Richard Dawkins: pseudoskeptic?

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Skepticism project

It is not enough for this site to talk about "pseudoskeptics" in the abstract, without giving examples. Fortunately, examples abound. Richard Dawkins makes many stereotypical pseudoskeptical mistakes, almost as if he read the WikiSynergy article and made the mistakes on purpose. For example, in his article What’s Wrong with the Paranormal?. Dawkins says:

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Science tells us what we have reason to believe.
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So far, so good, if you are speaking about idealized science. He goes on:

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Now, how about the paranormal? What does it mean? It’s been defined as ‘things that science cannot explain.’ That means ‘Cannot explain and never will’, which is much stronger than ‘Hasn’t yet solved’...To call something paranormal means that it is for ever impossible for science to explain. It’s a miracle.
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Where did he get that from? The paranormal is that which science has not yet explained. The supernatural is the word Dawkins is describing. If Dawkins were talking about the supernatural, he would be right. This is a real lack of scholarship, one sign of pseudoskepticism. It also seems as if he is using the most unscientific definition he could devise in order to denigrate the subject by its very definition.

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[I]f telepathy ever were convincingly demonstrated, I’d treat as a fascinating problem that science doesn’t yet understand, like radio once would have been. But let’s talk about it anyway because, like astrology, if there were any evidence for it (there isn’t) it would be difficult for present day science to explain.
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This is complex, because it is possible that Dawkins is confused about the meaning of the word "evidence" in the same way he was confused about the definition of "paranormal." On the face of it, the claim of "no evidence" is a typical pseudoskeptical way of putting things, because pseudoskeptics have a tendency to dismiss all evidence. If Dawkins actually believes that there is no evidence, he should support the claim since he has incurred a burden of proof. He is also very confused, because there is a huge amount of evidence for telepathy, although what that evidence indicates is debatable. Alternately, it is possible that Dawkins does not mean what he says literally. If what Dawkins means to say is that there is no proof, then it would be a scientifically stronger claim to say that "ESP has a lot of evidence for it but has not been conclusively demonstrated."

Whatever claim Dawkins is actually trying to make, he is not an expert. As a scientist, before making such a statement he should have spent many years analyzing the evidence base. Other scientists who have done so say that there is a great deal of evidence, and the evaluations of the evidence range from the opinion that the evidence conclusively demonstrates telepathy (Dean Radin) to the opinion that there is good evidence for telepathy but it needs further replication (CSICOP fellow Ray Hyman). In any case, no scientist who is speaking as a scientist should say, as Dawkins does, that there is "no" evidence. If Dawkins is merely speaking as a layman with an opinion he has every right to do so, but it is unethical to use his position as a popular writer to promulgate misinformation on a scientific subject.

Dawkins then goes on to make some correct, if irrelevant comments about television performers of fake psychic tricks. Then he says:

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Having said that, some ‘paranormalists’ are skilled enough to fool most scientists, and the people best qualified to see through them are other conjurors. This is why the most famous psychics and mediums regularly make excuses and refuse to go on stage if they hear that the front row of the audience is filled with professional conjurors.
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Another unsupported claim: where does he get this information? He also fails to take into account the magicians who have endorsed psychic phenomena. Given that we have caught him out several times already, would we be surprised if, in fact, it is not a regular occurance for the front row to be "filled with professional conjurors?" Would we be surprised if this were not only a highly unusual occurance, but that it is untrue, as Dawkins claims, that it has happened to "most famous psychics and mediums?" It is doubtful that this happens often, or that it happens to most famous psychics and mediums. It would also prove nothing if it did, since it is well known that there are many psychic fakes.[1]

What Dawkins does in the paragraph quoted above shows another feature of pseudoskepticism: a failure to directly confront the best cases available, but instead to beat the worst cases to a pulp in the hope that the reader will think that all cases are the same.

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Various good conjurors, including The Amazing Randi in America and Ian Rowland here, put on shows in which they publicly duplicate the ‘miracles’ of famous paranormalists – then explain to the audience that they are only tricks.
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That is a good thing. Hopefully, next, Randi and Rowland will take on such cases as the one mentioned by CSICOP fellow and magician Ray Hyman who said:

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"It is true that no one who has studied the reports of seances by Home or Crookes' accounts of his tests on this medium has come up with plausible ways he could have cheated or produced the alleged results by normal means." [2]
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Dawkins goes on:

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How about the uncanny experiences we read about? Say, dreaming of a long-forgotten uncle, then waking to be told that he died in the night. There’s no trickery here. The people who have these experiences are sincere, and who can blame them? It can be very weird. It’s just that most of us are bad at probability theory.
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Dawkins admits, here, that there is no fraud. Possibly he would take it back were he to be confronted with the cases where coincidence cannot possibly be the explanation.

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How about performers who seem to ‘sense’ that somebody in the audience had a loved one whose name began with M, owned a Pekinese, and died of something to do with the chest – ‘clairvoyants’ and ‘mediums’ with ‘inside knowledge’ that they ‘couldn’t have got by any normal means’? I haven’t space to go into details, but the trick is well known to conjurors under the name ‘cold reading’.
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Another standard skeptical explanation. Unfortunately, one should not make extraordinary claims without supporting evidence. The claim of cold reading is extraordinary here because in certain cases magicians have not been able to replicate (or even credibly claim they could replicate) the feats of psychics and mediums. The experiments of Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona would be good evidence for Dawkins to refute. Unfortunately, CSICOP already investigated this evidence, and failed to refute it.

According to Gary Schwartz,


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...a vocal subset (Hyman was one of the three), made the claim that if they had a year or two to practice, they might be able to figure out a way how to fake what the mediums were doing under these experimental conditions. My response to this vocal subset was simple. It was "show me." Just as I don't take the claims of the mediums on faith, I don't take the claims of the magicians on faith either. Mentalist magicians who make these claims will have to "sit in the research chair" and show us that they can do what they claim they can do. Thus far, the few cold readers who have made these extreme claims have refused to be experimentally tested. They have not been willing to demonstrate in the laboratory that they can't do what the mediums do under these experimental conditions; and at a later date, demonstrate that their performance can improve substantially with practice.[3]
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Were mentalists to replicate the feats of psychic and physical mediums, it would be a great service to humankind, because it would eliminate a source of confusion for the thinking public. Unfortunately, such ability has never been conclusively demonstrated under controlled conditions such as the laboratory tests where mediums have obtained statistically significant results.

See also


References

  1. ↑ This also assumes that psychic ability does not exist, and therefore the excuse of a mentally hostile audience interfering with psychic a demonstration is invalid.
  2. ↑ The Zetetic Scholar #7 Dec 1980
  3. ↑ [http://www.enformy.com/Gary-reHymanReview.htm How Not To Review Mediumship Research: Understanding the Ultimate Reviewer's Mistake] by Gary E. Schwartz, Ph.D.
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