During an interview with a newspaper reporter recently, I was asked a common question: "Do you feel like we're losing the battle? That people are increasingly turning away from science and towards woo-woo?" And I answered, as I always answer, "No."

While it's true that the anti-vax movement could do some real harm to society, and that so-called Intelligent Design could make its way into text books, we have one thing going for us that they will never have.

But before I answer what that is, I have to define "we" and "they."

"We," of course, are the skeptics. But more than that, we are those who wish to believe what is real. We are truth-seekers, explorers, modifiers, and we are often wrong. We will never have all the answers, but those answers that we do have will best fit the available data. When new data appears, we will abandon our belief for a new one.

"They" are the believers. They are those who wish to believe what they believe, for a variety of reasons. They have all the answers, or at least most of them. When new, contrary data appears, it will be hammered into shape, discredited or discarded.

And why we will win is this: if you take all scientific knowledge and purge it from the public mind through some sort of multi-generational cultural revolution or societal collapse, all the data will still be there. It may be forgotten, but it can always be rediscovered by a curious person observing something and thinking "Hmm, I wonder how that works." The truth (reality) can't be destroyed. The idea that water has memory can be destroyed, never to return.

But what is "winning" in this apparently eternal struggle? In fact, there is no "winning" here. If we are successful, "they" and "we" will end up believing exactly the same things. Strangely, that's "their" goal too. The major difference is, "we" will change and "they" will not. And if they're right, eventually we'll be on their side and still true to our ideals. If they're wrong, their ideas will eventually wither and die.

Believers and skeptics may end up coming to the same conclusions, with both sides declaring victory. That would be a wondrous day. And as long as the skeptics stayed true to the principle of always changing beliefs based on evidence, we all will truly have won.

In the meantime, it's back into the trenches to educate people about the incredible value of vaccines, the danger of homeopathy, and the hucksters who call themselves "psychic." For the believers, your task is very simple. Show us the data. If you have it, we'll happily meet in the middle and shake hands.

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****Psychic relativity verified by senior researchers at Princeton University****
written by bmsecond, November 07, 2009

Jeff: Psychic relativity has nothing to do with so-called
psychic abilities. The term refers to the nature of acausal
connections in the space-time continuum. In other words,
the concept of a synchronicity principle, as suggested by
Carl Jung and Professor W. Pauli, Nobel laureate, physics.

I'm available to discuss all aspects of this extraordinary
verification, and will provide exact documentation.

This has been offered to the skeptics before, but they
refused a meeting, (csicop) etc.....

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@bmsecond
written by JeffWagg, November 07, 2009

Please fill out a challenge application. We're ready to see the proof.

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written by Smiledriver, November 07, 2009

Gah, beat me to it. Anyway, I'll second that please tell us...

1.) what can you do 2.)under what conditions 3.) with what degree of accuracy

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written by kenhamer, November 07, 2009

1.) what can you do 2.)under what conditions 3.) with what degree of accuracy

Let me answer for him:

1. Nothing.
2. None.
3. None.

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written by PopSciCle, November 07, 2009

Jeff, I share your optimism that we will never lose. Even if we were to enter a new dark age and all knowledge and skepticism would be lost, eventually inquiring minds will rise again and they will want to know.
However, I also very much doubt we will ever win, for a quite similar reason. Even if we were to enter an age of reason where all woo woo nonsense was eliminated, and all believers of weird things somehow came to know better, eventually, there would be new nonsense, and new people to believe it.

Our susceptibility to such nonsense is part of human nature, and it is difficult to guard against. Even if you could get to everyone at and early age, and warn and educate them about common fallacies and mistakes in thinking, it won't be enough; some people will walk into such traps with their eyes open. There will always be casualties of lazy, sloppy thinking (in more than one sense).

It will remain an eternal struggle, I fear.
The truth will set you free, but the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. (Because one cliche is not enough )


As a side note, the expansion of the universe may make some data unavailable to observers in the far, far future (something like 100 billion years); or at least that's what I read in a popular science magazine a year or so ago.

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written by bosshog, November 07, 2009

This would only be true if "they" were convinced on the strength of their evidence, which can be refuted. The truth is that they believe because they need to believe, that is they seek comfort and refuge from reality in belief and thus will not be swayed by arguments, however convincing those arguments might be.
As for winning: I feel I have already won - I let myself think freely. I don't care what others may think and don't need to "win" them over.

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written by Kuroyume, November 07, 2009

I agree with bosshog. It's not about winning or losing. It's about the freedom from shedding misconceptions, delusions, beliefs in favor of unadulterated reality. I'd have it no other way. If only that could be imparted to believers in the sort of way that Carl Sagan did it more often then the world might start to change.

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At last . . .
written by wallacej14, November 07, 2009

. . . an official admission that skeptics and believers share the same bunker mentality.

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written by rjh02, November 07, 2009

Loss of science knowledge happened when the Roman Empire collapsed in Europe. Took hundreds of years for Europe to catch up. Yet Europe was the first place to have the industrial revolution.

Will it happen again? Answer highly unlikly. Reason - knowledge is too widespread. If one country collapses, eg USA, then others will take over, eg Japan, Europe, China.

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Can't entirely agree
written by Wolfman, November 08, 2009

While I tend to be optimistic about science/rationalism winning out, it is not for the reasons that Jeff states. In regards to the claim that scientific information will never be lost...there are plenty of examples throughout history where scientific information was, in fact, entirely lost, and had to be re-discovered from scratch. And while the odds of such complete obliteration of information seem significantly lessened in our modern world, I would not see it as being impossible (perhaps not the destruction of all knowledge, but possibly the destruction of certain specific pieces of knowledge).

By the same token, the idea that entirely untrue beliefs can be "destroyed, never to return" is also contradicted by history; beliefs that have endured over centuries, in the direct face of evidence to the contrary, as well as beliefs that disappear for a time, only to be re-born at some future time. In fact, the only way to "destroy" such information, and ensure that it were "never to return", would be to destroy every single piece of information that is out there...which really just comes down to having a big book-burning party.

Information can disappear; and information can endure. Its truth, or lack thereof, is only one of many factors in its survival.

So then...why do I think that the "good guys" will triumph? Well, I don't believe we'll ever 'triumph' in terms of eliminating superstition, or wildly untrue beliefs. There are always going to be credible people among us, willing to believe anything...and there are always going to be unscrupulous individuals ready to take advantage of them.

However, as time passes, the body of 'proof' for the scientific side of the debate will continue to grow; and we will also be able to educate more and more people in how to evaluate and understand such information. Its not a battle that will ever see an absolute victory; but it is one where, over time, we will be able to continue to decrease the damage that can be done by those on the 'other side'.

And that is, I think, the only real 'victory' to which we can look forward. And in truth, it is quite a significant victory.

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written by Snixtor, November 08, 2009

by Wolfman:

In regards to the claim that scientific information will never be lost...there are plenty of examples throughout history where scientific information was, in fact, entirely lost, and had to be re-discovered from scratch.

I don't think Jeff is suggesting that the record of scientific information cannot be lost, but that the data itself the "truth" of it can't be lost. If we lost all records of the periodic table, carbon would still have the same number of electrons as it did before, so we can re-discover exactly the same data.

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written by Kuroyume, November 08, 2009

I agree that Jeff is talking more about the essence of naturalism which we can discover and rediscover.

To me, it is more about whether people will remain curious enough to derive principles and make discoveries. Simply look at Ancient China. They were well on their way to science but ended up with Confusius, empirical totalitarianism, and slid backward in technological advances and free inquiry. There is no guarantee of perpetual accumulation of knowledge. We can only hope that fragments persist long enough to propel some future generation (as the Classical Greco-Romans did for the Renaissance).

Though, if we ever ended up with a numeric system like Roman numerals again, mathematical models for scientific theories would be a b*tch.

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written by Mark P, November 08, 2009

You can already see Science winning. Instead of just waving their hands and claiming it works, most woo-meisters are desperate to mimic the trappings of science. They eagerly seek papers they can distort to strengthen their hand, but seek them they do.

They know that in the population at large that scientific thinking is the most respected method, thanks to its many amazing successes.

"Intelligent Design" shows how the creationists already know that they are losing. Their only hope is to persuade people that ID is scientific, because they know that ridiculing science directly is a losing strategy these days.

Slowly, asymptotically, we approach the truth.

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written by Snixtor, November 08, 2009

most woo-meisters are desperate to mimic the trappings of science

"Physics of Homeopathy" being a recent, prime, comic example. All about "Steven Hawkings" inventing string theory which says you can ignore mass. Oh how the stupid burns. Fortunately this particular example stands out like a sore thumb to those of us with even rudimentary knowledge of physics. Unfortunately, there a lot of folks that don't have that rudimentary knowledge and are easily conned when somebody drops a few names alongside their claims.

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Science has always been winning:
written by Sarenthalanos, November 09, 2009

Mark P, you bring up an interesting point. As far back as St. Augustine and a bit previous, religious folks have had to constantly revise their stance on many things science has discovered or disproved. Religions have also used science to their benefit, as with Heron of Alexandria, where he made devices that could fool the ignorant into believing the sounds and movements were acts of the gods.

Instead of spontaneous generation that early philosophers and the church believed up until Darwin's time, science discovered evolution theory and much more. Up to the early 1900s, people still believed that living creatures were regularly brought about from inanimate objects in a matter of days. Sometimes through "recipes for life". Then there is the horror of church-established medicinal practices in the past and how those were found to be, scientifically, often more harm than help. You could also say that science could have conquered or lessened the "evil" of the Black Death, while also lessening or preventing the interesting effect it had upon the Catholic Church. The church was suffering greatly because of it.

Even the pseudo-scientists who distort science to further their goals of Intelligent Design are no different than the clergy spin-doctors of centuries past, and they too have found themselves at a loss already - it's just going to get worse for them. ID was their compromise to evolution after having already adopted the stance that you could get birds from tree fruit, which was embarrassing after the slightest bit of science being applied to the idea proved that to be a load of crap.

What is next?

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