Demon Haunted World

Demon Haunted Did you ever watch people as they are checking out at the grocery store and push their cart by the gossip rags that declare, "Man with Six Heads Found in Utah," or "Aliens Revisit Woman for Tenth Year in a Row"? Even if not buying the paper, the shopper often either picks it up and reads some of the stories or steals a look when it appears that no one is looking. There is something about the strange and unusual that attracts people.

At best, individuals read the stories and laugh. In the worse case scenario, they actually believe the articles. Unfortunately, says popular scientist Paul Sagan, too frequently people do not have enough skepticism and will accept bunk as truth. Demon-Haunted: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Sagan's last book before his death last year, discredits such pseudo-scientific beliefs as faith-healing, palm-reading and alien abductions and condemns those who are gullible and easily misguided.

He says that the demon-haunted world is one where people would much rather hear and believe unbelievable stories like the 900-year-old-man found alive in the mountains than understand some of the basic premises of science and technology. Because of his true love and belief in science, Sagan took it personally anytime anyone would yawn at science but would instead become intrigued with something like the strange powers of the pyramids.

In the book, he notes that belief in the supernatural may have deep psychological sources, but it is maintained by people's lack of understanding of the scientific method. Pseudo-science adopts something like the posture of science, but actually is simply an impostor. Candle in the Dark is the title of a mostly Biblically-based book published in 1656 that attacked witch hunts as a scam "to delude the people." The author, Thomas Ady, decried the fact that anything out of the ordinary was attributed to witchcraft.

"For much of our history, we were so fearful of the outside world, with its unpredictable dangers, that we gladly embraced anything that promised to soften or explain away the terror," writes Sagan. It does not appear that humans have come very far since then.

Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.

A large number of the book's pages cover the supposed truth behind hoaxes in addition to a precise instruction in the ebbing art of skepticism. For example, the planet of Mars is always good for a pseudo-scientific story.

The tabloid Weekly World News for September 14, 1993, had a huge front page spread about how the "New NASA Photo Proves Humans Lived on Mars!" A fake face, supposedly taken by Mars Observer in its Mars orbit (despite the fact that the spacecraft failed before achieving orbit) was said to prove that beings colonized Earth 200,000 years ago. Other examples are the strange-looking vegetable or a pattern of wood grain or the hide of a cow that resemble a human face.

In fact, there even was a celebrated eggplant that closely resembled President Richard M. Nixon. In what the he calls "The Fine Art of Baloney Dectection" Sagan teaches the reader everything from possible ways to interpret reports of alien abductions, to the design of reading horoscopes to the ins and outs of crop circles.

In order to help people better choose between what is factual and what is a falsehood, he offers a few recommendations: Before making a decision of information, obtain independent confirmation of the facts; facilitate significant debate on the subject by knowledgeable persons, especially if the subject is controversial in nature; define and analyze more than one hypothesis and do not accept something as true unless all, not most, of the arguments work. Sagan admits that even scientists can make mistakes, despite following logical progressions as those noted above.

As an example, he states he had believed that when Iraq burned the Kuwaiti oil wells in 1991, the smoke might be enough to disrupt agriculture. Although the sky was dark at noon and the Persian Gulf temperatures fell several degrees, not enough pollution reached the stratosphere to cause serious long-term disruption. In comparing the two "sciences," Sagan states in particular that science is skeptical about arguments from authority. It questions everything and everyone. Pseudo-science, however, fails to be skeptical and questioning and instead accepts authority too easily.

Were someone to apply the tools of skepticism to claims about the supernatural, UFOs, and alien abductions, they would quickly dissolve. Much of the book is an application of those acid tools, and a very effective dissolution of claims. In Demon-Haunted World, Sagan's typical approach is to argue that people who report being abducted by aliens, or having recently met Elvis, are deluded or are lying. That is, he attacks the very core of these people's authority, questioning their truthfulness over and over again.

Sagan says that skepticism should and does also exist in science, but it is different than that for pseudo-science. In the former, questions about people's truthfulness do not arise at the beginning of the skeptical process -- at least not in public -- but only after many other possibilities have been explored.

It is part of the learning process of science that scientists assume that their colleagues are telling the truth about what they have done and what data they have collected, unless there is strong evidence of deception or delusion. Accusations of fraud are rare. Skepticism in science is more typically aimed at the effectiveness of reasoning, the logic of techniques, and the concern of contamination. On those fronts, research.