Aporism Reading Group discussion

Sagan opens the book with a passage that perfectly restates the impetus for my new blog. In it, he is picked up at an airport by a man (who Sagan jokingly gives the pseudonym "William F. Buckley") who was, as Sagan puts it, "well-spoken, intelligent, curious", and yet, had immersed himself in pseudoscience and fiction.

"He wanted to talk about frozen extraterrestrials languishing in an Air Force base near San Antonio, “channeling”[...], crystals, the prophecies of Nostradamus, astrology, the shroud of Turin … He introduced each portentous subject with buoyant enthusiasm. Each time I had to disappoint him: “The evidence is crummy,” I kept saying. “There’s a much simpler explanation.” [...] He was, in a way, widely read. He knew the various speculative nuances on, let’s say, the “sunken continents” of Atlantis and Lemuria. He had at his fingertips what underwater expeditions were supposedly just setting out to find the tumbled columns and broken minarets of a once-great civilization whose remains were now visited only by deep sea luminescent fish and giant kraken."
The Demon-Haunted World. Random House

I find it easy to forget that this is not a new issue. At some point, I naively believed that knowledge was the antidote to ignorance. I reasoned, in the early days of the internet, that soon we'd enter a new age of education and knowledge. With all the answers to life's questions available at your fingertips, how could ignorance possibly persist? If only it were so simple, but alas, bad information, too, can spread on the internet, just like it has been spreading since the advent of what we consider "media". The only difference is that, instead of the sale of cheap pulpy paperbacks, it's clicks that are the goal. The bait itself has not changed. Sagan goes on to say;


"Mr. “Buckley”—well-spoken, intelligent, curious—had heard virtually nothing of modern science. He had a natural appetite for the wonders of the Universe. He wanted to know about science. It’s just that all the science had gotten filtered out before it reached him. Our cultural motifs, our educational system, our communications media had failed this man. What the society permitted to trickle through was mainly pretense and confusion. It had never taught him how to distinguish real science from the cheap imitation. He knew nothing about how science works."

And that is really the crux of the problem, isn't it? Science education, in America at least, is failing. Somewhat ironically, as there has been a great cultural conversation on the role of "STEM" compared to the more liberal arts. And yet, most people in our society don't have a basic understanding on how science works in the first place. Even many high functioning, intelligent, successful people, those who approve of scientific thinking, do not actually understand why it is so useful. A little later in the chapter, Sagan says:



"Surveys suggest that some 95 percent of Americans are “scientifically illiterate.” That’s just the same fraction as those African Americans, almost all of them slaves, who were illiterate just before the Civil War—when severe penalties were in force for anyone who taught a slave to read."
The Demon-Haunted World. Random House

Sagan stops short of stating that, as was the case for slaves, illiteracy was used as a tool of control. An unscientific mind is an easy mark. He then turns to medicine as an objective defense of science. Particularly relevant to our era:

"But microorganisms mutate. New diseases spread like wildfire. There is a constant battle between microbial measures and human countermeasures. We keep pace in this competition not just by designing new drugs and treatments, but by penetrating progressively more deeply toward an understanding of the nature of life—basic research."
The Demon-Haunted World. Random House

Indeed, a very slim silver lining of the pandemic is that science communicators will have it in their toolbox for many decades before it's edge starts to dull. We developed a vaccine in less than a year. No war in the 21st century has killed more innocents than Coronavirus, not even close. It was both a Triumph for science, as well as a stark reminder that we ignore it at our literal peril.

And, even more relevantly, he moves to distrust of scientists. This is a real problem, particularly in this pandemic. We've seen a man that I, personally, consider to be a hero, Dr. Anthony Fauci, dragged through the mud as a conspirator, an actor, probably a lizardman as well. The sole cause of his character assassination were his attempts - in an extremely difficult and hostile executive environment - to communicate the scientific realities of Coronavirus to a violently ignorant public. Do I know if Dr. Fauci is in fact, not a lizardman? Well, no. But I do know that the things he has been saying are completely supported by objective scientific evidence. So it doesn't really matter if there is some grand conspiracy; he's telling the truth about coronavirus. Because the alternative is that the entire medical system - of the entire world, including country's hostile to our country's agenda - is engaged in the largest conspiracy in human history. Occam's razor makes short work of this ruin of an argument. We must not let political identities result in the outright rejection of scientific fact. That is why I am doing all of this.

What these people don't realize though is, as Sagan puts it:


"Pseudoscience is easier to contrive than science, because distracting confrontations with reality—where we cannot control the outcome of the comparison—are more readily avoided. The standards of argument, what passes for evidence, are much more relaxed. In part for these same reasons, it is much easier to present pseudoscience to the general public than science."
The Demon-Haunted World Random House

Sagan brings the chapter a close with a powerful message that I will definitely keep with me on this journey.

"Perhaps the sharpest distinction between science and pseudoscience is that science has a far keener appreciation of human imperfections and fallibility than does pseudoscience (or “inerrant” revelation). If we resolutely refuse to acknowledge where we are liable to fall into error, then we can confidently expect that error—even serious error, profound mistakes—will be our companion forever. But if we are capable of a little courageous self-assessment, whatever rueful reflections they may engender, our chances improve enormously. If we teach only the findings and products of science—no matter how useful and even inspiring they may be—without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish science from pseudoscience? Both then are presented as unsupported assertion. [...] The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science."
The Demon-Haunted World. Random House

And there it is. "The method of science... is far more important than the findings of science." I feel like this is what needs to be communicated to people, and how science classes utterly fail. Teaching the findings of science are important to understand the world, without a doubt. But if they are not built upon a foundational understanding of the scientific method, then both science and pseudoscience are both being presented as unsupported assertions.

I found this chapter illuminating, although it contained very little in the way of new information, it did sum up the problems in a very eloquent way.