Deepak Chopra, writing for (of course) the Huffington Post, laments about his critics that, “Most of my stinging darts come from skeptics.” So he has decided to attack skeptics and skepticism – a preemptive strike against his critics. Predictably he mangles scientific skepticism, and is content to attack a straw man and then declare victory.

He begins:

Over the years I’ve found that ill-tempered guardians of scientific truth can’t abide speculative thinking. And as the renowned Richard Dawkins has proved, they are also very annoyed by a nuisance named God.

Right of he starts by accusing skeptics of being “ill-tempered” as if we are all cynical curmudgeons. This is an unimaginative ad hominem (Chopra really wracks up the logical fallacies in this post). Many of the skeptics I know are actually quite mild-mannered, even overly nice. Chopra confuses, perhaps, sharp scientific criticism with emotion. This is a common mistake among those who are not adequately familiar with the scientific process – it is a relentless meatgrinder of criticism and does not abide illogic or sloppiness – and that’s a good thing. Beware of those who confuse scientific analysis and criticism with being mean.

In the very same sentence Chopra then accuses skeptics of not abiding speculative thinking. And later he writes:

It never occurs to skeptics that a sense of wonder is paramount, even for scientists. Especially for scientists. Einstein insisted, in fact, that no great discovery can be made without a sense of awe before the mysteries of the universe.

This is transparently wrong, but in my experience a common refrain from those at the receiving end of skeptical analysis. Speculative thinking is critical to scientific advancement, and anyone who has bothered to actually read skeptical blogs or listen to skeptical podcasts would see numerous examples of our cheering on those scientists who were able to expand human knowledge by coming up with new ideas, and seeing beyond the current limitations in scientific thinking.

Einstein is deservedly the poster boy for this – his brilliant speculations led to relativity theory and revolutionized modern physics. But as another luminary, Thomas Edison, said genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. While we applaud the inspiration (speculative thinking) skeptics also recognize that most speculations turn out to be wrong, and we use the 99% perspiration (the hard work of science) to decide what is likely to be true and what should be discarded as bunk.

But Chopra and his anti-skeptical cohorts ignore that part about the hard work of science. They want to stop after the 1% of inspiration, and just gloss over all that actual perspiration, and then get defensive when they are called on it.

Regarding awe, Phil Plait had a good response to this. But I will add that Carl Sagan, a leading light of skepticism, is honored as such precisely because of his eloquence in expressing the awe and wonder that real science can inspire.

Chopra is then quick to claim God is on his side. He conflates skepticism with atheism- – which is just sloppy and gratuitous. He also equates all atheists with the particular style of Dawkins, whom I admire but does not represent in style all skeptics. Chopra knows his audience, he is saying that you can dismiss these pesky skeptics because they don’t believe in God like “we” do. This is a combo argument from authority and ad hominem, with a hasty generalization thrown in to complete the logical fallacy trifecta. Nicely done. He continues in this theme:

Statistically, cynical mistrust is correlated with premature sudden death from cardio vascular disease. Since the skeptics who write venomous blogs trust in nothing, I imagine that God will outlive them.

Let me paraphrase – Don’t worry about those skeptics – they are cynics and will die young, unlike those of us who have God on our side. He also confuses skepticism with nihilism – trusting in nothing. The reality is when it comes to determining how the natural world works, we trust in the scientific process, in logic and evidence. We don’t believe without evidence, however. Belief is not a virtue in science.

It gets worse:

No skeptic, to my knowledge, ever made a major scientific discovery or advanced the welfare of others. Typically they sit by the side of the road with a sign that reads “You’re Wrong” so that every passerby, whether an Einstein, Gandhi, Newton, or Darwin, can gain the benefit of their illuminated skepticism. For make no mistake, the skeptics of the past were as eager to shoot down new theories as they are to worship the old ones once science has validated them.

What Chopra is saying is that no scientist who has ever contributed to human knowledge was a skeptic. But some of the very examples he gives – Einstein and Darwin – were very skeptical. Chopra also assumes (or maybe he is just making a statement about his own ignorance) that no members of the skeptical community are contributing scientists. Again – transparently false.

But if we are trying to be generous (something Chopra is not) we can interpret that statement to mean that skepticism itself does not contribute to knowledge. This grossly misunderstand that scientific process. Science is like evolution in that new ideas are generated, and then logic and evidence is used to select against them, so that only useful theories survive, prosper, and replicate. Creationists argue that natural selection is only a negative process, and therefore cannot create anything. Chopra argues that skepticism is only a negative process, and therefore does not lead to knowledge. Both are wrong for the same reasons. They ignore the generation of diversity and new ideas upon which natural selection and skepticism acts. Weeding out the unfit is critical to both – natural selection allows evolution to proceed, and skepticism allows science to advance.

Of course, when one’s ideas get weeded out by the process of science, it’s tempting to attack the process itself as cynical and ungodly – if you are a pseudoscientist, that is, and not truly dedicated to the process of science.

Chopra then goes for the “equivalence” gambit – saying that skeptics “worship” scientific theories. He wants science to be the same as religious belief – that is the arena in which he wants to compete, because he cannot compete in the arena of science.

Next Chopra unleashes an army of straw men:

Skeptics know in advance — or think they know — what right thought is. Right thought is materialistic, statistical, data-driven, and always, always, conformist. Wrong thought is imaginative, provisional, often fantastic, and no respecter of fixed beliefs.

Not that Chopra was ever taken seriously by any self-respecting scientist or intellectual, but really – you have to try to get it this wrong. Chopra is not even trying to understand or fairly represent skeptics, and his statements are the opposite of the philosophy we openly advocate. Scientific skepticism is against “knowing in advance” and conformism. We celebrate imagination and a provisional approach to knowledge.

He was close with “materialist” in that science is based upon methodological naturalism, but I don’t think that’s what he meant. And he is actually using “data-driven” as a pejorative – how telling.

Then he finishes with the woo he so desperately is trying to protect from scientific skepticism:

Thirty years ago no right-thinking physician accepted the mind-body connection as a valid, powerful mode of treatment. Today, no right-thinking physician (or very few) would trace physical illness to sickness of the soul, or accept that the body is a creation of consciousness, or tell a patient to change the expression of his genes. But soon these forms of wrong thinking will lose their stigma, despite the best efforts of those professional stigmatizers, the skeptics.

Ah – the argument from future authority – I will be proven right in the future, a convenient unfalsifiable claim.

What this article demonstrates is that Chopra is unequivocally anti-science. That is the reason he attacks skeptics and skepticism. He wants his woo to get a free pass. He wants to be able to speculate wildly, without ever having to justify his claims with logic and evidence. Chopra laments being called “the emperor of woo-woo” – probably because he knows that this emperor has no clothes.