Just a few final thoughts on TAM and the lessons we learned therefrom. This will be somewhat of a top level summary post.
Today, I’d like to quickly review some of disparate aspects of skepticism and why each of them matter, using TAM2013 as a touchstone. Here are six things against which we must continue to vigourously struggle as a movement:
- Medical quacks – I’m not about to tell people what their priorities should be, but this one is near the top for me because our lives are literally on the line here. There is a woeful lack of awareness on these issues, from vaccine denialism to the water-is-magic contingent churning out inactive ingredients as cures. I’ve had to explain homeopathy to practicing clinicians, very smart people who were never at any point warned that the purveyors of modern-day snake oil are allowed to sell dilutions which contain little to none of the active ingredient. The relevant talks here came from David Gorski, Bob Blaskiewicz, the Science Based Medicine panel, and Harriet Hall’s talk on the efficacy of screening tests, especially when it comes to relatively low-risk patient populations. This last talk inevitably touches upon the utility of Bayesian thinking in medical screening, particularly tests of binary classification. If you ever wondered whether theorectical advances in the fields of probability and statistics can help save lives, wonder no more.
- Dishonest liars – I’ve got no beef with people who pretend to have magical or psychic powers, who let you know they are pretending, and who refuse to divulge their methods. Nothing wrong with a little flair and stagecraft and entertainment. There are others, though, people like like John Edward, Sylvia Browne, and James Van Praagh who are actively feeding people false hope and false information in order to turn a buck, and they must be exposed as frauds. The relevant talks on this area of concern were An Honest Liar (here is the trailer for the film which looks truly amazing), Indian Gurus, Credit the Con Man, and Magicians vs. Psychics.
- Polical denialists – Whenever you hear a politician saying that abstinence-only education has demonstrable results, that anthropogenic climate change is a liberal myth, the evolution is a lie from the pit of hell and shouldn’t be taught in public schools, you are hearing science denialism in the service of (terrible) public policy. Whereas the abovementioned quack doctors and the dishonest liars take away people’s health and money, denialist political opportunists work to undermine the very essence of democracy, a well-informed citizenry. Examples discussed at TAM include this paper on creationism and this session on climate science. TAM could have used a bit more in this category, in my view.
- Faith-based moralists – Morality should be a deliberative process, rather than a collection of authoritative decrees. Religious faith generally favors the latter over the former. Jerry Coyne and Marty Klein both spoke out against this, but we could use more.
- Blurrers of the lines – Demarcation problems abound, and we must treat them as both problematic and fascinating. Where do we draw the lines? Here are a couple attempts at addressing this important issue: Skepticism and Philosophy, What exactly is the difference between science and pseudoscience? It might not be obvious to everyone why demarcation matters, but as Susan Jacoby mentioned in her Friday keynote, there has been more than a little hostility between those doing skepticism, humanism, and gnu atheism. Good fences, good neighbors, and all that.
- Humorless killjoys – You know who I’m talking about, people who substitute moral outrage for moral reasoning, those who elevate high dudgeon to high art. There were no TAM sessions on this topic, of course, unless you include the abundant transgressive humor at the after-hours sessions. Still, I think they are a huge problem, and I’m not about to give them a pass here.
There are many more areas that I didn’t even touch upon here. Feel free to add your own in the comments!
INDEX: This is the last post in a series of three:
These things always come in threes, or so I’ve been told. Share and enjoy!
