[recycled material - first appeared here]
Yesterday I listened to a podcast that featured a personal hero of mine, Neil deGrasse Tyson, in which he responded to questions from the audience. Before answering one, he objected to the word "prove" in the question, saying he didn't like that term. Right on! Neither do I. And he explained why he didn't like the word, paralleling something I wrote here roughly a year ago.
Rather than providing proof, scientific findings support hypotheses; they boost our confidence in a theory; they increase the probability that our understanding of how things work is accurate.
To read more of that post, click here: Prove, Shmoove
Groan. Why the trumpets, why the tinsel?! When discussing and disseminating science news, shouldn't we aspire to be, you know, a little more scientific?
The following release of a science finding strikes me as akin to having a party to celebrate sobriety.
I bet the headline that appeared on my screen last December elicits at least a small groan from most of you:
The mall as a sanctuary: Study finds holiday shopping outlets aren't just shrines to spending
Oh holy kazoos -- is that for real? Alas, it wasn't a parody or a joke. It was "science." In this case, the strongest of the science part was some actual data collected. That said, get ready for another, minor groan:
The researchers conducted 41 in-depth, in-home interviews with Muslims, Jews and Christians in the United States, Israel and Tunisia to examine consumers' behavior when their given religion represents either a majority, minority or immigrant faith.
That 41 number is kinda small, especially considering the three countries of origin and the three religions involved. How could you come to any type of reasonable conclusion from that sample? Not to mention questions about how the subjects were . . . recruited?
Are you ready for some of the actual "finding"? Put down any sharp object you may be holding, because if you slap your forehead you don't want to hurt yourself.
In countries where a religious group was in the majority, the researchers found that the dominant religion experienced "consumption mass hysteria," which led to consequences of debt, drunkenness and overeating.
Wait. Was this study a joke? Have I been duped into attempting to take something seriously that isn't serious? Sadly, it wasn't a joke. But fortunately, I wasn't duped. Were others?
What we have in this study is another case of a little bit of (poor) data being amplified into a supposedly revelatory finding.
A new study has found there are physiological and cognitive differences between people of the political left and right persuasions. What's more . . . well, I'll let the news release headline tell it:
The biology of politics: Liberals roll with the good, conservatives confront the bad
Wow, liberals in their selfish hippy-trippy fashion "roll with the good," while conservatives, in their buttoned-up, business-like fashion "confront the bad."
Hmm. If "confronting the bad" means going after potential threats to national and neighborhood security . . . I guess I could see that. But what's "rolling with the good"? If liberals truly roll with the good, what's behind their concern over hunger and poverty and a slew of social inequalities? Why are they more inclined to spend money to combat the threat of global warming? How is that "rolling with the good"?
Likewise, how is the conservative's penchant for wanting to keep as much of their profits as possible not "rolling with the good"?
Fortunately I read the entire article and discovered what all the fuss was about. Little, actually.
The experiment tracked the reaction of self-reported liberals and conservatives to visual images. And the results:
While liberals' gazes tended to fall upon the pleasant images, such as a beach ball or a bunny rabbit, conservatives clearly focused on the negative images – of an open wound, a crashed car or a dirty toilet, for example.
Okay, that's interesting. The news release, however, not only failed to provide information on two important experimental elements--number of subjects and degree of difference (i.e., what "tended" means)--but it also failed to provide links to that information. Tsk, tsk.
Too often, when some study succeeds in sending a single wood chip flying from a tree of interest, there comes a yell of "timber!" While it may be exciting and entertaining to do so, exaggeration isn't good science.
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. - Blaise Pascal
It is Super Bowl Sunday. I am a fan of football. Perhaps a bigger fan of the enjoyable hoopla involved, starting with the food. I find a good party to be invigorating, if not cathartic. But perhaps that's just my justifying a favored idiocy. Maybe loving football is crazy.
I realize that my love of football isn't "rational." But it seems to me that holding just about any aspect of life to a ruler of cold logic sucks the life out of it. For good and bad. Couldn't the origin of biological life itself be seen as a bit of a quirk, a happenstance detour from the straight and narrow?
Yes, when there are problems to confront, full-strength rationality can be one heck of a tool. In many situations, an indispensable tool. But to apply it to all of life . . . maybe that's crazy.
As for the Pascal quote, I might revise it this way:
The unconscious has its reasons of which the conscious is largely unaware and has little comprehension.
Whatever you do today, I hope you enjoy it.
[recycled material - first appeared here]
Roughly twenty years after the birth of the term, I still don't like homophobia. The word. But before arguing against the use of this term, let me emphasize that by taking a position against the word I am by no means taking a position in support of any or all behavior the term is used to categorize. The issue I address here is solely the perceived misuse of language.
Why quibble over "homophobia"? First, as popularly employed, homophobia implies a diagnosis, and supports a perspective, that rests upon a tenet of pop-psychology. The tenet asserts that behind all aggression, anger, and resistance, exists the true causal emotion -- fear. But does fear underlie all aggression, all anger, all opposition?
As Andrew Ortony and Terence J. Turner, researchers specializing in the psychology of emotion, long ago outlined in the pages of Psychological Review, anger is a distinct emotion that has its developmental roots in the infant's experience of frustration. The infantile experience of frustration, especially that of restraint, develops into the adult emotion of anger. Furthermore, the expression of anger emerges prior to that of fear. Hence anger does not develop out of fear.
What underlies adult anger?
In a 1993 edition of another psychological journal, Cognition and Emotion, renown authority on human emotion Nico Frijda wrote, "As for anger: The most elementary elicitors...are acute goal interference."
For the above and other reasons, the fear-as-primary-motivator tenet of pop-psychology seems to me to be more than highly questionable. It is likely outright false.
Returning to the specific case of homophobia, opposition to the increasing presence and political clout of homosexuals cannot and should not be written off as a mere symptom of widespread phobia. It is more complicated than that.
If you think about it, the reasoning behind "homophobia," "homophobic," and "homophobe," is almost absurd. With similarly applied reasoning, one could diagnose anti-abortion activists as choice-phobic, environmentalists as development-phobic, and republicans as tax-phobic. As an even more ridiculous example, I myself could be called "creamed-corn-phobic," for I intensely dislike this canned vegetable and resolutely oppose its inclusion into my diet.
Why not diagnose as phobic all aversive and oppositional behavior? Because the underlying reasoning is defective, and because a term as serious as phobia should not be used to categorize a person or people with reckless abandon.
The second and perhaps primary reason why the popular use of homophobia concerns me is that behind this term lurks moral and political bullying. All too frequently individuals employ the term in an attempt to pathologize opposing perspectives. To force values. To close issues. By labeling and defining people as "homophobic" you easily discredit their concerns. Calling someone homophobic is equivalent to saying, "You are sick. Your feelings and beliefs have absolutely no place in this society."
True, the "other side" is frequently guilty of the above, but does that justify it?
The questions of homosexual rights (the extension of civil rights to people with differing sexual orientations), and how and to what degree society should accept and accommodate homosexuality, are controversial and complex. Personally, I'm for homosexual rights such as the right to marry and adopt children. However, using words that discredit the holders of opposing opinions and values, and thus, indirectly, the opinions and values themselves, is a strong-arm political tactic--a tactic that undermines the effort to make our communities and nation more free-thinking.
Language is a powerful tool. Sure, it would be nice if we could classify all behavior and persons we didn't like as pathological, hence undeserving a legitimate place in the world. But it just isn't that simple. Furthermore, by doing so we undermine a better understanding.
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