Caveman Logic: The Persistence of Primitive Thinking in a Modern World (38 page)

Variants of this theme continue to appear and prosper. Whether on television (
Dead Like Me
) or on the big screen (
Shaun of the Dead
,
White Noise
), it’s clear that death is no impediment to movement or communication. Some of these productions are well done and quite entertaining. The problem I have is those cases where there is nothing to suggest that what we are watching is in any way unreasonable. Too often, there is the presumption that the abilities or events we are witnessing may be infrequent, but not
impossible.
The message on shows like
Medium
is, “Not everyone can do this, but it
can
be done.” Illusionist James Randi revealed to me that some years ago he was approached by an American TV network that saw some potential in his psychic investigations. “These might make an entertaining weekly series,” he was told by a network executive. Randi was asked what percentage of the cases would prove to be real. “None,” he replied. At this point negotiations broke down. “You’ve got to have
some
,” was the network’s response. Zero percent just wasn’t interesting or worth broadcasting because it wouldn’t sustain an audience and sell cars or detergent.

This is actually a sad state of affairs. Pseudoscience will usually enjoy greater acceptance and financial reward than either real science in general or the real science that debunks the charlatans. It was unclear to Randi whether the network executive who rejected his show did so because he, himself, was a believer and didn’t want to see his cherished worldview held up to public ridicule or whether, simply put, he knew that irrational shlock sells. The latter seems far more likely. The six hundred or so attendees at the annual
Randi.org
Amazing Meeting held in 2005 were largely of the view that the world holds enough natural wonder without importing supernatural accounts or abilities in order to attract or sustain viewer interest.

A show based on a Randi-like character might initially draw attention. Imagine a weekly TV series in which some paranormal claim is made—Water dowsing? Faith healing? Communication with the dead?—which is then thoroughly investigated and found to be a fraud. What is wrong with that? I’ve asked this question of many undergraduate students and their answers are surprisingly consistent. Many of them describe such a show as a “bummer.” In one’s words, “You get all built up for some neat thing and then you see it was just a trick. A fake. Who cares about that?” The second most popular answer is perhaps more disturbing. “Even if you show some medium or faith healer to be a fake, you still end up wondering, ‘Yeah, OK. She’s a fake. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. There are probably other ones out there who can do this stuff. You just didn’t test them.’”

Successful psychics enjoy tremendous financial rewards and wide popular acclaim. Arguably, they shouldn’t. If the public were more astute and less gullible, psychics would be discredited and their shopworn bag of tricks revealed for what they are. Many magicians and professional illusionists are among the most vocal critics of so-called psychics. The reason is obvious.

As Jamy Swiss
¹⁸
notes, magicians like him are honest professionals. They forthrightly promise to deceive you. In his view, a professional “psychic” like Uri Geller uses the same tools for dishonest goals. Swiss rightly notes that he and his professional colleagues never pretend to be more than they are. It is one thing to entertain and amaze people by exploiting their lack of observational skills and rampant Caveman Logic. It is quite another to sell these tricks as evidence of the supernatural. Magic tricks or illusions are fun to watch because they violate our expectations. The sense of awe we feel often borders on the physical. But they are magic tricks. Illusions. We should
know
we are in the presence of illusionists and conjurers. No claims should be made for supernatural abilities. Not surprisingly, Swiss points out that a professional magician is the best candidate to detect the subterfuge used by Geller and others like him. “It takes one to catch one.”

Imagine how you might feel confronting a colleague who uses the same gimmicks you do, but then deludes his audience by pretending to have spiritual or supernatural abilities. He’s just like you: another conjurer, maybe a bit better at it, maybe a bit worse. But unlike you, he’s a liar. He pretends to be more than he is and misguides and perhaps exploits people in the process. Outspoken social critic and illusionist Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller) singles out well-known “psychic” John Edward for some of his disdain. In Jillette’s words, “John Edward is an alchemist. He takes grief and turns it into cash.” Edward’s performance is all the more egregious because his audience often consists of grieving people who are understandably more vulnerable and needy. Edward works his wares using mass media like television and paperback books to supplement his income. Essentially, though, he is no different from smaller-scale mediums who provide (for a fee) séances for grieving loved ones so they might contact their dearly departed.

We need to call into question the behavior on both sides of this offense. Yes, the exploitive medium or psychic who preys on the grieving believer is a parasite or worse. But the belief system of the exploited victims is no less at fault. It is their gullibility that creates a market. Before we justify their actions with a “But they’re grieving” defense, consider what they believed
before
they were grieving. In fact, consider the irrational beliefs of those around them who have not lost a loved one. Grief does not suddenly create a whole new set of beliefs. The core irrationality that gets exploited by the John Edwards of this world was well in place before the sad event that brought it into the exploitable range. Uri Geller and John Edward could not make a living if Caveman Logic was not already rampant. And we cannot blame them for
that
.

There is an unfortunate coda to this message. Once they have been discredited, charlatans and the irrational beliefs they exploit do not simply disappear. Author and skeptic Joe Nickell (who has written several
Real-Life X-Files
books) reports that he was one of several “psychic investigators” who caught John Edward cheating on a segment of
Dateline NBC
. According to Nickell, it didn’t matter. Nor have James Randi’s public debunkings of Uri Geller mattered. People remember Geller as the “psychic spoon bender.” They are unlikely to remember his surprisingly frequent public refutations or his futile legal action against Randi. If most Americans remember Geller, it is for his “abilities,” not their unmasking.

Nickell has also investigated the Shroud of Turin controversy. His unassailable conclusion is that there is more than enough scientific evidence to show that the shroud was in fact the work of a self-confessed forger in the Middle Ages. But, as Nickell points out, it does not seem to matter how many times the hoax of the shroud is uncovered and publicly reported. It keeps coming back. Neither the public nor the media will let go of it. Every Easter the story resurfaces somewhere and is disproved all over again. It is just too good a myth to let go.

The media are obviously complicit in this. They know a good story when they see one. No one has ever gotten poor banking on naiveté, superstition, or Caveman Logic. Many have gotten rich. It is easier to sell a scam than to debunk one. A haunted house is considered news or, at least, entertainment. Revealing the fact that a haunted house has been faked is neither. At the start of the twenty-first century, the paranormal still has a cachet that skepticism sorely lacks.

Science and politics should never mix. Indeed, science—to do its business according to the rules—must stay clear of all doctrinaire thinking. Here is a familiar example of where it has not.

Lysenko was a Russian biologist who championed the Lamarckian idea that acquired traits could be inherited. This is, of course, wrong. Imagine the Three Blind Mice losing their tails to the farmer’s wife, and then producing tailless offspring. However, because a connection was made between this non-Mendelian view of genetics and prevailing Soviet Marxist values, the view received political and economic support. Indeed, Lysenkoism was the official Russian brand of genetics until it was formerly discredited in 1964. The problem is, the rules and findings of science cannot be confined to national borders. It is a universal enterprise and the rest of the scientific universe (i.e., geneticists everywhere else) found Lysenko and his ilk ludicrous.

It is easy to criticize the Lysenko episode and many American and Western European teachers use it as an instructive episode in what happens when science comes under the grip of politics. It is an easy moral tale to share. It does not hurt that the protagonists are somebody else. Better yet, they are a former enemy, whose demise has only confirmed what America believed all along about the “Evil Empire,” to quote Ronald Reagan’s celebrated meme from the Cold War era.

Americans believe that something like the Lysenko episode could or would never happen
here
. Ask the average American why that is so and the response will be that this is a free country. There are no dictators. There are no threats of imprisonment in frozen gulags or worse to bring uncooperative nonconforming scientists under control.

All of that is probably true. However, the ideological suppression of images or ideas or research can occur in subtler but no less effective ways. One is called
prior restraint
. It is a highly efficient way to censor content without having to publicize the process or involve the legal system. Censorship stays well below public detection and thus avoids civil or legal repercussions.

Some years ago in Ontario, Canada, there was a considerable flap over sexual expression in magazines. When I moved to the province in 1971, it was customary to cover portions of nude pictures, even in mainstream publications like
Playboy
or
Penthouse
, with small black rectangles. Residents of Ontario were thus kept from the crippling psychological effects of seeing images of nipples or pubic hair. These same photos were readily available to any Canadian who could drive across the border and purchase the same magazine in Buffalo, New York, or Detroit, Michigan. These standards were liberalized over the years but for a while the battle to keep Ontario sexually prim was quite successful.

The province spent taxpayer money prosecuting magazine sellers or distributors, not surprisingly losing in court as often as they won. At some point, the censors found an easier way to do their business. They simply had uniformed police officers visit a neighborhood variety store (often run at the time by Asian immigrants) and threaten prosecution if the offending magazines were not removed from display. It worked almost every time. I know of no “mom & pop”-owned variety store that had the time and resources to take on the local police, especially in a country to which they had recently immigrated. They simply complied.

The suppression of research or ideas requires different strategies. Some readers will recall that religious pressure can affect the funding and even the legality of various types of research. The most recent example involves stem cells. However, there is another kind of suppression that occurs well below the radar. Most Americans are aware that there is controversy over the teaching of Darwinian natural selection in public schools. There is fear by some that this information will erode the spiritual values of their children or cause them to question their faith. They ask for religious accounts of biological events to be taught side by side with scientific ones. They argue that this is only fair. It isn’t that they want to suppress science altogether, it’s just that they want their kids to hear “both sides of the issue.”

All of this is old, if disturbing, news. What isn’t so well known is the fact that textbooks have also been affected by America’s ambivalence about biological science. People wrongly assume that the textbooks used in public science classes will contain the truth, even if some teachers or school districts restrict student exposure to it. Surely the books, they reason, are above this fray. Sadly, this is not the case. Textbooks are typically published by large corporations. These corporations are often publicly traded companies guided by the profit motive. Their writers and editors are aware that a full and undiluted treatment of Darwin is the road to controversy. Controversy does not sell textbooks. In fact, it may cause them to remain unsold.

The adoption of a textbook for the lucrative high school (or university) market is a plum that publishers and their representatives seek. The field is highly competitive. For every science text you’ve ever seen in a classroom, there were several unsuccessful competitors. Each of those alternatives was a viable candidate that fell short in some way. In the case of university textbook adoptions, the decision is usually made by a single professor teaching the course. There are rarely committees to please and the final choice may be somewhat idiosyncratic. I have seen choices swayed by factors as trivial as seeing a reference to one’s own work in the text, having known the author from graduate school days, or liking the book salesman.

Decisions about high school textbooks are usually made by committees and involve larger numbers (and more financial incentives) than the average university adoption. Such committees may be swayed by concerns about public opinions and, like TV programming, are often driven by lowest common denominators. Thus, a book that “plays it safe” even if deficient in many ways is more likely to be chosen than its alternatives that offer better science without pandering to ruffled feathers in the process.

At a recent conference, I discussed the issue with a book rep from one of the large academic publishers. I was stunned by what he confided to me.

“You have no idea how textbooks are dumbed down. Even when we get good scientists or educators to write them, they go through revision by committees who are concerned with politics and the demands of the marketplace. These people know nothing about science. They simply get letters from local school boards who have received threats from local parents or clergy. One thing leads to another and before it’s over, the textbook is politically correct. We’ve got to pull our punches or the book will never sell. We can publish textbooks that remain true to science, but nobody will get to read them. Somebody else’s book will get the adoption.”