by Judith Curry

It is important to distinguish between disbelief and nonbelief– between believing a sentence is false and merely not believing it true.

At FabiusMaxiums, Larry Kummer has an excellent post Learning skepticism: an essential skill for citizenship in 21st century America. The meat of the post is an essay by Marcello Truzzi published in 1987: Zetetic Ruminations on Skepticism and Anomalies in Science. Excerpt:

Regretfully, the term “skeptic” today is being used by many who adopt that label for themselves in a misleading way. To many, it is falsely equated with the term “rationalist.” The dictionary meaning of the term indicates that a skeptic is one who raises doubts. Thus the word is meant to reflect nonbelief rather than disbelief. But when we look at those who trumpet that they are skeptics towards claims of anomalies, we find disbelievers and debunkers rather than those who express uncertainty or doubt. The public “skeptics” of today present us with answers rather than questions. As philosopher W.V. Quine (himself, ironically, one among such modern public “skeptics”) neatly made the distinction:

It is important to distinguish between disbelief and nonbelief– between believing a sentence is false and merely not believing it true. Disbelief is a case of belief; to believe a sentence false is to believe the negation of the sentence true. We disbelieve that there are ghosts; we believe that there are none. Nonbelief is a state of suspended judgement; neither believing the sentence true nor believing it false. [The Web of Belief, W.V.O. Quine & J.S. Ullian, 1978, p12]

Of course, none of this is to suggest that disbelief is always in error or that there is not bunk that needs to be debunked. I only point out that disbelief should not be confused with skepticism and nonbelief. This confusion is far from a new problem, and James H. Hyslop — who would probably disagree with Quine about ghosts– noted the confusion when he wrote:

The average man today thinks he is a sceptic because he does not believe in a given allegation. The fact is that scepticism is not unbelief in the sense of denial nor in the sense of being opposed to a given belief, but it is critical ignorance. Few men show this characteristic. They are too much ashamed of denying what they do not know something about. The public has gotten into the attitude of mind which it likes to call scepticism, but which is nothing more or less than dogmatism hiding under false colors. It thinks that belief is the only thing that can be biased and does not dream that denial can be biased, and in fact that the bias of denial is not only less justifiable but far worse than the bias of belief. It has not basis upon which to rest at all except belief. But people have come to think that denial or doubt is the mark of intelligence, when in fact true scepticism is much nearer being a mark of ignorance. True scepticism means that we do not know, not that such a thing is not true. To know that a thing is not true is knowledge, not doubt, and hence is subject to bias. It is all the worse when it parades itself as a trustworthy student of truth and in fact is only trying to deny it. The average mind assumes that belief disqualifies a man from studying a problem and that the only person who can investigate it is the man who does not believe anything about it. If the doubter has no opinions and is not biased by preconceptions of his own, and if he does not have an interest in an opposing theory, it is true that he may be better qualified than the believer to investigate, but the majority of those who parade as sceptics in the matter usually have some theory of their own to sustain against that which they claim not to believe, and hence are as much biased as the despised believer…. Open-mindedness is the only scepticism that can claim immunity from prejudice. — “The Bias of Skepticism”, James H. Hyslop, Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 3 1909, pp 29-35

… In his now classic discussion of the normative structure of science, Robert K. Merton included organized skepticism along with universalism, communism and disinterestedness among the institutional imperatives of science (The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, Robert K. Merton, 1973, p270). He referred to this as the “temporary suspension of judgement and the detached scrutiny of beliefs in terms of empirical and logical criteria,” and then pointed out that this practice “may come into conflict with other attitudes toward the same data which have been crystallized and often ritualized by other institutions” (Merton, p277).

I would suggest to you that this conflict also occurs between one part of the scientific community and another. As our scientific institutions have developed, this becomes an internal as well as an external problem. And as these institutions have become integrated into other institutions, vested interests and non-scientific concerns (such as the control of economic resources) develop. And I suggest that as science grows into so called “Big Science,” the norm of organized skepticism begins to conflict frequently with the norm of disinterestedness. This can lead to attempts by defenders of the majority of “orthodox” viewpoint to attempt to merely discredit rather than disprove competitive minority views (especially maverick claims), and this results in what Ray Wyman (1980) has pointed out is a form of “pathological science.”

As Thomas S. Kuhn (The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change, 1977) has termed it, there is an “essential tension” within science since it must on the one hand preserve its accumulated knowledge by acting cautiously and conservatively while on the other hand remain an open system ready to take in new and potentially revolutionary data and concepts. This balance is maintained through a number of methodological prescriptions which make it difficult but not impossible for the claimant of an anomaly to obtain acceptance of the claim.

First, science places the burden of proof on the claimant. Second, the proof for a claim must in some sense be commensurate with the character of the claim. Thus, an extraordinary claim requires “extraordinary” (meaning stronger than usual) proof. This latter prescription seems related to the rule of parsimony in science that states that the simpler adequate explanation is the one to accept. {a variant of Occam’s Razor; see Wikipedia}

Now I would call your attention to the fact that these rather conservative rules for evidence of extraordinary claims mean that a claim that is inadequately supported results in a simple nonacceptance of the claim. Evidence is, then, a matter of degree, and not having enough results in a claimant’s not satisfying the burden of proof. It does not mean disconfirmation of the claim. The proof is insubstantial, and the claim is unaccepted rather than refuted. The claimant is, in effect, told either to give up or go back to find stronger evidence and arguments for a possible later day in the court of science.

Science can speak of the highly improbable; it can not properly speak of the impossible. But as a practical matter, the highly improbable is treated as though it were impossible. Working on a perpetual motion machine is almost certainly a waste of time, but once we deem it absolutely a waste of time, we close the door on such research and violate the equilibrium of the “essential tension” and disobey Peirce’s injunction by blocking inquiry. The scientist who works on a perpetual motion machine may be playing the longest shot of all, and he may be conducting stupid science, but it is not necessarily false or pseudoscience.

JC reflections

What a nice surprise to spot this essay on twitter on a Saturday morning. This is the best article I’ve seen sorting out the uses and misuses of skepticism.

In context of the climate debate, many scientists and members of the public simply find that the claim for dangerous anthropogenic climate change is inadequately supported. Further, the most objective skeptics of this claim are those that do not have their own theory to push.

The conflict between the norm of organized skepticism with disinterestedness is severe in the case of climate science. This can lead to attempts by defenders of the majority of “orthodox” viewpoint to attempt to merely discredit rather than disprove competitive minority views (especially maverick claims), and this results in a form of “pathological science.”

In the common parlance of the climate debate, it seems that ‘deniers’ are ‘disbelievers.’ Their disbelief is fueled the perception of pathological science that is fueled by political beliefs.

I have no idea how to untangle the mess that climate science has become, but scientists and institutions advocating for policies, without carefully describing the uncertainties and areas of ignorance, seems to be at the root of the problem.