Why People Believe Weird Things

By Michael Shermer

W.H. Freeman and Co.

Intro: This is an excellent book. It’s written by the publisher of Skeptic magazine, and it’s obviously got a skeptical point of view. The book is written at a basic enough level that just about anyone should be able to pick it up and read it without too much prior knowledge. It presents a good overview of several different topics, but not so many that it doesn’t cover them well. The book is divided into five parts, each covering a different sort of topic. I’ll mention each of them below:

Part 1: Science and Skepticism

In this section, Shermer gives some history of his own skepticism, including his own experiments with the different types of pseudoscience he had encountered during his period of credulousness. He talks about the nature of science vs. pseudoscience and what distinguishes them. He talks about the different ways of thinking that lead people to believe in pseudoscience instead of science. His section on the logical fallacies that lead people to believe weird things is especially good.

Part 2: Pseudoscience and Superstition

This section starts with a discussion of some of the common forms of parapsychology tests. He has a short section, where he discusses some basic statistics and probability. Since statistics are not well-understood by most people, this section is a good one. A basic understanding of statistics is important to evaluating almost any scientific claim, and it’s an area where many experiments to study the paranormal are flawed. Without knowledge of the correct methodology, there is no easy way to spot those flaws.

Chapter 5 deals with near-death experiences, and their similarity to the effects of altered states of consciousness, which can also be mimicked by hallucinogenic drugs or anything that decreases oxygen flow to the brain. He talks about the search and desire for immortality, including scientific attempts to prolong life.

Chapter 6 talks about alien abductions. He recounts his own abduction experience, caused by exhaustion while riding in a bike race. He debunks the "alien autopsy" film that has been shown so many times on television, even after it had been shown to be a fake. This section is excellent, as he presents a variety of evidence to show that the film was faked, including evidence that shows it was faked by people who didn’t understand how a real autopsy is done. He also cites the stories of some "abductees", while questioning the veracity of their claims. He cites the interesting coincidence that the stereotype of the alien with a big head and the wide eyes became prevalent after a movie showing a supposed abduction aired on NBC in 1975. It seems that people are being abducted by aliens that look like they expect them to look. Logically speaking, it makes more sense to believe that it’s a psychological phenomenon, as opposed to thousands of people being abducted by alien ships that leave no trace and never seem to be detectable.

The next chapter deals with wide-spread accusations of all sorts. Shermer compares them to the witch crazes of the past. He suggests that there is a feedback loop, where the first accusations seem credible and then other people repeat them, causing more people to make the same claim until everything has been blown out of proportion. Accusations of witchcraft in the past and claims of satanic cults in the present seem to present all the evidence of being a hysterical craze. Similarly, the recovered memory movement, where psychologists manage to help their patients find "repressed" memories of parental sexual abuse. The accusations leveled at parents as a result of this recovery of memories had devastating effects on people’s lives. In time, it has turned out that the accusations were produced by the psychologists, and were never true. In some cases, this was a result of a misguided desire to find true abuse, in other cases it was a result of outright fraud. It appears that this particular craze is dying down, but it doesn’t seem to be completely over yet.

The last chapter in this section deals with Ayn Rand’s cult of "objectivism". Basically, Rand developed a philosophy stating that the world exists separate of humanity and that the only way to understand this universe is through the use of reason. As Shermer points out, the flaw in this reasoning is that the application of reason allows one to get at final objective truth. The problem with this idea is that it implies the existence of such a final truth. Many examples can be shown that do not allow such final objective truth, for example any subjective experience, such as taste in music or art cannot be shown to be correct or incorrect – it’s just a matter of taste. As such, any philosophy that claims such a thing is flawed. Having never read any of Rand’s work, I found this last chaptre to be very interesting.

Part 3: Evolution and Creationism

This section is broken into three chapters. The first deals with the arguments for creation, especially young-earth creationism. He presents them in all their "glory", including a picture from the Institute for Creation Research showing a painting of Noah’s ark with a stegosaurus in one of the stalls! He cites the accusations that evolution leads to all the evils of the world. The second chapter shows 25 common creationist complaints with evolution, with the response from the point of view of evolutionary biology. This section is excellent, and it should be required reading of everyone, if for no other reason than to stop people from presenting the same tired arguments that have been shown to be in error countless times. It makes any discussion of evolution difficult, when a large part of the time is spent dealing with arguments that never seem to die. The final chapter deals with the Supreme Court decision that declared the Louisiana statute requiring equal time for creation "science" in the classroom. This chapter is an interesting reading in the history of this debate. Anyone interested in these controversies should definitely read these three chapters.

Part 4: History and Pseudohistory

This section deals with historical revisionism, particularly those who deny that the Holocaust ever occurred in Nazi Germany. The first chapter recounts Shermer’s experience at a "debate" with Holocaust deniers on the Donahue show. He shows the pitfalls of failing to face the deniers claims, especially when they are correct. For example, Shermer cites evidence showing that the use of human fat to make soap is false, even though such evidence is normally ignored by historians, while being trumpeted by deniers. He warns that by ignoring the evidence, historians make the deniers claims of a conspiracy to hide the evidence from the public. Doing so makes all their claims seem correct.

In the next chapter, Shermer outlines the history of the movement to deny the Holocaust. He talks about the Institute for Historical Review and its part in the denial. He makes the point that just because someone denies the Holocaust, it does no good to accuse them of anti-Semitism. Such claims cloud the issues, and make their claims of being suppressed sound even more credible.

Chapter 14 outlines they claims of deniers and shows how to refute them. As is the case of evolutionary theory, there are points of contention among the experts, but the points that they are not debating if the Holocaust occurred, but how it occurred. This distinction is vital, as one shows that we are not sure of the event, while the second concerns details of that event. He provides a wide variety of data, all of which converges on the conclusion that the Holocaust did occur.

The final chapter discusses the book called The Bell Curve. This book purports to show that there are clear differences in intelligence (as measured by IQ scores) between whites and blacks and that these differences are the result of genetic differences between the races. Aside from the obvious difficulties in even describing what "intelligence" is (other than a number given by an IQ test) there is the difficulty in determining how much of the differences between two groups’ "intelligence" is a result of genetics. Even if we were able to say for sure that something specifically is intelligence, it may be very difficult to say for sure what the source of that is. Basically, The Bell Curve was a politically motivated work, and many of the responses to it have been similarly motivated. In the end, however, it’s science is flawed, and it’s conclusions, based on that science are flawed as well.

Part 5: Hope Springs Eternal

Chapter 16 is a discussion of the theories of Dr. Frank Tipler. Tipler is a physicist, who believes in the cosmic anthropic principle, the idea that the fundamental constants of the universe are so fine-tuned that they could not have arisen by chance. The universe must have been designed by some being with a purpose, and that purpose was the production of intelligent life. The argument goes that if any of the fundamental constants were changed life could not exist, and therefore they could not have arisen by chance. Of course, in contrast, any particular hand of cards is ridiculously unlikely beforehand, but you always get a hand of cards. Similarly, if the universe did have different constants and no life existed, then no one would be here to have this debate. It seems that there is confusion of the probability of an event before or after that event has been observed. Once you’ve seen something happen, it’s probability is one, and any thoughts about the likelihood that it could happened are conjecture without further observation and experimentation. Without more universes to study, it will be difficult for us to see if the universe could arise by chance. Tipler also goes on to claim that in the future, at the end of time, everyone who has ever lived will be "resurrected" in a super computer that will contain, in digital form, all our "souls". This is his version of the resurrection, promised in the Bible and other religious works. Of course, his reasoning that such a computer is inevitable, is based on a long series of logical steps, and if any of those steps fail, then this won’t happen. Shermer also asks the question of which version of "you" will be resurrected? The you right before your death? The version of you at some specific age? Every day in your life you have experiences that change your life, meaning that there is no static "you" to be preserved in the computer. As a further objection, I’d point out that the resurrection of everything that has lived requires perfect knowledge, which isn’t possible. If the computer tries to recreate everyone who could have lived there are more problems, because each human being is the union of one egg (out of thousands) with one sperm (out of millions or billions). To recreate every human possible would require recreating all the different unions of egg and sperm cells that could have occurred. Starting with the first humans (however you would define that) you would have rapidly increasing numbers of possible humans who could have lived. There is no way such a system could work.

The last chapter is a summary of why people believe weird things, especially when many of the things they believe have been shown to be erroneous. Unfortunately, such beliefs will probably always persist, since human psychology seems geared towards belief and not towards rationality. While we may never be able to eliminate such beliefs, in the end it would be even worse to allow them to rampage uncontrolled would be even worse. This book is a good tool in the battle to push back ignorance. I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in these topics or others similar to them, because it provides a good basic course in how to think rationally and carefully, which is the greatest problem…

Last updated 2 May 1999