NZ Skeptics Articles

And on Planet Earth, the Skeptics are the real Aliens

Matt McGlone - 1 August 1990

A talk given to the 1989 NZCSICOP Conference, Christchurch

Two years ago, at the Wellington Conference of this august society, I presented a talk detailing my harrowing experiences with the archetypal occult science-—astrology. In the course of that talk I made a plea for us to better understand the needs, hopes and wishes of those who reject the saving grace of logical thought. Jt was my opinion then that unless we understood and addressed those deep and often unarticulated motivations we were simply, and rather self-indulgently, wasting our time.

Whenever possible, I like to take my own advice. As a result I have spent the last two years idly flicking through magazines, reading novels, watching films, watching TV, lying staring at the ceiling and thinking about Life—in other words, doing research on the problem. And I’m here today to—in the words of professional motivators, ministers of religion, and caring people of all stripes—I’m here to share my preliminary findings with you.

I’ve found in the course of my research that it is just as important to know who we are as it is to know who they are. So, I’ll spend almost as much time talking about us as I’m going to spend talking about them. Even on the basis of this short discourse it is obvious that I’ll need a term both for them, and for us. And this I find particularly difficult because we are used to thinking of ourselves as perhaps a little brighter, a little more educated, a little more self-motivated than the average but, in all essentials, pretty much one with all humanity. Now this would have come as a great shock to most of you if my title hadn’t revealed all (due I might add to Denis Dutton’s insistence on the sensational—a little weird, don’t you think, in a Skeptic?), but it’s not them who are strange, but us. Now this insight pretty much dictated the term I’ll use for the Great Unwashed, the Gullible Consumers of Quackery, the supporters of Astrology, Colonic Irrigation, Herbalism, Pesticidiphobia, UFOs, and the vague feeling that there must be something out there, somewhere, or it doesn’t make any sense, does it? These unfortunates are quite naturally called the normals.

And then there is the rest; us, in other words. What are we? Let’s attempt a short description.

We are high minded, scientifically literate individuals, who look about us and see that the world is full of error and delusion. Not only is there deliberate deceit and sham—

sometimes done for gain, but more often just for personal gratification—but there is mass ignorance of the very fundamentals of the world about us. There seems to be no end to the silliness which assails us on every side. And our preferred solution is education. Education—let’s call it Salutary Education—by exposure of the deceitful and misguided, and Education of the Mass to a Higher Level. To us the truth is liberating: expose the people to it, and it will prevail.

It is quite obvious from this brief description what we should call this group: the aliens.

In this brief presentation I’ll look at what normals are, how many there are of them, and why, in essence, there is little hope for them. 1’ll then try and picture us as the normals see us; why we are aliens, in other words. And finally, I will talk about what we aliens can do to help these poor normal earthlings who are so obviously struggling without us.

The Normals

So, let’s do what we do best—examining in a caring way the gullible and ignorant public. Being scientifically literate is certainly not an absolutely necessary part of being alien, but most aliens are, nonetheless. Every so often a survey is carried out of public scientific literacy. This is no mere exploration of views out of idle curiosity; it is a rather transparent device by aliens to scare normals into providing more money for Science, their favorite charity. Naturally enough, the results are always horrific, and make headlines around the world. But what is this “scientific literacy”? Jon Miller of the Public Opinion Laboratory at Northern Illinois University believes that there are three criteria, three components to scientific literacy:

  1. Understanding the scientific method;

  2. Knowing its common vocabulary;

  3. Appreciating its social impact.

By using these three criteria, Miller estimates that about 7% of the adult population of the United States was scientifically literate in 1979. You probably don’t need to be told that most of these scientifically literate individuals were primarily males, older than 35, and university graduates. In 1985 Miller did another study and estimated that 5% of the adult population was scientifically literate, a significant decline, but probably not of any great importance. Miller’s point is that scientific literacy is low, and informal, science-based education in the media—which has intensified over the last few decades—has certainly not created an increasingly literate population, and may even have led to a minor decline.

A somewhat larger percentage of the population could be defined as a ‘scientifically attentive public’. These are people who are self-confessedly interested in science, would from preference turn to a scientific article in a newspaper, and probably understand enough to enjoy it. I’m guessing here, but I’m sure that this group would probably reject out of hand the more outrageous aspects of the paranormal—such as astrology, UFOs, channelling, etc. This group may make up to 15% of the population, but the definition is more subjective and therefore somewhat hazy. If we assume that all aliens are either scientifically literate, or scientifically attentive, we can estimate that aliens cannot be more than 20% of the population, and are probably not less than 5%. I’m not denying that both scientifically literate or attentive individuals are often normals, but I make the simplifying assumption that a numerically equivalent number of scientific illiterates possess logical skills which make them aliens nonetheless. So, let’s say that the normals make up something like 95-80% of the population. What do these mostly scientifically illiterate folk believe in?

You will all be familiar with the depressing lists of topics they haven’t a clue about. Something like 25% apparently don’t know that the earth goes around the sun once a year; they prefer once a day, once a month or would rather not have to answer trick questions. Most seem to believe that antibiotics are effective against viruses; a very large percentage are convinced that nuclear power stations cause acid rain. There are some bright spots; an impressive number seem to know that hot air rises—almost 98% in fact. But by and large it’s enough to make an educator weep.

But, I can hear you cry, when all is said and done, these are just questions. Surely, in practice, normals do know which way is up, in an intuitive fashion of course, and one not easily tested in questionnaires.

I’d like to believe it, but it doesn’t seem to be true. Some careful experiments have been performed which show that beliefs about the nature of the physical world do affect how one acts. For instance, if you believe in the medieval ‘impetus’ theory which states that an object continues in its motion until it runs out of impetus, and that it will continue the type of motion imparted to it, you will have problems in situations where this knowledge is important. And this truth can be experimentally demonstrated. For instance, only 50% of a group of university students in one set of experiments could correctly predict the path that a ball whirled about on a string would take when the string broke. About one third believed that the ball would continue curving away in ever widening circles; and another 20% suggested other incorrect options. When tested with an experimental set-up which was dependent on being able to correctly predict how a ball would move after release, about half the students failed. One even volunteered the information that when he had first used a sling, he had broken a window because of his incorrect assumption as to the path of ball. Likewise, when instructed to move over a target and to drop a ball so as to hit it, almost half the students dropped the ball when directly over the target, omitting to account for their own speed. One even deliberately moved past the target before dropping the ball, believing that the ball would move backwards as it fell.

Most of us have never had to take a serious interest in bomb-aiming, so we could perhaps argue that these experiments are irrelevant as far as everyday life is concerned. But in fact, when actual life and death issues arise, the problem seems to be even greater. Just to choose one example. I don’t think any of us will forget the unpleasant reaction of many normals to AIDS victims. Even professional health personnel, who should have been able to understand the clear message that the researchers were giving, panicked. Interestingly, I believe that it wasn’t until supernormals like Princess Di and politicians and film-stars were seen touching AIDS victims that the hysteria died down. And the message is clear enough: scientists can burble on all they like, but it’s the supernormals—and who can be more supernormal than Princess Di?—that the normals trust and follow.

Lack of knowledge does flow over into behaviour. But, if it really mattered, I hear you insist, people would pick up the necessary information and use it. Not necessarily so. I can hardly think of anything which more really matters to the normals than money. Those of you who were here in the years immediately before the 1987 stock-market crash witnessed the unedifying spectacle of an entire nation being taken to the cleaners by a set of flim-flam artists who promised the earth for a one buck share in their particular sandcastle. There were we persecuting harmless UFO addicts, while people who apparently believed that the laws of thermodynamics had been suspended for New Zealand’s benefit by unknown forces were nauseatingly idolised in the gutter and serious press alike. The normals simply didn’t understand what was being proposed: they just knew that they could keep on making money for ever—or at least until they needed it to ‘start a new life in Queensland’.

Money madness, or at least hope of substantial gain, clearly is enough to turn normals into illogical beasts. For example, most of you would have had the unpleasant experience of receiving a chain letter. I recently received one which announced that it wasn’t an ordinary chain letter, largely on the grounds that it would help my child’s education. There then followed a perfectly ordinary chain letter, which, instead of insisting that I send 500 dollars to the stranger at the top of the list and seven weeks later become a millionaire (or offering nothing but bad luck for many years if I failed to inflict a copy of the letter on a hapless friend), suggested that I send an unwanted story book to a stranger at the top of the address list, and promised that later I would receive a large number of unwanted story books for my child’s delight and edification.

Now, the disappointing thing for me is that I have a fair number of normals among my friends. And these aren’t your common or garden normals, but rather people who have been exposed to the best education the universities of this country can offer. Even so, some of these people haven’t grasped the stupidity of chain letters. People who would not steal to save themselves, seem to think that this transparent device for theft is somehow all right. In other words, in spite of being capable of simple arithmetic, they can’t apply it. Instead they have hit on the eminently normal concept that it’s somehow wrong to do it for money, but it’s OK, and will work, if you do it for something worthy, or for tea-towels or any other cheap item you may just happen to need a thousand or so of in a few wecks. The very fact that chain letter-like devices, such as pyramid selling, or Aeroplane, or the Champagne Club, have had to be outlawed by legislation, rather than being laughed out of existence, is powerful testimony to the fact that very large numbers of people in this country are not only ignorant, they act as though they are ignorant.

I’ve worked your basic university-trained normal into this discussion. Let’s broaden it to include the very pinnacle of normaldom: the normal professional.

You will be aware that the courts are increasingly calling on the help of psychologists and psychiatrists to assist with their deliberations. And psychologists and psychiatrists have put on a proper show, claiming that they know something that we don’t about the state of some poor unfortunate’s mind shortly before he or she came to the notice of the courts. A recent review of the evidence (American, as usual, but still relevant) came to the following conclusion:

“Professional psychologists and psychiatrists do not make any more accurate clinical judgements than laypersons. Lay interviewers using standardized questions produced information of equal or greater validity than psychiatrists conducting interviews in their preferred manner. Amount of clinical training and experience is not related at all to clinical accuracy. In contrast, actuarial methods, which eliminate the human judge, and base conclusions solely on empirically established frequencies, consistently equal or outperform professionals and laypersons alike.”

[Faust, D.; Ziskin, J. Science 241:31-35]

And here is the most telling conclusion:

“The expert will most likely move the jury further from the truth, not closer to it, given the common tendency for them to overrule actuarial conclusions.”

The authors discuss why this state of affairs should be so, and list the following as being depressingly common:

“Training and experience are unrelated to accuracy. The expert, misled by subjective self-appraisal and illusory belief, and unshaken by massive negative scientific evidence, attempts to persuade jurors to share the same misplaced faith in false markers. The expert’s persuasive effort may well succeed because it aligns so closely with common belief.”

I wouldn’t like you to think that I’m solely picking on psychology and psychiatry, which after all haven’t enjoyed a brilliant press over the years. The problems which I speak of extend to all scientifically-based professions—in fact whenever trained personnel abandon sceptical attitudes towards their work and begin to allow other normal considerations to predominate. For instance, the NASA engineers and managers were under great pressure to demonstrate that the Space Shuttle programme could be profitable. The long term failure rate of the boosters used to launch the shuttles was 1:50. Despite this, after some internal readjustment of the figures, NASA claimed that the risks of a launch failure were 1:100,000. There are two boosters used per shuttle launch and the Challenger disaster came in right on time on launch 25.

But even simple scientific knowledge which one would think would be routine in their jobs seems to have eluded some professionals. In California a truck recently lost a 20kg bag onto a freeway, and the chemical dust within spilled and began to coat the road surface. The highway patrol had no problem identifying the substance; the bag was Clearly marked ‘iron oxide’. The freeway was closed, and Hazardous Incident Response team arrived. Once they had checked the dust, established that it was a toxic, and hazardous substance, they called for ‘International Technology’—a toxic waste management company. They brought in two 22m long, cleanup trucks, closed the freeway for 8 hours, and completely removed the dust. Later, some doubtlessly alien scientists questioned the need for such precautions for, what is, when all is said and done, merely rust. The assistant director of the county’s Environmental Health Department waxed eloquent:

“The next time, the scientist who said it was not toxic can go out front on a rope and check it out without the proper equipment. If we had the same situation again we would shut down the freeway.”

Now this statement is very informative about normal attitudes for three reasons:

First, none of the people involved in the cleanup can have had, or retained, anything approaching a 5th form-level grounding in chemistry;

Second, the angry and contemptuous response shows that the official obviously didn’t believe that he should have had this sort of information in his head, or at least at his fingertips;

Third, his anger at the know-it-all scientists shows he is not aware of the kind of knowledge that they regard as second-nature. He sees their attitude as not coming from superior chemical knowledge but from a kind of dangerous hubris. He cannot have been aware that most scientists, having seen the label on the bag, and having looked at the metallic dust, would have been happy to have cleaned it up with their hands with no concern at all, indeed if cleaned up at all it had to be.

Why are normals the way they are?

I’ve followed the Skeptic’s habitual path up until now, doing what we do best: poking a little fund at the normals. But what are they really like? What makes them tick? P’ll make a set of assertions about them, and justify them as I go; assertions which I believe contain some clue to their thinking and behaviour.

Assertion 1: Lack of intelligence has nothing to do with it.

Let’s face it, they are capable of logical thought, they intuitively can make inductive inferences. If you shortchange them, many will realise it (which is more than you can say for many aliens). An impressive number can open a car without the aid of a key and drive it away, a feat impossible for most aliens. So let’s get it clear: absence of logical ability or low intelligence is obviously not the reason why they are ignorant of many things and concepts which aliens regard as essential.

Assertion 2: They have Enormous Problems with Probability.

We aliens know that a lucky streak is just a run of coincidences; normals won’t accept this. We’ll accept that occasionally there’ll be a cluster of birth abnormalities; not so our normal friends—they’ll be out witch-hunting before the ink is dry on the paper. Normals love statements such as ‘the chances against this happening are one billion to one’ if, for instance, two planes carrying only penguins collided over the Sahara. Us aliens, while accepting the Statement as a reasonable guesstimate, find it essentially uninteresting, as we know that there are an infinity of improbable things out there waiting to happen.

But we cannot simply dismiss the probability issue like that, as a misunderstanding. The matter is not one of misjudging the frequency of events, but an active process of modifying what would be the logical probabilistic inference to draw from a given situation. Let me give an example:

Linda is thirty-one years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. Her university major was philosophy. As a student she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also took part in anti-nuclear demonstrations.

Which is the least probable of the following statements:

  1. Linda is active in the feminist movement;

  2. Linda is a bank teller;

  3. Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement.

Now it is an unfortunate fact that most aliens perform as poorly in this little test as most real folk. All of you would have realised that the third statement must be the least probable, as no composite statement can be more probable than its constituent parts. But didn’t at least some of you, while facing the iron logic of probability, have a nagging voice inside your head saying something like ‘Hey, she can’t just be a bank teller, read the description. She’s got to be a feminist as well.’ If we have these sorts of problems with probability, imagine the desperate situation faced by the normals. In fact, I tried this test out on some normals before giving this talk, and two of them unhesitatingly picked statement 3 as the least probable. More than a little surprised, I asked for their reasons. The answers were along the lines of ‘A bank teller is highly unlikely to be a feminist’. Let’s face it: both aliens and normals tend to judge according to types, rather than according to strict logic.

We now draw the most important conclusion about normals. Probability plays no part in their thinking; the world would be a better place if it did, but that’s the way it goes. So let’s move on to our third assertion.

Assertion 3: Normals find Meaning in the World.

A passenger plane has crashed. Many are killed. The media, after dwelling as long as is considered newsworthy on the details of the crash, switch suddenly to the totally irrelevant aspects of the disaster. And the irrelevant aspect of the disaster that I most like is all those people who weren’t on the plane. All 5 billion of us, minus a couple of hundred. But to be fair, it’s usually the handful who were going to get on the plane, but at the last moment changed their minds. Now, while I can accept that someone being on a plane can in some way be linked to it crashing, or even that someone who should be on the plane—let’s say the pilot—but wasn’t, can conceivably be relevant, but I cannot accept that your average passenger who wasn’t anywhere near the plane can have anything to do with the matter. I suppose it’s the vicarious thrill of the near miss which initially attracts the media. However, there is also the subliminal message to all prospective travellers by air: ‘Sometimes if you change your mind about travelling on a particular plane, everyone on it will die horribly, but not you.’ Alien luck being what it is, we are sure to change to the death plane, so the message isn’t of much value to us.

It would be a mistake to see this sort of story as another case of the media trying to get a little more out of a disaster by scraping the bottom of the emotional barrel. The media—and never forget this—have much surer instincts than any alien ever will. Not getting on the ‘death plane’ is the story to many people. You see, nothing like that can ever be the result of random probability working away quietly. They were tapped by fate on the shoulder, but, for whatever reason, they cheated death. They were preserved by a force which varies according to the exact nature of their belief system, but is never called by its true name, chance,

Aliens, trusting in probability, don’t seek meaning in random patterns. We bolster ourselves against fate with the comforting thought that the probability of being burnt alive on any particular flight is very low. Not so the normals: they get comfort from the fact that they are too young to die; that they are good people, and always say their prayers; or from their rabbit’s foot; or by positive thinking; or just by constantly changing their booking so as to avoid the death plane.

But why do normals seek meaning in a meaningless universe? What could possibly prompt this strange behaviour? And isn’t it dangerous? Actually, the normal approach to the world is, in its own terms, highly rational. The reason that we are intelligent creatures is not so we can indulge an insatiable curiosity about the world, but so we can better understand, communicate with, and anticipate the behaviour of our fellow humans. And that, by the way, is why psychologists and psychiatrists perform so badly: we know it all already, so they have to look bad in comparison.

Now, it is a fact that in the closed world of human relationships and communication that there is precious little randomness. Let me demonstrate. You are talking to an acquaintance who suddenly glances at the wrist which bears her watch. Being a good alien, you realise that there are a multitude of reasons why people glance at their watch-bearing wrists. Here are some:

  1. A sudden irritation on the wrist made them check to see if an insect had landed.

  2. A movement of the head coincided with a random twist of the wrist.

  3. They weren’t actually looking at the wrist, but at the floor, and moved the wrist slightly to obtain a better view.

  4. They have a rule—which they never break—of checking the time at regular intervals.

  5. They genuinely wished to know what the time was, but for no reason.

  6. They are bored stiff, wish that you would shut up and let them go, but they are too polite to tell you.

Why do we leap to 6 every time? And why are we right 9 times out of 10? Now, this is a trivial example of the meaning-packed interchanges which go on all the time. And it’s vital that we get them right. If we don’t, life would become unpleasant and difficult.

The truth is that we do not think in terms of probability, because we are primarily designed to relate to other human beings, beings which we know intimately because they are us. Our reasoning is based on what we know about this person, or this type of person, not on random occurrences, not on statistical probabilities.

A side effect of this propensity is that we tend to use the same personalized, internalized logic when thinking about the external world. A bloody moon, crows flying to the east at dawn, an economic forecast, diseased entrails from a slaughtered beast, a few points movement on the stock exchange: we can see none of these as the random, meaningless events they truly are, but they say something to us, have meaning for us personally. The normals live in a world full of patterns, a world suffused with meaning.

Assertion 4: Normals believe what they see.

Seeing is very important for communication, even when it is not involved in carrying the primary message. We all have a range of emotional signals which are given by our faces, by our bodies. We Jack the measure of control over these signals that we have over our verbal messages. And that’s the whole point; we are not meant to control them. The whole idea is that these signals are automatic; they do for us quickly and effectively what would take much longer if it had to be thought out and expressed verbally. In the quicksilver world of human interactions, the subtle but expressive clues which chase across our faces and constantly rearrange our limbs convey by far the most important part of most human communications.

It’s become a truism that television predominates in popular normal culture. But the reason that it has the power to make or break politicians or to transform our lives is because it deals almost exclusively with the seen not the heard part of the message. Reading is just another way of hearing a message: this is why aliens have never taken to television, and flaunt it as a badge of pride that they ‘listen to the radio’. Aliens discount the visual part of the message and so habitually misinterpret television, and thus are bored by it.

It is worth knowing how the different media forms function, for normal and alien alike. The principle function of radio is to tell us that something has happened; print gives us the details, the what and why of what happened; but television give us the most important message of all—it tells us what we should feel about the event. Radio alerts us; print informs us; but television moves us.

So there you have your normals. They are not dumb, but they have a great deal of trouble with the concept and practice of probabilistic thinking. They find meaning in the world, and they believe what they see, and they feel what they believe.

Enter the aliens

“He neglects his family—pays no attention to his wife, never plays with his children. He has no social life, no other intellectual interests…He bores his wife, his children, and their friends…He is always running off to his laboratory. He may force his children to become scientists also.’

You may recognize yourself in this. It is the very negative impression of scientists gleaned from a survey of 35,000 American high school students, but it applies in its general thrust pretty well to most aliens.

You may have seen the image of the scientifically literate or adept in recent films. One of my favourites is Dawn of the Living Dead, made in 1980. The dead are rising from their graves, biting large hunks of flesh from the living, who then die, only to rise again and begin the cycle afresh. Like pyramid-selling, it gets out of hand pretty quick. At the beginning of the film, shortly before the collapse of civilization as the living understand it, a TV interviewer is talking to a scientific expert about the situation. The scientist, despairing and exhausted in the face of an intractable situation, still asserts the faith of experts everywhere, ‘We’ve got to remain rational,’ he says, ‘logical, logical, logical…’. He sinks into hypnotic repetition of ‘logical’ and the interviewer’s voice rises above his: ‘Scientists always think in those kinda terms. It doesn’t work that way. That’s not how people really are.’

And as ever in the horror movie, the scientist doesn’t even hear him. ‘Logical’ he continues, ‘we have no choice. It has to be that way. It’s that or the end.’ And of course, as ever in horror movies, it is the end. I think that the most common image of a scientist—or the archetypal alien in our terms—is just that: the logician, who can sometimes come with the answers but, more often than not, is simply part of the problem. But whenever the action begins, the scientist is pushed to one side by the normal heroes who understand the real world, the world inaccessible to the scientist, walled off from it by his logical but narrow intellect. When a scientist is sympathetically portrayed, it is transparently a normal in drag. A cute marine biologist playing with dolphins, foam sparkling in his downy golden beard; or a glamorous woman, patiently stalking and empathising with the biggest male creatures she can find: lions, elephants—or most resonant of all—gorillas. In other words, just regular guys enjoying themselves with the sorts of creatures which get a good press. It’s the pale, bulgyeyed gook with the bottle-bottom glasses who studies bugs.

Why are we so alien?

To some extent it’s a dress style: styleless clothes, off the shelf and no gold chains or bone pendants, no flash. But more importantly it’s the way we interact; always arguing, disputing, never checking the body language to see if we are mortally offending someone. We are not very visual; we prefer to listen to classical music on the CD, not a rock video on the box. If we write, our publications are notorious for lacking much in the way of visual aids—we just have graphs, charts and tables as a general rule—and we seem to like it that way. We get a bit sniffy about the colour pictorial version with the neat 3-d graphs. But most damning of all, we will not take personal testimony—even if it is laced with emotion and dripping with plausibility—as anything but unsubstantiated anecdote.

My feeling of being a complete alien came of age when I was introduced to an accomplished acupuncturist. Being an alien I asked her, by way of a polite opener, if she had ever been moved to test the efficacy of her treatment by Say, sticking a needle in the toe, when it was meant to go in the ear. I was surprised by the anger both my inquiry and the subsequent conversation elicited. She was devoted to curing people, not experimenting on them. She had seen that it worked, knew that it worked, and saw no need to bolster her conviction with any further evidence. I replied that this was not enough for me; a little bit of solid testing was what I was after, not personal testimony. This was too much. Everyone in the room united against me. In the course of a relatively brief conversation I had broken every normal rule in the book, and established myself as an alien. Now, I have to admit that I am extremely sceptical about acupuncture and regard its easy partial acceptance by the medical profession as entirely due to the fact that both groups of practitioners always end up sticking needles of one sort of another into people, thus establishing a bond of fellow feeling. Nevertheless, like all of you, I’m ready to be convinced otherwise, and am always disappointed by the response.

The truth is that the idea that their eyes have let them down, that their personal experience is somehow false, is enormously upsetting to normals. Kill the messenger is the time honoured unwritten law of the normals, and we must always remember this.

Well, where does this excursion into the murky comparative psychology of the normal and alien worlds Ieave us? And what can we Skeptics, as the organized wing of the aliens, do to help the normals?

1. Admit that you are an alien

This is a great step forward. As long as you insist in thinking of yourself as a slightly superior version of a normal, you are still in deep trouble. The communication problem will persist. So, every moming, say to yourself ‘I’m an alien and I’m proud of it’.

2. Give up any hope of correcting the world view of the normals

Let’s face it. What has at least 50 years of state-funded promotion of the scientific world view in the schools actually achieved? Most people are still pre-Galileo as far as their understanding of how the world functions. Many believe in an all-powerful deity who will suspend the normal workings of the universe to assist a self-confessedly unworthy supplicant. Perhaps 15% of the population can stagger through a popular scientific article with some understanding of the topic.

Think about it. What do we have to show for this immense effort in public education other than a dinosaur craze among the tots; a huge and growing fear of pesticides, fluoride, radiation, and anything artificial in food; and an almost religious belief that whales and dolphins are extremely intelligent, when they are probably dumber than cows? It is the normals that force the Department of Conservation—against it’s better judgement, I’m sure—to push whales, which are obviously intent on dying, back into the water, or to truck them around the country at great expense, when the logical, (dare I say it) the alien thing to do would be to shoot them and get some free dog tucker.

Science does flourish, but only as a handmaiden to progress, and as an icon of the modern age. Look at that sacramental machine of the modern age, the personal computer. The classrooms of this country are filling up with useless PCs because normals are convinced that they somehow hold the key to their child’s progress. ‘Books, what good are they? What the lad needs is a computer.‘

3. Cultivate young aliens

Every generation through whatever process—faulty genetics, poor upbringing—produces a crop of new aliens. Let’s encourage them, tender flowers, and help them understand their true alien nature and strange, hopeless mission.

4. Remember what impresses the normals

Normals like to see things. They believe in people they can trust—people with wideset eyes, full heads of hair, sincere smiles and good teeth. They like a little humour as well—so let them know that ‘Hey, we can have a little fun too!” They like a show as well, especially if they can be on the side of the lions.

5. Remember what doesn’t impress the normals

Anything boring, or anything difficult. It’s OK to say something is difficult, but never attempt to explain it if it’ll take more than one minute. Meanness and unfairness doesn’t impress the normals. Everybody is entitled to a say, no matter how stupid what they say is, as long as they don’t take too long about it. And above all, they hate whiners.

The Conclusion

Some of you will by now be wondering where all this is leading, what’s the message? So, here’s the message.

We can’t change them. We can only hope to cut back some of the more outrageous and harmful forms of behaviour they indulge in. Denis Dutton has known this for a very long time, having been brought up in Hollywood. But I actually thought that we would be able to educate the normals. I was wrong. So, let’s follow the Great Denis Dutton Principle which is, as far as I can make out, something like this: “Get at them, but have a little fun while you do it’.

So, let’s not be too serious. And let’s not be too accommodating. Where some particularly egregious nonsense needs the boot, put it in. My own predilection is not to stop with the merely paranormal farrago. Think of all the other nonsense out there: Macroeconomics; the Breed a Better Baby bunch; the ‘Pesticides are all that ails us’ lobby; the whole ‘New Age’ sham; etc, ctc.—all ripe for a bit of skeptical rubbishing.

We will surely hear the age-old normal cry of “What harm were they doing?’ I admit that in the past I’ve tended to cringe a bit at this, backed off, and in my most serious voice intoned ‘It’s only the charlatans and crooks I’m after’.

Perhaps now we can straighten up and say: “They were doing no harm at all. It’s just that they are so silly I thought I’d have a bit of fun with them’.

Postscript

In his after-dinner speech at the conference, media commentator, Brian Priestly, chided us for being middle-class, and for laughing at unfortunates who after all are doing no harm and perhaps getting a little solace from the paranormal. He also posed the question of with what we intended to replace their present misplaced faith.

I personally intend to do nothing about being middle-class, and, as the above has made clear, will continue to ridicule silly, dangerous beliefs about the world. However, his challenge about what to replace the faith of the normals with is a serious one. This is my next project. I’ve always wanted to found a world religion.

References

Michael McClosky, Intuitive Physics, Scientific American, 1987 248: 589-592.

Scientific Literacy: a special report. How much science does the Public understand? American Scientist, 76: 439-449.

David Faust and Jay Ziskin, The expert witness in psychology and psychiatry, Science, 1988 241: 31-35.

Andrew Tudor, Seeing the worst side of science, Nature, 1989 340: 589-592.