Since one of my favorite things in the whole world is seeing myself on television, I was delighted to receive a call from the producer of a very popular evening program. He wanted me to provide a little balance, he said, during a part of the show that would feature a woman who was bothered by ghosts - and had a videotape to prove it! Despite the fact that my reason and logic segment of this bizarre tale would be allotted no more than about 30 seconds out of 30 minutes, I agreed to do the show because I knew this ratio of sense to nonsense was pretty close to the industry standard. A few days later, a crew showed up to record my reactions to the remarkable video that supposedly showed hard evidence of spiritual harassment.
The video turned out to be less than compelling. A parapsychologist made it as part of a feature-length documentary that he was selling for $29.95. Parapsychologists are, after all, in the business of finding and promoting paranormal events. The woman who was alleged to have had the actual contact with ghosts offered an anecdotal account of her experiences and then pointed to a few dark droplets on her bedroom wall which she said were blood. There was also a story told by one of the paranormal researchers who said that, while snooping around in the attic, he was accosted and nearly strangled by a ghost. No doubt anticipating a skeptic or two in the audience, he pointed to the cord that was still firmly knotted around his neck as a kind of smoking gun. And, as if all this were not enough to convince even a rocket scientist, an occasional flash of light appeared on the parapsychologist's videotape of the alleged haunted house. He said that these lights in his camera were an indication of a strange and mysterious presence. I said it was more likely they indicated a need for repair.
But it hardly mattered because when the show finally aired, my comments were not included. Instead, there was an additional tale from beyond that dealt with a man who began smoking in bed - much to his wife's surprise! The victim of this Spontaneous Human Combustion episode said with wide-eyed sincerity that he could offer no explanation for this truly weird happening. The fact that he was interviewed in a smoke filled room and clearly seen to have a shirt pocket full of cigars seemed to suggest not a single clue to his misfortune. Indeed, the show's anchor was reduced to shaking her head and clucking her tongue at the wonder of it all. I too was reduced to shaking my head and clucking my tongue.
How is it that Americans can be so gullible? When public education was first introduced, it was said that superstition and magical thinking would soon be a thing of the past. If anything, public education may soon be a thing of the past. A Gallup Youth Survey reported that an embarrassingly large number of high school students still believe in such supernatural phenomena as astrology, ESP, clairvoyance, witchcraft and ghosts. In fact, the student who does NOT believe in angels turns out to be the exception. And adults fare no better in such surveys. Pollster Andrew Greeley at the University of Chicago found that 73% of adults believe in life after death and 67% of widows say they have already had contact with their dearly departed.
At a recent skeptic's convention, a professor of psychiatry on the faculty of a leading Ivy League university talked about his patients who reported having been abducted by aliens. He said that he believed their stories and, furthermore, that they were rational, emotionally stable people who had nothing to gain from lying. Then, in what can only be called a surprise upset, an investigative reporter took the stage and told about how she, with nothing more than a tall tale and a straight face, was among those accepted by the good doctor as yet one more example of alien abduction. Clearly, this was an excellent example of the need to always value the scientific method over the claims of the individual scientist.
Some of the other sessions at this gathering addressed such topics as the ease with which false memories of childhood molestation are created and the sexual hysteria that currently surrounds this issue; the neural architecture, developed tens of thousands of years ago, that practically assures modern man of an occasional hallucination; the growing problem of junk science in the courtroom; the persistent though irrational belief in such things as a UFO government cover-up and a JFK assassination conspiracy.
Gathering material at many such conferences, I eventually developed a presentation titled "A Critical Look at the Bizarre Beyond" during which I try to provide the most probable (though rarely the most spine-tingling) explanation for many seemingly paranormal events. And although my audiences may smile at anyone taking anything so silly as crop circles seriously, they can be equally adamant when it comes to their own store of outlandish convictions. And whenever I happen to question any of the more mainstream beliefs, beliefs that completely lack any hard scientific evidence, it is my sanity that is questioned and my morals that are doubted.
And this is what frightens me. Never before has a society been so much a product of and so much dependent upon science. Yet a very definite anti-science bias exists at nearly all levels. Jurors who don't know if the Earth goes around the Sun or vice versa are asked to evaluate the medical risk of breast implants. Athletes are considered more credible and certainly more admirable than PhD's. Newspapers carry a daily horoscope but seldom offer even a weekly science column. Celebrity chefs are asked to comment on the potential danger of adding genetically altered tomatoes to salads. Politicians become expert at sound bites while remaining wholly ignorant of an expanding universe.
Understanding science isn't easy and rigorously practicing the scientific method isn't fun. Believing is always going to be far easier than even the most rudimentary attempt at knowing. But perhaps, one day, people will become a bit more skeptical and demand that those who make extraordinary claims offer extraordinary evidence. Until then, I guess I'll just have to continue shaking my head and clucking my tongue.
A few worthwhile sites to visit include:
http://www.csicop.org/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?author=7
http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/
http://www.skepdic.com/
