Sowing Seeds

When a died in the wool skeptic is confronted with an obvious piece of woo there is always the temptation to stomp in with all guns blazing and reduce the offender to quivering shreds of illogicality. In the words of the XKCD cartoon, someone is wrong on the internet, and it is very tempting to spend your time and energy putting them right. I am guilty as charged in this respect, as anyone who has ever experienced one of my rants over on my blog will know.

The question is, does it actually do any good?

I had an experience not so long ago, where I got into an argument about the nature of magical thinking particularly as it related to homeopathy. I posted one jibe too many and I ended up being defriended by somebody that I had known for a while. I was actually quite keen to know his views on the matter but obviously it was a very touchy subject for him.

There is also the issue of confirmation bias.

When somebody is confronted with an opposing view to their own they will often ignore all arguments to the contrary and just look for evidence that supports their preconceptions. It is all too easy for anybody to publish something on the internet without any evidence to back it up, and somebody searching for something to confirm what they want to hear will pay more attention to it than a contradictory source.

My view is that our job as skeptics is not to act as evangelical guardians of the truth (whatever that might be) but to encourage others to ask questions, look for evidence and develop a skeptical worldview of their own.

I recently got talking to a pair of young Jehovah's Witnesses that came to the door one Saturday morning. As part of the conversation one of them said that an increase in devastating earthquakes in recent years was a sure sign that the end times were approaching. Rather than going for a slam dunk, I suggested that he looked at the US Geological survey for earthquake data from the year 1900 to the present and plot it on a graph for himself to see what the truth of the matter is.

I hope that in this case a bit of patient encouragement will have sowed a seed of skepticism that will be more productive in the long run than a blazing argument (however satisfying that might be at the time!).



(Chart data from Miguel Vera)