Learn the truth

A short blog-post today about two ways to question, and learn, the ”truth”.

In psychology and neurology one of the most repeated ”facts” is what happened to Phineas Gage in 1848. (He got an iron rod through his head and survived it, making the rest of his life very interesting to everyone who studies the brain.) In Slate there is an article about how one of the most told stories when retold, even to university students, is largely fictional. Or to be kind, even some scientists have used poetic freedom when describing the case of Phineas Gage. Now anecdotes are an important part of describing the world including science, but it is somewhat depressing that one of the great scientific stories are also one of the great examples of how to spin a story. It appears that there is a lack of information about what actually happened to Phineas Gage after the accident and that people have filled in the blanks with what they think should be the truth.

There is a lot of debate about energy, arguments about the environment, safety, and world politics is a huge part of the debate. Yesterday in the book store I came across a book arguing that nuclear energy is something bad, using Fukushima as an example of the dangers of nuclear energy. There is no doubt that nuclear energy is dangerous, but everything in life is associated with some danger. The question we need to ask is how dangerous nuclear energy is and anyone who wants to use Fukushima as an example should read this UN-report.
A small extract from the report:

38.
No radiation-related deaths or acute diseases have been observed among the workers and general public exposed to radiation from the accident.
39.
The doses to the general public, both those incurred during the first year and estimated for their lifetimes, are generally low or very low. No discernible increased incidence of radiation-related health effects are expected among exposed members of the public or their descendants. The most important health effect is on mental and social well-being, related to the enormous impact of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident, and the fear and stigma related to the perceived risk of exposure to ionizing radiation. Effects such as depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms have already been reported. Estimation of the occurrence and severity of such health effects are outside the Committee’s remit.

Page 10 of SOURCES, EFFECTS AND RISKS OF IONIZING RADIATION, UNSCEAR 2013 Report,Volume I, REPORT TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY, SCIENTIFIC ANNEX A:
Levels and effects of radiation exposure due to the nuclear accident after the 2011 great east-Japan earthquake and tsunami

I want to emphasise that nuclear energy is dangerous and that the text above is cherry picked to show that it is not as dangerous as some people say it is.

What is critical thinking?

I have an acquaintance who is very much familiar with what is happening in the education system in Sweden. He knows about different schools and different methods for teaching and he expressed to me that he was just sick of all the talk about critical thinking. Everywhere the term ”critical thinking” is used almost as a spell, as long as the pupils are taught critical thinking it's not very important that they know anything else. If the schools just teach critical thinking skills the pupils will find all the other information that they need by themselves.
This is of course idiotic and anyone who used critical thinking would realise that this is the case. My guess is that too many fall in the trap of using a popular word without even trying to think about what critical thinking really is.

What it isn't
To think critical about something is not to be able to find the correct information about that something or the correct answer to a question. (Here ”correct” is of course only a temporary property for a certain set of statements. The term ”correct” is relating to the ”truth” which is only an approximation, our current knowledge of the ”Truth” - how things really are.) To do that is to expand the existing knowledge either for oneself, a group of people, or for humanity if what is discovered is something not previously known. To be able to establish the truth is not the same as being able to think critically. To think critically comes before finding the truth and sometimes a truth cannot be found but it is still possible to think critically before that.
To think critically is not to doubt everything. That is what skepticism is often accused of as well, being nothing but doubt of all assertions. But there is not much thinking involved in doubting everything. It is also not very efficient to doubt everything even if one tries to do it in a Cartesian way in order to find a fundamental Truth, something that cannot be a mistaken impression or a lie by a deceitful god. It would also be difficult to avoid solipsism if one begin to doubt everything.

It is in my opinion likely that critical thinking is not one thing but a collection of different important techniques that has to be used and weighted with judgement. To do this is to employ critical thinking skills. The indiscriminating doubt of everything is not critical thinking but doubt is likely to sometimes be the result of judging the evidence at hand, and it can also be an important part in weighing the evidence. To acquire the skill for critical thinking include both knowing the different techniques and having the experience of using them, non of which is easy or comes natural to us humans. Today I am beginning to write a series of blog-posts about important elements of critical thinking. The first one is Heuristics

Important parts of critical thinking – Heuristics
Some relatively simple heuristics is a part of critical thinking. These might be so well known that they are even made into proverbs. If something sounds too good to be true it probably is – is one that most people have heard. It is probably also possible to include longer stories that are teaching an important lesson of what to do or not to do. To cry wolf is something that is bad, you can understand this either by thinking about how people would react to constantly get false alarms or you can learn it from the story.
But is it critical thinking to know that crying wolf is not a good thing to do? No, not really, the critical thinking part comes earlier. If we get the impulse to sound the alarm even if we know that there is no danger, we can either act on the impulse or think about it and chose not to. In reality we have a choice between the immediate satisfaction of an impulse or to consider what might be good for us in the future if we would need to sound the alarm for real. That it is bad to cry wolf is not something that is set in stone, from an individuals point of view it might be more rewarding to follow the initial impulse and have a laugh sounding the alarm. It can probably be argued that for a society it is bad if people have the habit of crying wolf. But what says that an individual should place the benefit of society above the joy of following an impulse? This is one reason why heuristics are never 100%. But this kind of reasoning is not likely to take place in the head of the person tempted to sound the alarm. The Story About the Boy Who Cried Wolf is a way to avoid thinking critically and arrive at the conclusion without thinking. That is to say the opposite of critical thinking. If we start to think critically about heuristics we realise that they are general rules that are questionable.
I still consider heuristics to be an important part of critical thinking, not because it always leads one to a correct result but because it gives us a quick warning about when we need to start thinking. The heuristics are there because we as a species have learned to not trust our impulses all the time, and we use our culture to give us warnings in tricky situations. The heuristics are something like a starting point for critical thinking. Unfortunately we don't have heuristics for all situations and some people follow them more or less blindly. They have limits but with all their faults they can still not be ignored.

The Heretics, by Will Storr

Review: The Heretics – adventures with the enemies of science, by Will Storr

It was a new experience for me to read a book where people pop up in the text that I have had mail conversations with, met for a cup of coffee, or had dinner with. People that are acquaintances of mine and that I have as friends on facebook. This implies that this review will be biased in some way but one lesson from the book is that all reviews are biased anyway, because they are the product of a mind that is defending its own conception of how the world is. I also recognised a lot of the books referred to in the text as standing in my own bookshelf, so it is no surprise that The Heretics was a very suitable birthday gift that I devoured quickly.
In the interest of full disclosure I should point out that one reason that I liked the book might be that within the skeptics movement I am somewhat of a heretic myself due to my Christian believes. I am sure that there are also some Christians that consider me to be a heretic but that is not the kind of Christians I hang around with.

The Heretics in the book are people that have a world-view that is very different from the scientific one and who often feel that they are treated unfairly by the scientific establishment. Some have had to leave academia after, as they see it, being branded as heretics. Others may see it as that they had to leave since they gave in to what they wished to be true instead of following the evidence.
In the book many of the biases that we suffer as humans are discussed, not least how we tend to see what we want to see and stop investigating an issue after we have found sufficient evidence to confirm our preconceived ideas of how the world should be. The refreshing and interesting thing with this book is that it apply this also to the scientific community and the skeptics. Because if these biases are human and scientist and skeptics are human there is a risk that also scientists and skeptics will be victims of these biases.
Will Storr describes how he talks to skeptics that are against homeopathy (as we are) without having read the scientific studies and without having tried to look at the evidence themselves. And he juxtapose this with believers in fringe theories and pseudoscience that also haven't read the research and can't remember what was the name of that article that proves beyond a doubt what they believe is true. He has a very good point although I don't agree with it 100%.
No person can be up to date with all research in all fields and at some point we have to trust the people that can give a summery of the research. If you believe that an authority has more knowledge than you of a topic, use the same scientific method as you would use, and is an honest person, it is all right to trust what that person says. At least until evidence to the contrary materialise. In the skeptic community we are interested in the promotion of science and critical thinking in general and are just a little less trusting of our leaders than the believers. So we skeptics should show some humility in regard to our believes.
Unfortunately on the other side you often find the ”experts” that are not trying to avoid bias and are not up to date on the scientific research, and you find people selling ideas and products with a confidence that they have no ground for. To me there is a difference between the skeptic taking an overdose of homeopathic sleeping pills to make a point without being as well read as Edzard Ernst and the homoeopath selling homeopathic anti-malaria pills without understanding what it is, how it works and if it works.
But the book is not about the skeptical movement it is about what it is like to be a human. Storr tries to understand not just how the heretics can hold their believes and preach them to others but also why they hold those believes. And he is not afraid to scrutinise himself and the stories he uses to justify his own beliefs and opinions. He gives a glimpse of the humans, some are easier to understand than others, some take larger liberties with the truth than others to defend their story but they all share the illness and blessing of having a brain. A brain that will create an image of the world as it suits us to see it. Storr doesn't spend much time describing science as the solution to our faulty vision but that is the way he treats it. What makes the book interesting is that he doesn't divide everything into black or white, pseudoscience and science, some people are just better at applying critical thinking even to themselves, but no one is perfect.
For a moment consider the opinions that you have about global warming, the Middle East, GMOs, the distribution of wealth, and all the other opinions that you have. What opinions that you have are wrong? You know that not all of your opinions can be correct, but you have no way of telling which of the things that you believe at this moment are incorrect. Some opinions no one can say if they are correct or not, but that doesn't help. No one is perfect, we don't live in a black and white world. That is what is important and that is what this book is about. In my mind the moral of the story is that the virtue of humility is still very important. We who want to think of our selves as guided by science must listen to what people experience and doubt our old truths enough not to miss new knowledge. In my opinion (which might be wrong), Storr have written a book that all skeptics should read since it is not the hero story that we are used to. We still need and we also have, heroes in the skeptical movement but we should not have any saints. It is also a book that highlights the human condition of having a brain that creates an image of reality and not a reflection of it and what problems that will follow because of this difference. It is a book that will let the interviewed heretics question what is sane and what is not, even so far as to entertain that hearing voices in your head is just another way of being sane. Read this book.

So can you be a Christian if you also want to be scientific about things? In this book it is stated that several studies show that religious people are happier than atheist. I doubt that being religious is a choice but if it was, the atheist would be in the same category as smokers, doing something that science know is wrong. (Since this is a written text I should point out to my atheist friends that this last bit is written partly in jest and partly to show that we live life in a complex world without right and wrong answers to many questions.)

A Quick affair

Once upon a time Sweden had the strange honour of having one of the worlds most peculiar serial killers. His name was Thomas Quick. He killed people and that made him a serial killer. He used different methods, he killed at different places, and his victims could be of any age, sex, and ethnicity. He also forgot a lot of information about his acts and could remember almost nothing about the murders he confessed except some precise details.
Now Sweden instead have one of the worlds strangest miscarries of justice. A person who has taken back his old name of Sture Bergwall instead of Thomas Quick, has been found not guilty to all the murders he was previously sentenced for. And people are wondering how the police, the psychologists, the attorney, and even Thomas Quick's own lawyer, all could believe that he was guilty.
Given the change in what is reported to be the ”truth” it is perhaps not surprising to find that some of the people most involved in the original case are meeting to discuss the case of Thomas Quick. They are: the academic who stated that the way Quick's memory ”worked” was consistent with him being the murderer, the prosecutor who based his career on the case, the policeman responsible for many of the interrogations of Quick, the journalist from a local paper that suddenly was reporting on a case of world wide interest, and finally the chancellor of justice who declared that there was no miscarry of justice right before all the sentences were appealed and revoked one by one.
You can read about the meetings in the local paper Dalademokraten (DD).
If you like to see it from their point of view they are suffering from the media's change of heart, all due to some journalists that got everything wrong. Even if Quick has been acquitted in a court of law from all the murders he was sentenced for that does not imply that he didn't commit them. And if only the media had not changed their angle Quick would still be locked up and justice would have been served. It is now up to them to explain this to the people so that they understand that it is only due to some legal technicality that Sture Bergwall is a free man.
From a different point of view it might look like the people responsible for the unlawful imprisonment of a liar and for the fact that several real murderers walks free are either still suffering from their delusion or are trying their best to save themselves. If there has been a miscarry of justice they are all responsible for it and many might feel that they should face other consequences beside being told about their responsibility in the press.
For those who have not studied all the cases this is an interesting exercise in critical thinking. What is most probable: that one man managed to kill a huge number of people without leaving any technical evidence, confessed to the murders and managed to walk free after a retrial when he changed his plea, or that a number of professionals and the media was duped by a liar on heavy medication to believe in a spectacular lie? The odds are not great for either of the two and yet one is the truth. What a critical thinking individual has to do is to listen to the arguments that are presented and look at the evidence.