Science & Pseudo Science

With apologies to international readers, this post is admittedly pretty U.S. specific.  Just carry on, please…   I’ll be back to more widely applicable brain stuff soon.   For those of you just tuning in, check out part 1 and part 2.

When I first mentioned this series to a group of acquaintances, one of them scoffed. “A war on science? In AMERICA? Pshaw. There’s always a fringe contingent against anything, and  Churches have been fighting science for centuries! You really think it matters NOW?”

Yes, yes I do.   And I think it should matter to you, too. (’cause I’m a busy body that way) 

I grew up in the heyday of the Apollo space program.  In 1969 I was four years old, and too young to understand the significance of that first moon walk, but I stayed up late to watch it on our flickering black and white TV anyway. My parent’s excitement and tension was infectious:  this was something very, very cool, and a little scary.  

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This post isn’t intended as open debate of Creation vs Evolution , and it isn’t about what I believe, or what I think you should believe.  Rather, it’s about the anti-science aspects of the Creation/Evolution arguments, and how they are contributing to a confused and negative perception of science in the US.  For more info, please see part 1 in this series. 

The problem appears straight-forward and simple on the surface; The Theory of Evolution flat out conflicts with the  literal interpretations of the Bible’s account of Creation.    Many Christians don’t see the conflict as relevant to their lives, and they move quietly beyond it, whatever they actually believe.

But for Fundamentalists, the conflict is clearly relevant.  For them, there is no doubting that life arose as described in Genesis, created by God along with the rest of the Universe in less than 7 days.  In their view, the Theory of Evolution is not only inaccurate, but it is an evil  and atheistic argument against mankind’s unique relationship with God.

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A few weeks ago on Creative Think, creative-thinking expert Roger von  Orech posed an interesting question: “What do you think will be demonized in the next two years?” 

My answer actually scared me:  Science.  

It’s hard to imagine at first…   how could a logical method of investigation (and the body of knowledge produced through that  method) be viewed as evil and diabolic? It seems especially odd in the US, where for so many years,  scientific technology  and education has been the driving force of our success. 

The whole concept seems absurd on it’s face - but under the surface, much of the public’s perspective on science is are shifting from positive to negative. Why?

Science IS Scary Stuff, Sometimes.

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I cultivate a few unsavory vices; among them is a curious fascination with all-things pseudo-science.

It’s led to an unhealthy love of bad disaster movies, where teens are chased by killer frosts and “volcano tires” let heroes drive miles across molten, flowing lava.

Bad science is also responsible for my compulsive curiosity about late-night infomercials. (Did you know that 25 lbs of alien plaque can live in your intestines? Or that dangerous toxins can be leeched out through your feet?! Wowser, and only 29.95!)

But where pseudo-science really shines is in the “science” of Intelligent Design. (Come on, who can resist the life from a jar of peanut butter argument?) [click to continue...]

Ellen Langer is a Yale graduate, a Harvard psychology professor, an award winning researcher, and author of several interesting looking books on applied mindfulness. But it’s her study on hotel maids that’s gotten all the attention this year… hotel maids who apparently “thought themselves thin.”

(Yes, yes this is old news - but sometimes its fun to cover stories *after* the media frenzy dies down, dang nab it! Besides, it fits with the whole mindfulness craze that’s building from the Eckhart/Oprah thing)

Hotel maids are a busy and hard working group of people, lugging around heavy equipment, bending, turning, and scrubbing all day long. It’s a physically demanding and active job that burns a lot of calories.

But maids don’t typically see themselves as active, it turns out. When Langer and grad student Alia Crum surveyed 84 of these hard working women, two thirds of them said they didn’t regularly exercise. A full third said they didn’t get *any* exercise, inspite of their very active jobs. But what was really interesting is that when their fitness levels were measured - they matched their belief, rather than the reality. Their weight, blood pressure and other measurements were equivalent to people living a sedentary lifestyle.

“Given that they are exercising all day long,” Langer says, “that seemed to be bizarre.”

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