Michael Prescott's Blog

Guest post: a capital idea

Roger Knights sent me this post. I think it's an interesting idea, though I'm not sure I'm sold on it. Here it is: 

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Almost five years ago MP said (see below) that he was going to refer to professional skeptics (or "card-carrying skeptics") as "debunkers," because that word conveys their dismissive mission, while not being insulting like "scoffer" or "cynic." But that word still conveys a lot of disdain when our side uses it. I think we should reserve it for use in our angrier moments, and select a more neutral term for cool-blooded mentions such as were made in the recent "Monsters of Florence" thread.

That word, I suggest, is "Skeptics"--i.e., "skeptics" capitalized. It is polite, but everyone will intuitively grasp its subtext: that they are capital-S skeptics. IOW, that they are overdoing it.

I suggest that MP add a guideline to a masthead above each thread recommending this spelling.

[Excerpt from this post:]

Too many of the so-called skeptics–I mean professional skeptics, not laypeople–operate like defense attorneys who are determined to muddy the waters, confuse the jury, exploit technicalities, and game the system in order to win debating points at the expense of the truth. Their approach all too often consists of tendentious hairsplitting and obvious logical fallacies, like personal attacks, question-begging, and appeals to emotion.

As many people have pointed out, the term skeptic is not really appropriate for people who operate this way. Skepticism implies neutrality, a willingness to look at the evidence without prejudice and follow it wherever it may lead. A great many of the self-styled skeptics clearly have an agenda, usually rooted in materialism and secular humanism, and have made up their minds long before they began their “investigations,” which consist mainly of cherry picking the weakest examples or focusing on a few dubious details in an otherwise impeccable case. Like the defense team in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, they subject each drop of blood to endless analysis and speculation, creating a climate of doubt and a fog of confusion, without troubling to notice that there is a trail of blood leading directly from the murder victims to the suspect's car and from the suspect's car to his house. They pick apart each leaf on the branch of a particular tree, but never acknowledge the forest.

Though I've called them skeptics in the past, I think from now on I will call them debunkers. The word debunker is neutral, not insulting like other some options (denier, scoffer, etc.). The so-called skeptics themselves often describe themselves as engaged in debunking, so they can't reasonably object to the term. But unlike the word skeptic, the word debunker suggests an agenda; it suggests that the person is actively seeking to invalidate a certain claim. And this is true of most of the so-called skeptics most of the time.

I might add that debunkers are not always wrong. Far from it. Some of the cases really are weak and deserve criticism. I've played the role of debunker myself, particularly in regard to some (though not all) claims of materialization mediumship. Debunking can be a perfectly legitimate and useful activity, but it is an activity dictated by an agenda, and the word captures this connotation in a way that the word skeptic does not.

Monsters of Florence

Yesterday I read The Monster of Florence: A True Story, by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi.  When I say I read it yesterday, I mean I consumed the entire 328 page book in one day, staying up well into the night to finish it.

It's a real page turner that recounts a series of baffling murders in Florence, Italy, and the remarkably inept police investigations that ensued. In the course of these investigations several completely innocent people ended up in prison, each accused of being the serial killer, only to be released when the real killer struck again. The book makes clear that there was little or no evidence convicting any of these people and that prosecutors simply saw the high profile case as a good way to advance their own careers. The faster they could convict somebody – anybody – of the crime, the faster they would move up the ranks. They do not appear to have been overly scrupulous about the methods used.

Besides career opportunism, there was another motive driving the prosecutors and police. Once they came up with a theory, no matter how far-fetched, they would stick to it to the bitter end. They were utterly unwilling to change their minds, and they regarded any criticism of their position as evidence that the critic himself was covering up for the murderer. In the culture of Italy, to lose face is unthinkable, and an authority figure who had to admit he was wrong would suffer a severe loss of face. Any alternative, including putting innocent people in jail for life, was preferable. And no amount of evidence could possibly persuade a person whose "face" was on the line to back down.

Preston and Spezi  provide a good example of this attitude. Authorities concocted the theory that a doctor who had drowned in a local lake was actually part of a secret society that organized the killings in order to harvest body parts for occult rituals. Needless to say, there was absolutely no evidence supporting the existence of such a society or such rituals. Of course, the absence of evidence simply meant that the society was exceptionally good at covering its tracks!

The trouble was that the official medical examination had ruled accidental drowning as the cause of death. To get around this obstacle, authorities conjectured that someone else's body had been substituted for that of the murdered man. Incredibly, they were able to get permission to exhume the corpse, at which point they discovered that it was indeed the body of the doctor and not a substitute. Did they abandon their theory? Not at all. They simply deduced that the secret society had made a second substitution – digging up the corpse and putting the doctor's remains into the coffin before the remains could be officially exhumed.

In other words, the discovery of the doctor's body in the coffin was taken as evidence that the secret society was even more powerful and wily than originally believed. And this pattern was repeated throughout the investigations. Evidence contrary to the official line of reasoning was either ignored or explained away as having been manufactured by the conspirators to throw the investigators off track. The more exonerating evidence was uncovered, the larger and more nefarious the conspiracy was proven to be! And anyone who questioned these methods was immediately suspected of being part of the conspiracy himself.

Incidentally, the same judge who ordered the exhumation of the drowned man's body also directed the investigation into the murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia, which resulted in the imprisonment of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito without a scintilla of evidence against either of them. As before, the judge had come up with an elaborate and totally unsupported theory involving a Satanic ritual to explain the murder, even though the facts of the case pointed to a much simpler story – a break-in gone wrong.

Corruption and fear of losing face are two of the big issues here, but why do the Italian people stand for it and even cheer on the prosecutors who make such transparently ridiculous allegations? Douglas Preston got an answer to this question from an Italian friend after his co-author, Mario Spezi, was himself arrested and jailed on charges of being the Monster (or perhaps aiding and abetting the Monster – the actual charges were never quite clear). Spezi had irritated the authorities by writing articles and participating in TV programs that debunked their cherished theory of the case. The authorities struck back by cobbling together the preposterous story that the veteran journalist must be in on it and intentionally covering for the real killer, and that he may have committed the crimes himself. Worldwide condemnation resulted in Spezi's eventual release, but only after months of incarceration, including one five-day period when he was not even permitted to talk to a lawyer.

Preston fought vigorously for his friend's release, but in the process learned something important about the Italian mindset:

[The Italians] viewed my outrage as naïve and a bit gauche. To be outraged is to be earnest, to be sincere – and to be a dupe. Some Italians were quick to strike the pose of the world-weary cynic who takes nothing at face value and who is far too clever to be taken in by Spezi's and my protestations of innocence.

"Ah!" said Count Niccolo in one of our frequent conversations. "Of course Spezi and you were up to no good at that villa! Dietrologia insisted it be so. Only a naïf would believe that you two journalists went to the villa 'just to have a look.' The police wouldn't have arrested Spezi for no reason! You see, Douglas, an Italian must always appear to be furbo. You don't have an English equivalent for that marvelous word. It means a person who is wily and cunning, who knows which way the wind is blowing, who can fool you but never be fooled himself. Everyone in Italy wants to believe the worst of others so they don't end up looking gullible. Above all, they want to be seen as furbo."

Elsewhere, the count explained the term dietrologia as 

"the idea that the obvious thing cannot be the truth. There is always something hidden behind, dietro. It isn't quite what you Americans call conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theory implies theory, something uncertain, a possibility. The dietrologist  deals only in fact. This is how it really is. Aside from football, dietrologia  is the national sport in Italy. Everyone is an expert at what's really going on, even … how do you Americans say it? … even if they don't know jack shit."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it gives them a feeling of importance! This importance may only be confined to a small circle of idiotic friends, but at least they are in the know. Potere, power, is that I know what you do not know. Dietrologia is tied to the Italian mentality of power. You must appear to be in the know about all things."

"How does this apply to the Monster investigation?"

"My dear Douglas, it is the very heart of the matter! At all costs, they have to find something behind the apparent reality. There cannot not be something. Why? Because it is not possible that the thing you see is the truth. Nothing is simple, nothing is as it seems. Does it look like a suicide? Yes? Well then it must be murder. Somebody went out for coffee? Aha! He went out for coffee … But what was he really doing?"

Although the count contrasted dietrologia with conspiracy theories, I don't think there is really much difference between them. Most proponents of conspiracy theories do not treat their speculations as "mere theory," but as self-evident fact. Their motivation seems to be just the same as that ascribed to the dietrologists -  a desire to be in the know, to feel smarter than everybody else, and above all, not to be a dupe.

This potent cocktail of furbo, face-saving, and opportunism explains a lot about the Italian justice system. But I think it also provides an explanation for the behavior of at least some militant debunkers of the paranormal. Many of them give the unmistakable impression that their greatest fear is to be fooled, and their greatest pride is that they can see through any deception. They are not taken in by surface appearances; they always dig up the real story, no matter how convoluted and far-fetched. And they cannot be persuaded to change their minds; if evidence is produced that casts doubt on their position, they either ignore it or explain it away. Finally, like the dietrologists, they are deeply cynical about human nature and seem to regard earnestness as a sign of naïveté, an indication that one has been duped. Smart people, they appear to feel, are always in on the con, and are never more than wryly amused by it. 

To be clear, I'm not talking about all skeptics, or even all of the militant ones. But I do think this kind of attitude is pretty widespread in the skeptical community and would be on open display at any skeptical gathering. The methods used by many professional skeptics - sarcasm, ridicule, authoritative-sounding pronouncements unanchored to any facts - are in line with these skeptics' self-image as more clever, more worldly, and more knowledgeable than the rubes and yokels who are readily taken in by sleight of hand, slippery language, and assorted con games. 

It's hard to overestimate the amount of damage this mentality can cause. The damage is obvious in miscarriages of justice (as in the Florence and Perugia cases), and less obvious in other areas, such as controversies over the paranormal and other out-of-the-mainstream subjects. I suppose it all boils down to insecurity, which would explain the desperate desire to save face, the need to appear more knowledgeable than other people, and the thirst for power, which is often sought as a way to compensate for personal inadequacies. 

Overall, it's a sorry picture of the human race - and by no means limited to Italy. Furbo is everywhere ... and it is not our friend.

Options, live and dead

Somewhere in his lectures, William James discourses on the topic of live options. As I recall, he told his classroom of British university students that for many of them, whether or not they were religious, the resurrection of Jesus was a live option - meaning that they would at least take the idea seriously and not dismiss it out of hand. On the other hand, the idea that the prophet Mohammed rode a flying horse (a story recounted in the Koran) would not even be considered. This was because the students, raised in a Judeo-Christian environment, were inclined to treat articles of the Christian faith with at least a modicum of respect, while they were not inclined to treat other religions the same way. James went on to say that for all of us, there are live options and others that are not live - things we are willing to think about in a serious way, and things we reflexively reject.

Times change, and if James were speaking today he would use different examples. But his basic point is still valid. All our opinions are filtered through a screen of preconceived assumptions about what is or is not worth considering. If a given subject can't get through the screen, we won't accept it on even the most provisional basis. It's not that we necessarily have taken the time to examine the claim in detail and refute it. Sometimes we do that, but more often we just brush it off as nonsense. 

People may refer to their particular screening process as common sense, the way things are, the way the world works, or their BS detector. Or they may call it the laws of physics or simply science. ("Science says ____ is impossible.") Or they may call it the word of God. ("Scripture tells us ____ is impossible.") 

It's easy to see the screening process at work in other people, but much harder to see it in ourselves. Subjectively, our personal filter appears to be absolutely identical to reality or logic or revelation - whatever our standard of judgment is. Objectively, the filter differs from one person to the next; probably no two people have exactly the same filter. 

In describing things this way, I don't mean to suggest that the filtering process is bad. On the contrary, I think it's essential. We're bombarded with ideas and claims and opinions. We need some way to cut down the clutter. Just as an email program would be overrun with junk without a spam filter, our minds would be overwhelmed by distracting irrelevancies and intellectual dead ends without a screening system. 

I feel this way even in cases where I disagree with the standards imposed by the particular filter. For instance, the great physicist Helmholtz famously said that he would not believe in telepathy no matter what the evidence, even if he witnessed it firsthand. For him, telepathy was not a live option. Though I think he was quite mistaken, I can understand how someone who had organized his worldview around the principles of classical physics would reach such a conclusion. For him, the implications of telepathy were too shattering to bear thinking about. Proof of telepathy would upend his entire belief system and throw his thoughts into chaos. As a matter of psychological self-defense, he had to repudiate the very possibility. And why not? Nobody is obligated to embrace an idea that will destroy the entire intellectual structure of his life. 

I have my own filter, of course. There are ideas that I reject out of hand, seldom troubling to investigate them. Examples include: 

• conspiracy theories claiming that the moon landings were faked
• conspiracy theories claiming that 9/11 was an "inside job," and the Twin Towers fell because of "controlled demolition" 
• assertions that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, has a fake Social Security number, or was fathered by someone other than Obama Sr. 
• any form of young-Earth creationism or special creation of all species at once (I'm open to more sophisticated intelligent design arguments) 
• claims of "ancient astronauts" who built the pyramids 
• claims of shape-shifting aliens who live among us
• claims regarding the Illuminati or other mystical cabals that secretly rule us

Then there are ideas that strike me as so implausible I'm just not interested in pursuing them. I don't necessarily rule them out altogether, but I don't take them seriously. Examples include:

• homeopathy
• pyramid power
• stories about Atlantis, Lemuria, and other lost civilizations (unless presented as legendary treatments of known civilizations like Crete)
• the Loch Ness Monster, the yeti, Bigfoot, and other creatures of cryptozoology

These lists are far from exhaustive. They are only meant to show that I have my own filter, just like anyone else.  

When we see skeptics bending over backward to contrive a non-paranormal explanation for some well-documented anomalous phenomenon, it would be a mistake to assume that they're being churlish or deliberately obtuse. Even if there are obvious holes in their logic or clear misrepresentations of the reported facts, we should not necessarily assume dishonesty (unless a particular skeptic has a track record of intentional deception). In most cases, these errors are the result of dismissing the claim too quickly, without really studying it or even thinking about it - i.e., without taking it seriously. And the inability to take it seriously is a function of the skeptic's own individual mental filter. For him or her, this kind of claim is not a live option. 

Proponents of the paranormal sometimes complain that skeptics are willing to latch on to any explanation, no matter how far-fetched or absurd, as long as it obviates psi or life after death. But in a certain sense, this kind of thinking is quite logical. If psi and an afterlife are ruled out of bounds - if they are not live options, are inconceivable, are something that cannot possibly be considered, ever - then any alternative explanation must be preferable. It may seem unlikely that NDEs can be explained by brain chemistry given that the brain is minimally active during a cardiac arrest, but if any non-materialist explanation is impossible, then brain chemistry simply must be at work somehow. It may seem unlikely that all of the thousands of children who spontaneously report past lives are lying or being manipulated by unscrupulous parents, but if past lives are out of the question, then deceit must be involved somehow. And so on. 

The old saw is that we should have "an open mind, but not wide open." In truth, nobody's mind is wide open. We all have mental gatekeepers - bouncers on autopilot, whose job is to keep out the riffraff. We simply differ on which ideas should be bounced.

Water baby

Here's an interesting news story about four Utah police officers who say they heard an adult female voice calling for help from an upended and partially submerged car. When they turned over the car, they found the driver, who had apparently been dead for hours, and in the backseat, an eighteen-month-old baby. No one else. 

The baby survived and is reportedly in good condition. 

Naturally, if you read the comments appended to this article, you'll find various skeptics rushing to the conclusion that the driver - the baby's mother - must have actually been alive right up to the last minute (despite the fact that the front part of the car was deeply submerged, meaning she was upside-down in freezing water for 14 hours), or that the cops misheard the babbling river as a voice, or that they are all "lying for Jesus." This stuff is mixed in with bigoted remarks about Utah and Mormons, and the usual snarky asides about the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Sky Daddy.

It's kind of interesting how the Internet lets you see the best and worst of human nature in the very same place. The cops and other rescue workers who braved hypothermia-inducing waters to save the child are obviously good people. The folks who post dumb and gratuitous insults aimed at those same cops (or at those who believe them) are obviously ... well, you know. 

As for what actually happened, my guess is that either the mother's spirit lingered at the scene long enough to impress a telepathic impression on the cops, or the baby's spirit guardian intervened. 

Bewitched

Roger Knights recommends this fictionalized account of Eusapia Palladino's mediumship. The book got a very positive review from Kirkus ("an enchanting, graceful narrative that will absorb readers from the first page") and many favorable reviews from Amazon customers, as well - including a five-star review from Michael Tymn, the well-known writer on mediumship, who also runs a blog. 

The Kindle edition is bargain-priced at 99 cents. 

Michael Schmicker is the author of Best Evidence, a good nonfiction introduction to some of the strongest evidence for ESP and an afterlife.

Light reading

I don't completely grok this, but it's way cool. Scientists say they have taken the first photo that shows light as both a particle and a wave. 

Here's the photo:

The particles are at the bottom of the image, and the wave is at the top. 

And here's the article, which includes a cute little animated video to help explain things.