-vaccination lobby. The introduction of a compulsory vaccination against smallpox in 1853 stirred up mass action: one demonstration by antivaccinationists in Leicester in 1865 attracting 20,000 people.
In the 1970s the anti-vaccine lobby was stirred to action again with the claim that the whooping cough element in the standard series of childhood immunisations against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough was causing brain damage. The steep drop in uptake led to many cases of whooping cough, leading to long-term lung damage. It took ten years of careful studies to disprove the claim, and whooping cough immunisation rates slowly returned to their pre-scare levels.
Then came 1998. Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues proposed that MMR might cause autism.
Another Libel Suit – This Time Against Paul Offit
READ THE FULL ENTRY AT SKEPTICBLOG
We are still in the midst of the libel suit brought by the British Chiropractic Association against Simon Singh, and now another defender of science has been targeted by such a suit. Paul Offit, Amy Wallace, and Wired Magazine have been sued for libel by Barbara Loe Fisher, the head of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC).
Here is a pdf of the complaint.
The subject of the suit is the excellent article by Amy Wallace criticizing the anti-vaccine movement. Wallace was attacked for this piece by anti-vaccinationists – essentially because she got the story correct. Wallace pointed out that the science strongly favors vaccine effectiveness and safety, and that the anti-vaccine movement is dangerously wrong – hurting the public health with their misinformation. The anti-vaccinationists were apparently very upset over be called out by a mainstream journalist. They got a lot of bad press this year, the Chicago Tribune also did a series of articles detailing the dangerous pseudoscience of the anti-vaccine movement. Wallace’s article earned her a place in the infamous baby-eating photo (along side Offit and yours truly) that only served to further embarrass the anti-vaccine movement via the blog, Age of Autism.
The law suit, in this context, seems like just the next step in the campaign against Offit and Wallace.
The NVIC, despite its innocuous name, is an ideological anti-vaccination group, and they were targeted among others in the Wallace piece. Fisher found a sentence in the article that she felt she could build a libel case around.
Fisher, who has long been the media’s go-to interview for what some in the autism arena call “parents rights,” makes him particularly nuts, as in “You just want to scream.” The reason? “She lies,” he says flatly.
“She lies” will now be the subject of as much analysis as the term “bogus” was in Singh’s article about the BCA, so I might as well start. Critics often walk a fine line – we want to accurately portray the actions and claims of the targets of our criticism, without holding any punches, but we have to be clear in our terminology and careful not to inadvertently give the wrong impression. The term “lie” is problematic. It is not necessarily inaccurate, but it can carry implications not intended by the writer, because it may imply something about what another person knows or believes.
Ginkgo biloba – No Effect
READ THE FULL ENTRY AT SCIENCE BASED MEDICINE
Another one bites the dust.
The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) is generally a waste of taxpayer money, but they have sponsored several well-designed large trials of popular herbal supplements. And one by one these studies have shown these popular products, such as echinacea for the common cold, to be ineffective.
To add to the list, published in JAMA this week are the results of the largest and longest trial to date of Gingko biloba for the improvement of cognitive function and to treat, prevent, or reduce the effects of Alzheimers disease or other dementia. The results of the study are completely negative.
The study was very rigorous – a consensus trial designed to address all the criticisms of prior smaller studies. It was a direct comparison of Gingko biloba at 120mg twice a day, double blind, randomized, multi-center trial involving 3019 subjects aged 72-96 for a median of 6.1 years. Subjects were followed with standardized tests of cognitive function.
The results are easy to report – every measure showed no difference between G biloba and placebo. There was no difference in cognitive function, risk of developing dementia, rate of progression of dementia or normal cognitive decline with aging. Usually such studies involve some random noise in the results, especially when several outcomes are measured. But with such a large study, random fluctuations should average out, and that is exactly what happened.
Important Studies page update
The Important Studies page has been updated to include the latest study on Ginko Biloba, the herb that purportedly helps with cognitive decline illnesses in older adults, which came back with absolutely negative results. It appears ginko is gunko!
Oh how he squirms
Richard Saunders pummels the astrologer. You can hear it in Milton’s voice how he’s squirming under Richard’s unrelenting questioning. I love me some Australian Skeptics! They rock.
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