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  • It's sometimes put to me that my work is mono-focused on religion.

  • I say look at the cloud behind that cloud.

  • My driving interest is psychology --

  • particularly issues around manipulation.

  • Religion crops up so much of the time

  • purely because it constitutes arguably the most systematic implementation of

  • psychological manipulation we're likely to encounter in our lives.

  • It's a smorgasbord of exploitation

  • but it's far from unique.

  • Here's another one:

  • pseudoscience -- systems of belief and practice falsely presented as fruits

  • of scientific method.

  • Like clouds, religion and pseudoscience can drift into each other.

  • But generally-speaking, there's no requirement in pseudoscience to believe

  • in any gods.

  • Nonetheless, the social and psychological parallels are remarkable.

  • Like religion,

  • pseudoscience offers the false promise of easy answers to complex questions,

  • through unsubstantiated claims of esoteric knowledge.

  • Like religion, its proponents deflect criticism with all the same

  • fallacious defences.

  • Most ironic of all are the defences that denounce science,

  • when pseudoscience itself seeks recognition based on claims of evidence.

  • And like religion,

  • pseudoscience also shines a torch on the tremendous difficulties we have

  • in acknowledging our ignorance and vulnerability.

  • When we look at the areas of life occupied by pseudoscience,

  • it should come as no great surprise that it's all the same territory occupied

  • by gods --

  • ie the gaps in our knowledge.

  • We find pseudoscience mapping out false futures through prophecy;

  • proposing false communion with the heavens;

  • we find it offering false hope to the sickand grinding out an endless stream of

  • false psychological gurus.

  • If we take a closer look at those gurus, we see that, just like religion,

  • pseudoscience can be also practiced by true believers,

  • genuinely convinced of the validity of their work,

  • or by non-believers — people acting for personal gain

  • who have no belief in what they preach.

  • As with religion, these populations can migrate either way,

  • with some non-believers coming to believe their own publicity,

  • and some true believers

  • waking up from their illusions, only to discover they don't have skills in

  • any other trade,

  • leading them to continue in a profession they privately reject.

  • A religious example of this is the clergy project --

  • an online community of priests who hold no supernatural belief,

  • and whose membership ballooned from around 50 in March 2011

  • to over 400

  • in March 2013.

  • Pseudoscience comes in two broad categories, which we might call kiwis

  • and chickens.

  • As the name suggests,

  • kiwis are totally flightless.

  • They provide no results,

  • no evidence,

  • no testable theory.

  • Typically, phrases like 'vibrations'

  • and 'cosmic harmonics' get bandied about, with requests for practical definitions

  • or these terms leading only to 'ignotum per ignotius' responses --

  • ie explanations even more obscure than the thing they purport to explain.

  • Examples of kiwis include Crystal Healing,

  • Homeopathy,

  • Reiki,

  • Feng Shui

  • and Astrology.

  • Kiwis serve as armchair pseudo-entertainment,

  • or as window-dressing to cash in on the placebo effect.

  • Then we have chickens -- concepts that can take flight for short distances,

  • with great flapping. This type contains some vestige of workable material,

  • whether by design or happenstance. But it's weighed down by a lack of rigour,

  • an indifference to validity,

  • the introduction of insupportable elements,

  • and the corruption of any reasonable componentsfor instance, when metaphor gets

  • taken literally,

  • or when phenomena that occur in some cases

  • are overgeneralised to all cases, such as treating all illness as psychological

  • in origin.

  • An example of a chicken would be Scientology,

  • which employs lie-detector-like technology called e-meters

  • that pick up subjects' physical reactions during explorations of memories

  • and associations.

  • These sessions are called 'auditing',

  • and emotional responses show up as various swings of the e-meter needle --

  • the goal being to nullify traumatic responses.

  • There are echoes of other therapeutic practices here --

  • after all,

  • therapy often involves the revisiting of painful memories. Phobia treatments

  • in particular involve sustained psychological confrontation with

  • feared subject matter,

  • until the fear reaction dies away. But Scientology's chicken status is betrayed

  • by its underlying theory.

  • Scientology founder Lafayette Ron Hubbard asserted that the human mind was plagued

  • with 'engrams'.

  • These are mental recordings of past traumas, purportedly made when we're unconscious.

  • Hubbard claimed that, during this downtime, we continue to process

  • every sensation around us, to the last detail. Hubbard claimed these

  • unconsciously recorded 'engrams' are the source of our irrationality.

  • The aim of auditing is to rid people of all their 'engrams',

  • at which point they're said to achieve a state of 'clear',

  • and to possess formidable mental faculties --however, this might

  • take some time,

  • as the individual's whole existence is explored.

  • Birth itself is considered an 'engram',

  • which is why Hubbard advocated silent birth .... but it stretches

  • back further. Events before birth can generate 'engrams'.

  • And even events before conception.

  • Hubbard spoke of

  • 'sperm dreams' -- memories recorded when the individual was a sperm.

  • Hubbard failed to provide any explanation of how a brainless gamete

  • can perform the sophisticated cognition of recognising itself as a sperm,

  • let alone record its experience in memory.

  • But we're soon drifting back further,

  • into past lives.

  • And not just human lives.

  • Hubbard's medical officer Jim Dincalci recalled a drug-fuelled session

  • where Hubbard fed amphetamines to his son to the point where he claimed

  • to have regressed

  • to a clam.

  • Should you have the time and money to audit these prolific 'engrams' to

  • the state of 'clear',

  • you'll then move on to auditing immortal alien spirits known as

  • 'body thetans', which Hubbard claimed are stuck to us in clusters,

  • and keep us from our full potential.

  • From alien spirits to past lives

  • to sperm dreams to detailed unconscious recordings,

  • none of these concepts bear even a postcard relationship to science,

  • despite Hubbard's frequent non-specific reference to 'laboratory evidence'.

  • Pseudoscience seems

  • irresistibly drawn to the concept of 'the unconscious'.

  • I'm not a fan of the term.

  • I prefer to talk about 'things we do outside of our awareness'.

  • This puts the focus on the things we do, which anchors discussion in

  • observable material.

  • When we start talking about 'the unconscious', and speculating on what

  • 'it's trying to tell us',

  • we're already starting with a dubious, assumption-laden metaphor.

  • And in the undisciplined hands of pseudoscientists,

  • this unanchored foundation is liable to drift clean away into

  • unadulterated fantasy --

  • taking the client with it.

  • During her therapy, Nadean Cool, from Wisconsin,

  • became convinced she'd been in a satanic cult,

  • eaten babies, been raped,

  • and had sex with animals.

  • She came to believe she'd developed over 120 personalities,

  • including children, angels,

  • the bride of Satan,

  • and a duck.

  • She was hospitalised over 30 times because of extreme suicidal feelings

  • brought about by the thoughts and images generated in her therapy.

  • She also confronted her father with accusations of satanic abuse inspired by

  • her therapist,

  • Kenneth Olson.

  • Any chance of future reconciliation vanished a week later,

  • when her father died of a heart attack.

  • In March 1997,

  • Nadean won a $2.4 million settlement against Olson.

  • As a result of the trial, several other former patients came forward,

  • with matching implanted fantasies.

  • 'The unconscious' was an exalted entity in the pseudoscience I found myself immersed in

  • on a recent course.

  • As I've indicated,

  • psychology's been a driving interest of mine.

  • I took it up academically at school --

  • and pursued it at university.

  • After my degree, alongside a career in publishing,

  • I continued my training, taking courses and workshops,

  • which culminated in a final post-grad course, through which I qualified as a

  • therapist several years ago.

  • The staff were passionate about evidence and research,

  • Then, a few months ago, I felt like stretching myself, and applied to

  • what appeared to be another great course, offering seminars on a huge range

  • of subjects.

  • The course began with a module presented as 'developmental psychology'.

  • I looked forward to discussing some juicy research papers. Instead, we were fed a welter of

  • undisciplined hunch and assumption,

  • on subjects like what the fetus was thinking in utero.

  • The nadir of that particular discourse came when it was suggested that

  • consciousness

  • began at conception.

  • The speculations on the baby's mental life

  • got truly bizarre.

  • I'd highlight particularly egregious passages from the course literature

  • to read out loud in the seminars.

  • For instance, this gem,

  • commenting on the moment babies discover their parents have a

  • separate relationship.

  • 'An early realisation of the parents' independent relationship is experienced

  • by the baby as a gigantic combined figure,

  • penis joined with breast,

  • stomach, mouth or vagina in endless mutual gratification,

  • creating ever new riches in the form of

  • faeces babies.'

  • After reading out that passage,

  • I said, 'Now, far be it from me to throw out the faeces baby with the bath water --

  • but what a load of shit.'

  • But the staff member we were with had drifted into a reverie of admiration,

  • remarking on the 'wonderfully rich language'.

  • As befits a chicken,

  • there were islands of supportable concepts.

  • Defences, for instance, represent entirely observable behaviours.

  • We can see people 'splitting' experience into false dichotomies of

  • black or white, saints or sinners,

  • virgins or whores,

  • heaven or hell.

  • We can see people 'displacing' onto more acceptable targets.

  • The late Christopher Hitchens observed another common defence:

  • 'reaction formation' --

  • as demonstrated in the almost clockwork regularity with which anti-homosexual

  • polemicists get discovered in flagrante delicto.

  • Models were also offered that acknowledge how we re-enact in therapy our behaviours

  • outside it.

  • Again, no problem. Well, it's a bit obvious isn't it?

  • Client complains that people always let him down.

  • It becomes clear they 'let him down' because he asks unreasonable favours.

  • Requests to borrow unfeasible amounts of cash,

  • r drive him to the airport right that second.

  • Am I surprised when I start 'letting him down' too? No.

  • It's one of the games he plays with people --

  • and chances are he'll play it with me.

  • Concepts like these are observable.

  • But pseudoscientists aren't satisfied confining themselves to the observable.

  • Like Icarus,

  • they try to fly higher than their false wings will take them --

  • in this case,

  • wings of intuition. And like Icarus, the result is a big burned bird.

  • Throughout the course, as with all pseudoscientific enterprises,

  • there was no interest in criteria for establishing validity.

  • Instead, it was suggested that we should simply stick with the ideas

  • we personally liked.

  • Me and another student from a scientific background were

  • very outspoken in our criticisms.

  • But, in contrast to previous courses,

  • criticism wasn't welcome.

  • As is characteristic of pseudoscientific practitioners,

  • instead of engaging with criticism, course leaders sidestepped it,

  • became defensive,

  • dejected,

  • passive aggressive and resorted to personal putdowns.

  • In response to my criticisms of Jung's coincidence-denying concept

  • of 'synchronicity', rather than address the content of my comment,

  • one course leader told me I should be more open-minded.

  • I replied that having an open mind meant being willing to hear new ideas,

  • not having to accept them.

  • I said the mind shouldn't be like a bucket — letting everything in without

  • discrimination.

  • That was gullibility.

  • It should be like a sieve — applying a critical filter to what we're told,

  • and rejecting what unjustified.

  • After a pseudo-thoughtful pause,

  • the course leader cheerfully announced that she was a bucket.

  • It was an asinine response.

  • It was also untrue,

  • as she proved countless times.

  • For instance, she was pseudo-analysing me one time,

  • and I happened to cough.

  • She pounced on it,

  • saying her comments had clearly touched on something.

  • I pointed out that,

  • as she well knew,

  • I'd had a chest infection for five weeks.

  • But she'd already formed a theory about this cough that confirmed

  • her analysis, and wouldn't entertain any other explanation.

  • Had she been the bucket she claimed to be, she would've been able to hear

  • other explanations. She was worse than a bucket.

  • She exemplified another defining feature of pseudoscience:

  • rampant confirmation bias.

  • In his famous paper 'On being sane in insane places',

  • Rosenhan showed the damaging effects of confirmation bias in

  • psychological assessments.

  • He organised the admission of eight fake patients into 12 different

  • psychiatric hospitals.

  • On arriving, they complained of hearing voices, which seemed to say the words:

  • 'empty',

  • 'hollow' and 'thud'.

  • That's all.

  • They gave genuine accounts of their life histories,

  • changing only their names and professions.

  • Upon admission, they ceased reporting any abnormal symptoms,

  • and behaved on the wards as they normally would.

  • They followed instructions --

  • but didn't ingest any medicine --

  • and they engaged in conversation and journal-writing,

  • to pass the time on wards where there was little to do.

  • In 11 out of 12 cases,

  • subjects were diagnosed with schizophrenia.

  • Rosenhan noted that the fake patients' life histories were distorted

  • by the staff to fit popular ideas about schizophrenic onset.

  • Normal negative reactions to mistreatment by staff were taken as

  • manifestations of disturbance.

  • With three patients, even their journal writing was pathologised.

  • Rosenhan also observed that just sitting outside a cafeteria

  • a short while before it was due to open

  • was diagnosed by one practitioner as indicating

  • 'oral-acquisitive pathology'.

  • The pseudoscience institute I attended was rife with these

  • pathologising biasses.

  • Mistreatment by staff was consistently deflected back on the students with

  • pseudo-analytical nonsense.

  • When I complained to the heads of the institute about one staff member's

  • serious violation of ethical guidelines, they suggested my problem with her was that

  • she reminded me of someone else --

  • possibly my mother?

  • I couldn't quite believe the clichéd drivel I was hearing.

  • I said, 'I'm sure if I came over there and slapped you round the face,

  • we could have a fascinating discussion about the people I remind you of --

  • but the fact would remain

  • I slapped you round the face.

  • Just like the fact remains that that staff member violated ethical guidelines.'

  • I could appreciate why most students became apathetic about challenging

  • these deflections -- it's hard to convey the sheer volume of them,

  • or the sheer stubbornness of the staff.

  • But I resolved to bulldoze through every deflection that came my way.

  • Predictably, resistance increased at first.

  • At times I'd have three staff members firing interpretations at me all at once.

  • But over time,

  • resistance slackened as I made it clear I wouldn't be sidetracked.

  • Of the many instances of abuse I witnessed and experienced,

  • the stand-out conflict was a series of exchanges I had with a supervisor about my throat.

  • Last year, in part one of my miniseries on death,

  • I shared that I had a throat problem which was initially suspected to be cancer,

  • but found to be benign.

  • The condition means my voice gets tired faster than it used to,

  • and with prolonged use over the day, it can become uncomfortable,

  • then painful.

  • I've learned to cope by taking periods of rest and just not overdoing it.

  • When I shared this information at the institute,

  • to my bewilderment,

  • one of the course supervisors deliberately pushed me to do quantities of

  • sustained reading in her session

  • that I'd indicated were

  • out of the question.

  • Our exchanges fell into a pattern.

  • I would decline to read.

  • She would become insistent and argumentative until I got angry

  • and shut the interaction down.

  • Incredibly,

  • the very same thing would happen next time.

  • I got in touch with the accrediting body of the course,

  • who were appalled

  • and told me her behaviour was not only unethical,

  • but illegal.

  • Professional or educational institutes are legally obliged to make

  • what are technically termed 'reasonable adjustments' to accommodate

  • any physical incapacity that prohibits certain activities.

  • In my case, that simply meant someone else reads.

  • More to the point,

  • pressurising me to read

  • could be construed as harassment.

  • I took this to the heads of the institute.

  • They fumbled a meek defence that my supervisor had interpreted my throat condition

  • as a psychological condition --

  • a manifestation of some unconscious anxiety.

  • I said that was completely unacceptable!

  • I'd made it absolutely clear to her

  • that it was a diagnosed condition, for which I'd had extensive tests.

  • I said, I hadn't asked for her opinion, and she was not medically qualified to give one.

  • I was furious.

  • They nodded gravely, and assured me my throat condition would now be respected.

  • But I knew this supervisor was directing students to disregard their

  • clients' medical conditions in similarly damaging ways.

  • For instance, one student had a client who'd lie on the floor during therapy

  • because he found sitting painful.

  • Without any medical enquiry, this supervisor directed the student to get

  • that client to sit in the chair,

  • declaring that the client's avoidance of the chair was 'an unconscious attempt

  • to sabotage the therapy'.

  • The student privately expressed serious misgivings,

  • but nonetheless

  • did as he was told.

  • Steven Weinberg famously said that 'for good people to do evil things,

  • that takes religion'.

  • But the same could easily be said of pseudoscience.

  • These students were good, sensitive people.

  • I felt sad for them.

  • But I felt much sadder for their clients.

  • And that's what makes me angry.

  • The horrendous abuse of clients.

  • Chantale Lavigne was reported to have been 'cooked to death' as part of a course run by

  • self-styled self-help guru Gabrielle Fréchette.

  • The session in which Lavigne died was part of a seminar aptly entitled

  • 'Dying in Consciousness.'

  • in which Fréchette --

  • who claimed to channel a biblical figure called Melchisedech --

  • had left Chantale, along with eight others, covered in mud,

  • w wrapped in plastic, then covered in blankets, with boxes over their heads

  • for nine hours,

  • with the instruction to hyperventilate.

  • Normal body temperature is 37 degrees. Chantale arrived unconscious

  • at hospital with a temperature of 40.5.

  • It was reported that Fréchette denied responsibility,

  • that she felt her duty was fulfilled by calling 911,

  • and that she continued to offer bookings.

  • Chantale had spent nearly $19,000

  • on this fatal course.

  • Bruce Hines recounted how his Scientologist sister died from

  • breast cancer.

  • She'd achieved the highest possible level in Scientology at the time --

  • Operating Thetan 8.

  • Hines explained that, in the 'almost God-like' Operating Thetan state,

  • you were supposed to be able to leave your body at will,

  • to be assured of your immortality, and to suffer no physical troubles.

  • His sister's cancer was slow-moving and easily operable,

  • but while Hines acknowledged that many cautious Scientologists take

  • normal medical treatment, his sister chose not to, believing that 'auditing would

  • ake care of it'.

  • She died aged 55.

  • Candace Newmaker was just ten years old when she was suffocated in a session

  • of pseudoscientific attachment therapy.

  • This vile practice

  • involves the forcible psychological regression of children who've failed to bond

  • with a parent.

  • Candace was pinioned under a blanket by four adults, and directed to push herself

  • out of it, in a simulation of rebirth, to encourage her to bond like a baby

  • with her adoptive mother.

  • Despite Candace screaming that she couldn't breathe, and that she was dying,

  • there was no respite.

  • One of the pseudotherapists, Julie Ponder,

  • even taunted her, saying,

  • 'Go ahead and die right now.

  • For real.

  • For real.'

  • After forty minutes,

  • Candace had spoken her last word and stopped moving.

  • Even so,

  • onder continued the abusive ranting,

  • calling her

  • a 'quitter'.

  • When we attempt to run before we can walk,

  • we fall over.

  • And that's what we see with pseudoscience all the time -- people falling over.

  • Into abuse,

  • bankruptcy, illness and death.

  • I suspect that will continue

  • until we learn to respect

  • the gaps in our knowledge;

  • to approach them with curiosity and discipline, rather them fill them with

  • the easy answers of pseudo-knowledge.

  • In short, to become

  • 'gap-friendly'.

  • Which brings me to scepticism. Scepticism is not only the most intellectually

  • honest position,

  • it actively crowbars a gap of thought between stimulus and response so that we

  • don't react in pat,

  • non-thinking reflexes. We stop to consider;

  • we act with more awareness

  • and spontaneity.

  • Scepticism could've crowbarred a gap of thought into Candace Newmaker's killers,

  • who might've stopped to investigate her cries, rather than numbly dismiss them.

  • Scepticism could also help chickens evolve to fly long distance --

  • if they streamlined

  • their billowy excesses

  • and started applying serious discipline to their lazy,

  • wack theories.

  • In view of everything I've said about pseudoscience,

  • don't think me a hypocrite if I end by proposing a new metaphorical

  • pseudoscience of my own.

  • A kind of avian alchemy.

  • Let's turn these kiwis and chickens

  • into

  • dodos.

[music]

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B2 中高級 英國腔

科學 "的差距 ('Science' of the gaps)

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    Arbbian 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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