I spent a big chunk of my writing time yesterday at the doctor’s office waiting to be diagnosed with a viral sinus infection, presumably the same one my son picked up at his toddler play group a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday, the congestion and coughing had gotten quite bad and I had to try to do something about it. Unfortunately, the doctor said that there is almost nothing that can be done other than the usual treatments for cold-like symptoms. It has made it hard to focus and concentrate, which has made me something less than enthusiastic about writing. Anyway, today I wanted to talk about a recent half-assed effort from Micah Hanks that almost started to say something interesting before giving up and deciding not to. Yesterday, Hanks published a piece asking if Americans are uniquely resistant to consideration of scientific anomalies. At first glance, the answer seems a rather obvious no. More than half of Americans claim to believe in Atlantis and ancient astronauts, according to a recent Chapman University survey, and another poll found that the vast majority of Americans believe in at least one pseudoscientific claim, so it seems unlikely that “Americans” as a category are closed to anomalies. Instead, by “Americans” Hanks is actually referring to academic, government, and corporate elites, who control the funding mechanisms that help decide which topics are worthy of scientific investigation. Hanks is, for some strange reason, resurrecting claims made in 1996 by physicist William R. Corliss, who died in 2011, and is best remembered for his work collecting stories of unexplained scientific anomalies related to weather, physics, astronomy, biology, psychic powers, etc. “What has happened to that vaunted American pioneering spirit?” Corliss asked. “We suppose that an American scientist cannot paddle too far out of the scientific mainstream without jeopardizing his or her funding.” Hanks quickly related this to “paranormal” research and suggested that European scientists are more open to the paranormal than their American counterparts. He did not, however, rigorously check this by examining statistical evidence, relying instead on an impressionistic and selective list from 2012, a problem he himself acknowledged. Hanks’s discussion bordered up against a potentially interesting question of the degree to which structural factors act as a curb on extreme hypotheses, and the degree to which the need to justify funding requests limits the range of potential research subjects. Basically, do scientists intentionally tailor their research questions to areas where they feel they have the best chance of convincing those who hold the purse-strings to fork over some cash? Recent research on the subject has found that scientists who receive grant funding are more productive and more likely to have more successful careers. A 2014 study indicated that the pursuit of funding can cause scientists to distort their research or even bias the results, intentionally or not, in order to align with funders’ expectations. Generally, this is considered a flaw in the system because it gives power to those with money to pursue their agendas at the expense of pure research. But Corliss’s question raises another point that is worth considering: What if it also works to limit interest in pseudoscience by rendering ideas outside the mainstream unprofitable? This can be both good and bad, and it’s a shame that Hanks devoted exactly no thoughts to the epistemological question of how the structure of scientific funding systems impacts what we consider “science” and “pseudoscience.” Instead, Hanks wonders if the real problem isn’t TV: However, if there’s truly one thing that the United States seems to have in greater amounts than most other countries, that might well be its paranormally-themed entertainment. The motion picture business only really began booming in the early 20th century thanks to a burgeoning American industry being built around it, and with the resulting prevalence of film and television entertainment produced in the U.S. over the last century, it is only natural that the amount of paranormal-themed programming would be higher here too. Does he know for sure that other countries don’t have paranormal TV in similar abundance? It’s true that most other countries are smaller and produce less TV overall. But most “American” paranormal shows are produced for international distribution, not just American consumption, and I’m pretty sure that you can watch Ancient Aliens from Melbourne to Mexico City to Manilla. Mexico, Brazil, and the Philippines all hold Ancient Aliens fan conferences to roaring crowds, and the international media treat ancient astronaut theorists like visiting royalty. America doesn’t do that.
Hanks’s final paragraph leaves out the subject. Whose “negative attitude” is he referring to? It’s surely not the American public, which has never failed to fall for the latest crazy claim. It’s also not the American media, which treats even ridiculous scientific claims with a fake seriousness they don’t deserve. I suppose he must mean scientists, even then, large numbers of them still line up to appear on pseudoscientific fake cable TV “documentaries,” and many credit exposure to pseudoscientific ideas on TV or in the media for creating their interest in science. I don’t have the answers here, but I know that this question deserves more serious and rigorous consideration.
18 Comments
Joe Scales
1/31/2019 09:52:42 am
"... and many [scientists] credit exposure to pseudoscientific ideas on TV or in the media for creating their interest in science."
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V
2/1/2019 01:48:20 pm
Joe, as a skeptic, I can tell you that yes, that is literally exactly what happened for me. I got interested in science in large part because of, well, the original Unsolved Mysteries and In Search Of... even more than because of Star Trek. (I can credit Star Trek with my interest in political activism; I grew up on Next Generation, which had SO much political plotline and addressed then-current issues in a futuristic format.) And I became a skeptic because frankly, the "mysteries" and "claims" just weren't holding up under closer inspection.
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Joe Scales
2/1/2019 02:20:00 pm
When Next Generation came out, I dubbed it "Star Trek, the Next Cancellation"... how wrong I was there. But eventually I started watching it and thought it really, really got better as it went along. Though I'd taken flack (and deservedly so) for once writing here that I couldn't take the optimistic humanity central to its theme in re-watching the reruns after 9-11 America... there are a few episodes that I really dug. The one in particular where Picard gets hit with a beam from a beacon in space and ends up living the adult life of a man on a dying planet... I mean, forget about the whole global warming aspect of it... it was simply a great story and acted so incredibly well by Patrick Stewart.
orang
1/31/2019 10:22:49 am
I listened to Micah Hanks once on a "Binnall of America" podcast several years ago and that was enough for me. It was clear that he didn't know what he was talking about.
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Uncle Ron
1/31/2019 11:19:12 am
Another aspect of the situation is that scientific research/experiments are tightly controlled to produce hard data. "Mainstream" science can investigate the question of what happens when you do this to that, determine the answer, and the topic is settled. Anomalies and paranormal phenomena, by definition, lie outside conventional investigative methodologies, and experiments do not produce unassailable results. If scientists can't have confidence in the veracity of the data/results they are not likely to bother doing the research.
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V
2/1/2019 01:49:53 pm
There's also the fact that it's not really an anomaly just because some random person doesn't know what it is. It has to first be proven to BE an anomaly before it can be investigated as one, and most of the claims don't really hold up for that.
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Aaa
1/31/2019 12:42:05 pm
_another poll found that the vast majority of Americans believe in at least one pseudoscientific claim_
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Anhydrous Cool "Disco" Dan
1/31/2019 01:03:05 pm
Asking for an explanation is putting the cart between the horse. First you have to prove something exists. "Dark matter" and "dark energy" have not been proven to exist. They have merely been postulated to exist by scientists who realize the data doesn't match the model.
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V
2/1/2019 01:53:35 pm
And your very statement proves you wrong. It's not that scientific models can't explain 95% of the universe; the explanation IS dark matter and dark energy. It's simply that science has not yet managed to FIND dark matter and dark energy. It's like saying you can't explain cooking because you don't know why water bubbles when it boils--you still know it's boiling when you SEE it, so you can't say "it does something and nobody knows what."
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Argumentative Cool "Disco" dan
2/1/2019 02:58:16 pm
You make my point, You can indeed see boiling water, but no one has found "dark matter" or "dark energy" nor has either been proven to exist; further, no one has proven that they MUST exist. They are simply a possible explanation for the universe not behaving the way scientists expect. 1/31/2019 04:49:09 pm
I went on the Mysterious Universe site to reply to Micah's post and discovered I am banned. How about that? I have never been a troll or broken any rules yet they don't like criticism at all. So I'll post a reply here.
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ANTARCTIC COOL "DISCO" DAN
1/31/2019 05:02:48 pm
Coincidentally, there is another Sharon Hill who runs a skeptic website called “I Doubt It.” Small world, huh?
Reply
1/31/2019 05:08:13 pm
No there isn't.
Affable Cool "Disco" Dan
1/31/2019 11:16:41 pm
Wow, the scythe of deletion certainly does not discriminate!
An Anonymous Nerd
1/31/2019 11:02:17 pm
I posted something not-too-dissimilar. We'll see what happens. Comments over there need to be approved.
Reply
DO YOU WANT TO BELIEVE?
1/31/2019 07:35:00 pm
Carl Sagan had the Loch Ness Monster as a pet
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Riley V
2/1/2019 12:45:01 am
When you talk about Joe/Mary Schmos’ belief in the Paranormal include Religion. I’ll bet that number shoots way up.
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Doc Rock
2/1/2019 01:01:06 pm
Yesterday I listened in as two friends had an extended conversation about Burrows Cave. Both are convinced that he was on to something even though two years ago I discussed this issue at length with the same two people. One of the guys even grew up about six blocks from burrows who had a reputation as a crackpot and con artist long before his "discovery."
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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