Mailbag: What’s The Harm?

It is time for another entry in the mailbag series where I answer feedback email from readers and others. If you want to send me a question, comment or any other kind of feedback, please do so using the contact info on the about page.

Tony recently wrote a comment on the post about six general approaches to refute any conspiracy theory. Because it represents such a common and typical response to efforts to promote scientific skepticism, it deserves to be part of the mailbag series where it can be discussed and dissected in some detail.

It is a combination of the “what’s the harm” gambit, the fallacy of relative privation and the uneasy relationship between those atheism-centric individuals who want to exclusively focus on religion (and ignore everything else) and scientific skeptics who take a broader approach to pseudoscience wherever it can be found.

This response will focus on several questions. What are the harms with pseudoscience and conspiracy theories and why should you care? Are they not just fun and harmless? Why is it not productive to insist that people ignore problems just because some other problem is deemed more important? Finally, why is Debunking Denialism about scientific skepticism and not a generic anti-religion blog?

Tony writes:

What’s the harm with pseudoscience?

It is tempting to think of pseudoscience and conspiracy theories as just harmless fun. However, the facts show something entirely different. Here is how I characterized the situation in a previous mailbag entry when the issue came up:

There are real and substantial harms to conspiracy theories and a substantial proportion of the American population embrace them. The characterization that it only involves “few nutty, basically harmless and amusing conspiracy theorists” is a scientifically false statement. In fact, this “what’s the harm?” gambit is so common that there is a website called What’s The Harm? that specifically focused on collecting documented examples of harm from pseudoscience.

It is also worth noting that pseudoscience and misinformation was likely one major factor in the election of Donald Trump. The Trump administration also continues to push conspiracy theories and even goes so far as to make up “alternative facts” and even alleged historical events that never happened to justify their policy decisions.

The fallacy of relative privation

Tony questions why people even bother with scientific skepticism when there are “bigger things to be concerned about” and hints that this bigger problem is religious belief. However, as we have seen, Tony has grossly underestimated the harmful impacts of pseudoscience. It is substantially worse than he thinks.

The line of argument deployed by Tony also constitutes the fallacy of relative privation. It is a rhetorical trick used to distract from an important issue (A) because some other issue (B) somewhere else might be more important. There are a number of problems with this approach. For instance, it might be empirically false to say that B is worse than A and it is possible to focus on more than one thing at the same time. Also, it can be used to condescendingly dismiss any issue (including B). For instance, we might reply that infectious diseases, cardiovascular disease and extreme climate events combined (at least tens of millions of people) kill more people than religion (which, according to Tony, merely kills a few tens of thousands of people). So according to Tony’s own logic, we can safely dismiss religion as relatively harmless. Since he would not accept this kind of argument, he should not accept the argument that he laid out about the harmful effects of religion versus pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.

Why is Debunking Denialism not an anti-religion website?

There is an unstated question in the comment submitted by Tony. Why is Debunking Denialism about scientific skepticism and not focused on anti-religion instead? As it turns out, there are several reasons for this.

Before we explore those reasons, I am tempted to cite the introduction to the documentary “The Enemies of Reason” (2007) narrated by Richard Dawkins (one of the most well-known atheists in the world):

The title of this documentary is the inspiration for the mission statement for this website that can be found at the top of the sidebar to the right.

Let us return to the reasons for why Debunking Denialism is a website that focuses on scientific skepticism instead of being just another anti-religion blog.

First, as we saw above, organized religious communities with anti-science tendencies are really just a special case of the more general problem with pseudoscience and irrational nonsense. Thus, there is nothing wrong with taking a broader approach and criticizing many different forms of pseudoscience. In fact, refusing to take this broader approach at least some of the time might be seen as giving a free pass to non-religious forms of nonsense.

Second, religion is extremely broad and includes everything from people who just cherish the symbolism and sense of community to violent religious extremists. Thus, from a pragmatic standpoint, it is not all that useful to attack less malignant forms of religion or liberal believers because they can be important allies in the struggle against pseudoscience. In particular, religious believers and organizations have been crucially important in the fight against creationism in public schools.

Third, most of the arguments for and against religious beliefs and claims have already been discussed to death on the Internet. There are not that many original contributions that can be made by me at this point. However, Debunking Denialism has taken on many different kinds of pseudoscience that have been promoted by religious extremists, such as those who refuse mainstream medical treatment for sick children, creationism, and HIV/AIDS denialism pushed by some evangelical religious organizations.

Fourth, taking on pseudoscience more broadly increases the reach of scientific skepticism and critical thinking as well as might help undermining selective skepticism. Some people might find this website looking for information about one of the more than a dozen different categories or any of the 380+ articles because they reject that particular pseudoscience. Then, as they investigate this website further, they might find a pseudoscience or misconception they actually do believe in and change their minds. If they consider the website credible on, let’s say, climate change, they might be more inclined to trust the information about vaccines. It could be a way to break down their cognitive dissonance. Although purely anecdotal, there have been a few people who have sent emails to this website and said that this was exactly what happened. Because selective skepticism is such a threat, it can be useful to focus on many different forms of pseudoscience. Finally, once a person understand the benefits with science, the folly of pseudoscience and quackery, and the psychology of conspiracy theories, religious extremism might not even come up as an issue for them.

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