Soundbites for the active skeptic

At the 2013 NZ Skeptic Conference Vicki Hyde presented a series of soundbites and talking points skeptics can use in discussions with others. Here are some of them, presented as a smorgasbord of ideas to be dipped into.

To paraphrase Edmund Burke:

For a dangerous idiocy to succeed requires only that good people say nothing.

Here's what you can say, please always in a polite caring fashion.

About Skeptics and Skepticism

It's not that skeptics don't believe in anything, but that we try to maintain a balance between wide-eyed credulity and close-minded cynicism.

We see thinking critically as a creative, constructive, positive process - where you get to challenge what you think you know, identify assumptions and biases, evaluate what is presented, look for disproof that allows you to discard poorer explanations in favour of better ones, solve problems and suggest solutions.

I'm sure your strange experience was real - I've had some too - but that doesn't necessarily mean we always get the explanation right, assuming we get one at all.

Whether it's believing the promises of dodgy finance companies or thinking we've seen a ghost, we are all vulnerable to making mistakes, to being fooled - but that doesn't necessarily mean we're actually foolish.

The New Zealand Skeptics are the Consumers' Institute for the Mind.

Skeptics look for the most likely explanations, but we're happy to consider alternatives or accept the weird when the world is just plain weird at times.

Any skeptic would give their eye teeth for absolute proof of life after death or mind-to-mind communication or a perpetual energy machine. But the evidence has to be sufficiently compelling to be worth overturning everything we think we currently know about the world and how it works. That's a very big ask.

It would be great if there really was a moa out there or a Bigfoot; if the UFO landed in my backyard or better yet in front of the Beehive; if you really could cure cancer by waving a crystal at it. That sort of wonderful possibility is what keeps skeptics investigating claims - maybe one day that extraordinary thing will come up. But the proof will have to be equally extraordinary.

Think about all the things that happen to you in the course of a day. Do the maths and you should get a one-in-a-million experience - like a long-lost friend phoning you just when you were thinking about them - happen every couple of years on average. Seems amazing when it does, but it's not really that surprising.

Explain This!

There are people who genuinely believe they have paranormal powers, but although they may sincerely believe in what they are doing, a firm belief does not necessarily make it so.

With the information you've given me I can't explain your UFO sighting, but I think it's a pretty big jump to go from 'there's something in the sky I can't identify' to deciding that it must be an extraterrestrial spacecraft flown by aliens.

Having proof that there is alien intelligent life would be the biggest story ever - it would change everything, don't you think? So we should be really, really sure that that's what we've got here, right?

During the alien abduction fad in the 80s, the claimed abductee numbers meant that one American was being hauled up into a spacecraft every minute of every hour of every night for the previous 30 years or so. And yet not one decent photo, video or piece of souvenired alien artefact has ever been produced. Doesn't that seem odd to you?

But what about my auntie whose cancer was cured by prayer?

That's lovely for her. But there are thousands of people who die every day despite the fervent prayers of friends and family. Were all of them not worthy? What you've got to be careful about are those cases where people want to stop the medication and rely solely on prayer - that's when it gets dangerous and unethical. We've seen people - adults and kids - die when that happens.

But at least alternative cures don't cause any harm Take a look at the WhatsTheHarm.Net website. They've got a selection of examples from all around the world where people have been harmed by claims of the alternative health industry, the paranormal, and pseudo-science.

At last count, the website was citing 368,379 people killed, 306,096 injured and over $2,815,931,000 in economic damages in just the examples they cite. There are many many more.

We have cases here in New Zealand, like the poor lady last year whose scalp lesion was treated by an iridologist who bathed it in colloidal silver and picked out dead skin and bone to the point where the actual soft tissue of the brain was exposed. The victim refused conventional treatment for almost two years, and eventually died of the cancer.

But what about the Sensing Murder people who have revealed new info?

Well, the worldwide franchise for this exploitainment show hasn't provided any new information that wasn't already known to someone living. The police give out information to publicise the cases; anguished families are known to contact the psychics directly and tell them everything they know. There's even aired footage of the film crew prompting Kelvin Cruickshank to get things right when the psychic identifies a kid's drawing as a dog and you can clearly hear someone off-camera whisper, "It's a cat". That doesn't look like special powers to me'

But what about moa [ghosts, UFOs etc]? Prove they don't exist!

The problem is that you can't ever prove a negative, as there is always the possibility you might not have all of the evidence.

Do moa still live in New Zealand? To prove that they don't, you would have to undertake a ground search of every last inch of the country. That would be pretty hard … but that's not all. You'd have to make sure that this scrutiny was undertaken simultaneously right across the country, otherwise you'd be open to the Pythonesque argument that moa really are out there, they just nipped over to the other side of the hill when you weren't looking.

So turn the argument around - it is possible to prove a positive, and it's certainly a lot easier in this case. All you need to do is turn up with a genuine moa.

Why would people believe such weird things, pay for something that doesn't work…?

Sometimes it's something as simple as having been brought up in the faith, of whatever variety it may be. If you know of no other viewpoint or have no alternative source of information, you may well believe the Earth to be 6000 years old or that global cabals control everything.

Sometimes they are desperate for any kind of help or assistance, whether it' s from psychics claiming to be able to locate missing family members or parents searching for cancer cures for their children.

Sometimes they have paid over so much money to the likes of Nigerian scammers or herbalists they don' t dare believe that it might all be for naught. Sometimes they are just too polite to disagree. (Have you ever sent a bad restaurant meal back to the kitchen?)

Sowing Seeds of Doubt and Uncertainty

Ah yes, I watched Sensing Murder last night, but I feel really uncomfortable with the manipulation where the psychics use the same old tricks and techniques to make themselves look good. Those poor exploited families …

If clairvoyants really can see the future, it's a shame they didn't warn anyone about the Boxing Day tsunami, or 9/11. Poor old Princess Di was going to remarry and have two more kids - that was predicted just a week before she got into that car. Boy did they get that one wrong.

Yeah, I've heard claims that cellphone towers can maybe cause childhood cancer at the one-in-a-million kind of level, but I'm far more worried about those parents in their big SUVs doing U-turns outside the school every day.

Ken Ring keeps getting his earthquake predictions wrong. I wonder how many times he has to get it wrong before people stop listening to him?

I wonder why the psychics always talk to spirits with common names like John or Bill or Mary. They never seem to talk to a Peng, or a Mohammed or a Sanvi. The after-life must be European-only.

I used to think star-signs were harmless fun, but then I got to thinking that there's not much difference between disliking Scorpios and disliking Samoans - it's all just nasty stereotyping really. That's not so funny.

The New Zealand Council of Homeopaths have admitted there are no active ingredients in homeopathic products. No wonder it's called "the air guitar of medicine".

I think it's terrible that 94 percent of New Zealanders buying homoepathic products are being misled into thinking they are getting something real; it's a real rip- off to pay $10 a teaspoon for water with no active ingredients.

The alternative health industry is big business; "alternative, complementary or natural medicine" is just a marketing slogan for unproven products and services.

If the photos are blurry, perhaps you should reserve judgement about the Bigfoot body up for sale on EBay.

If the clinical trial has a sample size of 14, all carefully selected by the man looking to connect autism and vaccinations so he can sue Big Pharma, then it's not Big Pharma you should be wary of.

In the 16th century, people were plagued by night visits from demons who took them flying on broomsticks and fornicated with them; in the 1980s people were plagued by night visits from aliens who took them flying on spaceships and sexually interfered with them. Those experiences were genuine, but different times meant different explanations. Science now shows these experiences are down to basic human brain physiology, not demons or aliens. It's a fascinating discovery, and one which is very reassuring for the five percent or so of people who've had these experiences and thought they were going mad.

We do know there are people in the psychic industry who use non-psychic tactics to make it look like they have special powers. Check out the YouTube clip of Peter Popoff and his radio-supported messages from God, helping the hit rate at his faith-healing shows. Or Penn and Teller's footage of Rosemary Altea milking her audience for information for her psychic performances. That's pretty blatant.

If this were true, how would the world be different?

(Richard Lead, Australian Skeptics)

If clairvoyants could really tell the future, there should have been no deaths from the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami - people could have been warned.

If mediums could really talk to the dead, there should be no unsolved murders or arguments over inheritance.

If coffee enemas and Rife machines really worked, cancer should be a thing of the past.

If telepathy really worked, it would confer such handy advantages to telepaths in dating and mating that we should all have inherited these powers by now.

Talking to the Media

So why do you think 'balance' is needed when this story is about science, not about opinion or belief? Would you talk to a creation 'scientist' about why God made such bad rocks under Christchurch to 'balance' the ideas of a geologist?

If this psychic really was talking to the dead … if this machine really does cure cancer … if [insert major claim here] forget putting it in the Press, go straight for the New York Times. You'd get the front page and be up for a Pulitzer. Course, it would have to be true…"

Doing a piece on why psychics want to believe they have special powers would make far more interesting - and far more illuminating -television than any amount of exploitainment shows like Sensing Murder.

• Vicki Hyde is media spokesperson for the NZ Skeptics.