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Marcello Truzzi founded the Zetetic Scholar journal, in which he analyzes the term pseudoskepticism in the mid 1980s

The terms pseudoskepticism (sometimes pseudo-skepticism) and pathological skepticism are used to denote the phenomena when certain forms of skepticism deviate from objectivity. The term has been in limited use in philosophy for more than a century, but has only recently been the object of more systematic attempts at defining the concept. The most well known analysis of the term has been conducted by Marcello Truzzi, who in 1987 stated that:

Since "skepticism" properly refers to doubt rather than denial — nonbelief rather than belief — critics who take the negative rather than an agnostic position but still call themselves "skeptics" are actually pseudo-skeptics.

Characteristics of pseudoskeptics

The first extensive analysis of the term pseudoskepticism was conducted by Marcello Truzzi, Professor of Sociology at Eastern Michigan University, who in 1987 made the following description of pseudoskeptics:

In science, the burden of proof falls upon the claimant; and the more extraordinary a claim, the heavier is the burden of proof demanded. The true skeptic takes an agnostic position, one that says the claim is not proved rather than disproved. He asserts that the claimant has not borne the burden of proof and that science must continue to build its cognitive map of reality without incorporating the extraordinary claim as a new "fact." Since the true skeptic does not assert a claim, he has no burden to prove anything. He just goes on using the established theories of "conventional science" as usual. But if a critic asserts that there is evidence for disproof, that he has a negative hypothesis --saying, for instance, that a seeming psi result was actually due to an artifact--he is making a claim and therefore also has to bear a burden of proof.

Truzzi further identified the following specifically characteristics of pseudoskeptics:

  • The tendency to deny, rather than doubt
  • Double standards in the application of criticism
  • The making of judgments without full inquiry
  • Tendency to discredit, rather than investigate
  • Use of ridicule or ad hominem attacks
  • Pejorative labeling of proponents as 'promoters', 'pseudoscientists' or practitioners of 'pathological science.'
  • Presenting insufficient evidence or proof
  • Assuming criticism requires no burden of proof
  • Making unsubstantiated counter-claims
  • Counter-claims based on plausibility rather than empirical evidence
  • Suggesting that unconvincing evidence is grounds for dismissing it

It is thus acceptable scientific and skeptical practice to continue to assume the null hypothesis relative to some novel claim before the claim has convincing evidence showing that it might be true. This concept is born out in the following quotes:

  • "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." - Marcello Truzzi
  • "The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they have been proven to have their counterparts in the world of fact." - John Tyndall (1820-1893), physicist
  • "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." - William Kingdon Clifford
  • "A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree of certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which this world is suffering." - Bertrand Russell
  • "It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." - Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) in "A Scandal In Bohemia"

For instance, when extra-sensory perception (ESP) is proposed but no evidence is presented (or tests are done that show no statistically significant effect), it is reasonable to continue with scientific inquiry as if ESP did not exist. However, if a test is performed that shows apparent evidence for ESP, it no longer remains reasonable to do so.

If a skeptic believes that there was some flaw in the test which might invalidate the results, the burden of proof then shifts to them to show that the possibility of such a flaw was more likely than that ESP exists and showed results in the test. If the skeptic does not do so, or believes they have no burden of proof in providing evidence of the flaw, then they fit Truzzi's definition of a "pseudoskeptic."

Since a large part of science is replicability, the results of a single test in favor of some theory are almost never enough to sway mainstream beliefs, so it is rarely proper to label someone a pseudoskeptic because a single experiment doesn't convince them. Tests normally must be replicated by other independant groups to show that the result wasn't simply an experimental flaw or a statistical fluke. A skeptic is expected to generally remain skeptical about the result of any experimental result until it has been independantly replicated. It is when a result has been replicated in such a way and when the skeptic still maintains an alternative explanation without offering evidence that it's more plausible that they qualify as a pseudoskeptic.

Academic studies

A Spring 2006 course at the University of Colorado, "Edges of Science" which "Examines the evidence for paranormal phenomena, reasons for skepticism", includes a section which shows "how a healthy skepticism can see through unsupported assertions, and how pathological skepticism can work against honest scientific inquiry."

The Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health at the University of Arizona, run by Professor Gary Schwartz, claims to provide "a responsible forum in which to conduct systematic research on pathological skepticism, illusory correlates, and self-deception in science, society, and human relationships." The lab's research into "the role of conscious intention in energy medicine and healing, and the possibility of survival of consciousness after physical death" has been criticized in The Skeptical Inquirer because it did not consider non-paranormal explanations for the observations recorded..

Pennsylvania State University Folklorist David J. Hufford uses the term "radical skepticism" to describe the unexamined prejudices and preconceptions which he argues are embraced by many — perhaps most — academic scientists. After reading and analysing the works of many skeptics and debunkers, Hufford argues that one can readily find

appeals to authority, post hoc fallacies, ad hominem arguments and a whole host of other informal errors. Nonetheless, because this inductive dimension of scholarship is often less implicitly presented for scrutiny, and because so much of the work of framing questions and establishing boundaries of scholarly discourse about 'the supernatural' were largely set anywhere from several generations ago … to a number of centuries ago ... the systematic bias of this tradition operates almost invisibly today.

History

The term "pseudo-skepticism" appears to have its origins with 19th and early 20th century philosophy.

On 31 Aug 1869, Swiss philosopher Henri-Frédéric Amiel wrote in his diary:

My instinct is in harmony with the pessimism of Buddha and of Schopenhauer. It is a doubt which never leaves me, even in my moments of religious fervor. Nature is indeed for me a Maïa; and I look at her, as it were, with the eyes of an artist. My intelligence remains skeptical. What, then, do I believe in? I do not know. And what is it I hope for? It would be difficult to say. Folly! I believe in goodness, and I hope that good will prevail. Deep within this ironical and disappointed being of mine there is a child hidden — a frank, sad, simple creature, who believes in the ideal, in love, in holiness, and all heavenly superstitions. A whole millennium of idyls sleeps in my heart; I am a pseudo-skeptic, a pseudo-scoffer.

In 1908 Henry Louis Mencken wrote on Friedrich Nietzsche's criticism of philosopher David Strauss that:

Strauss had been a preacher but had renounced the cloth and set up shop as a critic of Christianity. He had labored with good intentions, no doubt, but the net result of all his smug agnosticism was that his disciplines were as self-satisfied, bigoted, and prejudiced in the garb of agnostics as they had been before Christians. Nietzsche's eye saw this and in the first of his little pamphlets "David Strauss, der Bekenner und der Schriftsteller" ("David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer"), he bore down on Strauss's bourgeoise pseudo-skepticism most savagely. This was 1873.

Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois, Frederick L. Will used the term "pseudo-skepticism" in 1942. Alasdair MacIntyre writes:

Will was no exception. He began as an analytical philosopher, distinguishing different uses of language with the aim of showing that certain traditional philosophical problems need no longer trouble us, once we have understood how to make the relevant linguistic distinctions. The enemies were two: the philosophical skeptic who poses these false problems and the philosopher who thinks that the skeptic needs to be answered. So in "Is there a Problem of Induction?" (Journal of Philosophy, 1942) it is two senses of "know" that are to be distinguished: "All the uneasiness, the pseudo-skepticism and the pseudo-problem of induction, would never appear if it were possible to keep clear that 'know' in the statement that we do not know statements about the future is employed in a very special sense, not at all its ordinary one.

Notre Dame Professor of English, John E. Sitter used the term in 1977 in a discussion of Alexander Pope: "Pope's intent, I believe, is to chasten the reader's skepticism — the pseudo-skepticism of the overly confident 'you' ... "

The term pseudoskepticism was popularised and characterised by Truzzi in 1987, in response to the skeptic groups who applied the label of "pseudoscientists" to fields which Truzzi thought might be better described as protoscience.

Science writer C. Eugene Emery, Jr. compared the degrees of skepticism of CD-ROM-based encyclopedias of articles on pseudoscientific subjects. He called such articles "pseudoskeptical" if only suggested or stated that the subject was "controversial, but the author may not have a clue as to why".

Abuses of skepticism

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 "Abuses of skepticism" is a term describing when skepticism either has ulterior motives or is taken to a counterproductive extreme. The term is a criticism of an individual's motivation and, at times, their psychology. The term is sometimes used by skeptics themselves, whereas pseudoskepticism usually is not.

Financially motivated skepticism

A common example is the tobacco industry, which at times in history promoted skepticism in smokers regarding the addictiveness or harmfulness of its product. Tobacco companies managed through various efforts to throw doubts on criticism of tobacco.

Religiously motivated skepticism

Religions have at times been accused of promoting skepticism of things that go against their faith. The Catholic Church has been accused of encouraging skepticism regarding the effectiveness of condoms for religious reasons. Scientology has been fairly open in encouraging skepticism of the idea ADHD even exists or that Prozac is ever necessary. In the past members of the Christian Scientists encouraged even non-members to doubt the necessity of vaccinations, but this seems to have ebbed somewhat.

Politically motivated skepticism

It could be said to be normal for one political party to encourage skepticism of the others' claims, even when they know those claims to be accurate. There are cases that go beyond that to encouraging skepticism of ideas generally accepted. There are forms of negationism that involve skepticism. They may feel that their political ideology would not have committed great crimes so need extraordinary proof to believe otherwise. The proof could at times never be extraordinary enough so they never believe it. For some AIDS reappraisal could be a skepticism based on or used for political motivations. When Thabo Mbeki supported the idea some deemed it to have a political motivation. If this were so it did not work as it cost him more support than it gained for him.

Controversy surrounding the concept

The Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE) has been criticized by science journalist Michael Lemonick as "fringe" but also as showing a "surprising attitude of skepticism".

One SSE member, L. David Leiter, thinks that organized skepticism might be called pathological or pseudoskepticism. According to Leiter, the label "Skeptic" "labels someone whose mental processes are continually and rigidly out of balance, in the direction of disbelief." He argues that the members of PhACT, "nstead of becoming scientifically minded, they become adherents of scientism, the belief system in which science and only science has all the answers to everything" and that even many pseudoskeptics are unwilling to spend the time to "read significantly into the literature on the subjects about which they are most skeptical"

Groups sometimes accuse each other of pseudoskepticism. Commenting on the labels "dogmatic" and "pathological" that the "Association for Skeptical Investigation" puts on critics of paranormal investigations, Robert Todd Carroll of the Skeptic's Dictionary argues that that association "is a group of pseudo-skeptical paranormal investigators and supporters who do not appreciate criticism of paranormal studies by truly genuine skeptics and critical thinkers."

See also

Notes

  1. "Marcello Truzzi, On Pseudo-Skepticism" Zetetic Scholar (1987) No. 12/13, 3-4.
  2. "Marcello Truzzi, On Pseudo-Skepticism" Zetetic Scholar (1987) No. 12/13, 3-4.
  3. "Marcello Truzzi, On Pseudo-Skepticism" Zetetic Scholar (1987) No. 12/13, 3-4. "Though many in this category who dismiss and ridicule anomaly claims call themselves 'skeptics,' they often are really 'pseudo-skeptics' because they deny rather than doubt anomaly claims"
  4. Truzzi, ibid, ".. they seem less inclined to take the same critical stance towards orthodox theories. For example, they may attack alternative methods in medicine (e.g., for a lack of double-blind studies) while ignoring that similar criticisms can be levelled against much conventional medicine"
  5. Truzzi, ibid, "those I term scoffers often make judgments without full inquiry"
  6. Hyman, Ray, 1980. "Pathological Science: Towards a Proper Diagnosis and Remedy," Zetetic Scholar, No. 6, 31-43. Truzzi wrote: ".. they may be more interested in discrediting an anomaly claim than in dispassionately investigating it"
  7. Truzzi, ibid, "scoffers sometimes manage to discredit anomaly claims (e.g., through ridicule or ad hominem attacks) "
  8. Truzzi, ibid, "A characteristic of many scoffers is their pejorative characterization of proponents as "promoters" and sometimes even the most protoscientific anomaly claimants are labeled as 'pseudoscientists' or practitioners of 'pathological science.' "
  9. Truzzi, ibid, "scoffers sometimes manage to discredit anomaly claims .. without presenting any solid disproof
  10. Marcello Truzzi, "On Pseudo-Skepticism", Zetetic Scholar, #12-13, 1987. "Critics who assert negative claims, but who mistakenly call themselves 'skeptics,' often act as though they have no burden of proof placed on them at all, though such a stance would be appropriate only for the agnostic or true skeptic"
  11. Truzzi, ibid, ".. the true skeptic does not assert a claim, he has no burden to prove anything. He just goes on using the established theories of 'conventional science' as usual. But if a critic asserts that there is evidence for disproof, that he has a negative hypothesis — saying, for instance, that a seeming psi result was actually due to an artifact — he is making a claim and therefore also has to bear a burden of proof."
  12. Truzzi, ibid, ".. many critics seem to feel it is only necessary to present a case for their counter-claims based upon plausibility rather than empirical evidence"
  13. Truzzi, ibid, "Showing evidence is unconvincing is not grounds for completely dismissing it."
  14. ECEN 3070 - "Edges of Science", Spring Semester Spring 2006
  15. Human Energy Systems Laboratory, University of Arizona
  16. http://www.csicop.org/si/2003-01/medium.html "How Not to Test Mediums: Critiquing the Afterlife Experiments"
  17. "Reason, Rhetoric, and Religion: Academic Ideology versus Folk Belief", from New York Folklore, Vol. 11, Nos. 1-4, 1985 40th Anniversary Issue" quoted in part in Clark, Jerome, Unexplained! 347 Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena; Detroit, Visible Ink Press; 1993, ISBN 0810394367; page 117
  18. Charles Dudley Warner, Editor, Library Of The World's Best Literature Ancient And Modern, Vol. II, 1896. Online at Project Gutenberg (eg. here)
  19. H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken, The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1908) publ. T.F. Unwin. Reprinted in Friedrich Nietzsche, Originally published: Boston : Luce and Co., 1913. p.30.
  20. Alasdair MacIntyre "Foreword" to the book Pragmatism and Realism by Frederick L. Will (1997) quoting his earlier paper "Is There a Problem of Induction?" Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 39, No. 19 (Sep. 10, 1942), pp. 505-513
  21. John E. Sitter, "The Argument of Pope's Epistle to Cobham" Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 17, No. 3, Restoration and Eighteenth Century (Summer, 1977), pp. 435-449
  22. Truzzi, ibid, "A characteristic of many scoffers is their pejorative characterization of proponents as 'promoters' and sometimes even the most protoscientific anomaly claimants are labelled as "pseudoscientists" or practitioners of 'pathological science.' "
  23. C. Eugene Emery, Jr., "CD-ROM encyclopedias: how does their coverage of pseudoscience topics rate?", Skeptical Inquirer, Nov-Dec, 1996
  24. scientificexploration.org
  25. Science on the Fringe. Time
  26. L. David Leiter, "The Pathology of Organized Skepticism" (PDF), in Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 125–128, 2002.
  27. Skepdic article on positive pseudo-skeptics

References

External links

  • Skeptic's pages - Quotes and links to articles about skepticism and pseudoskepticism.
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