It is not disbelief that is dangerous to our society, it is belief.

—George Bernard Shaw

On a popular local radio station, three morning show personalities were talking with a frequent guest. “Unbelievable!” “Amazing!” That's how they described their guest's incredible ability. In fact, they urged their audience to get to one of her seminars as soon as possible. Why? Because she can talk with the dead. Now these talk-show hosts are critical of many things; they often try to uncover the folly in what other people say or do. However, they were completely taken with the psychic. So were their listeners. Caller after caller was amazed by what she said—some even cried upon hearing what they thought were the words of their deceased loved ones.

You're at the hospital with severe abdominal pain. While lying on the examination table, a nurse enters the room, places her hands several inches above your body, and begins moving them in a gentle, wavelike motion, starting at your head and progressing slowly down your torso. “What are you doing?” you ask. “I'm driving the negative energy from your body,” she says. “It's what's causing your pain.” Sound a bit crazy? That wouldn't happen, would it? Well, it could. The nurse is practicing a technique called therapeutic touch. More than forty thousand nurses have been trained in this technique, and more than twenty thousand actively practice it today. In fact, it's taught at more than one hundred colleges and universities worldwide, including major medical schools at respected universities like NYU, and it's used in at least eighty hospitals in the United States alone.1

My good friend Joe is a geologist. He runs a water exploration company and travels the world finding drinkable water for towns, cities, and even small countries. He uses the most advanced technology, from complex computer models to satellite imagery, to locate high-output wells. Joe is very successful at what he does. In some areas of the Caribbean he has achieved an almost godlike status for his ability to find water where no one else could. Joe is one of the most intelligent individuals I know. And yet, at one point in his career, he used dowsing in his water exploration. Dowsing is a technique in which an individual holds an object, like a Y-shaped tree branch, and walks around the land in search of water. When the branch twitches, it's taken as a sign that water is below. Joe met a “professional” dowser while working in New England and became convinced that it works. In fact, many years ago when I bought some land to build a house he came over, dowsed the land, and told me where to drill.

What do these cases have in common? Very bright, capable, highly trained people are holding extraordinary beliefs that have little or no credible supporting evidence. In fact, the evidence indicates the reverse—talking with the dead, therapeutic touch, and dowsing don't work (my well has never yielded much water), but smart people continue to believe.² It happens to medical professionals, successful businesspeople, scientists, and to you and me. Now you may say, “I wouldn't believe in such bizarre things.” But what about other beliefs that may, on the surface, seem more plausible? Consider the case of “facilitated communication.”

SOUNDS REASONABLE, DON'T YOU THINK?

Your friend has an autistic child. Autism is a medical condition in which children can be unresponsive, aloof, and seem incapable of forming relationships with others. One's heart goes out to the children and parents affected by such a debilitating condition. Then there appears to be something that can help. Your friend recently told you of a fantastic new discovery that has enabled him to talk with his child. He says the technique, called facilitated communication, has demonstrated that autistic children are quite intelligent, and that their main problem centers simply around their inability to communicate. Delighted for your friend and intrigued by this breakthrough, you decide to learn more about the technique.

You find that facilitated communication has been used since the 1970s, when a teacher discovered that if you provide physical assistance to a severely autistic child, by holding their hand or arm to a typewriter or computer keyboard, the child will type out coherent, intelligent thoughts. Apparently, hidden beneath the impaired exterior of an autistic child lay a very capable mind that would demonstrate considerable intellect if put in a situation enabling him to communicate. In effect, facilitated communication demonstrated that severely autistic children have communication problems that are primarily caused by physical, rather than mental, limitations.

Based on this amazing discovery, the Dignity Through Education and Language Center was opened in 1986 to promote facilitated communication, and since then other centers have been established at major American universities. At Syracuse University, the Facilitated Communication Institute was established, which has trained thousands of therapists, and programs have been developed at other schools.

As time went by, the usefulness of facilitated communication gained support. Numerous reports were published indicating that facilitated communication was effective even for people with severe autism. Thousands of children throughout the world have been communicating with their parents and others using the technique. In fact, autistic children have been attending regular schools and progressing quite well with the help of facilitated communication.

The evidence seems compelling, doesn't it? Research centers are set up at major universities. Numerous personal testimonials indicate that parents can now communicate with their children. Severely autistic children are succeeding in school. And, there's “research” to support it. Pretty convincing stuff. Or is it?

It turns out that when controlled scientific studies were conducted, facilitated communication was shown to be worthless. In one very dramatic example, a researcher put headphones on both the facilitator and the child and asked a series of questions. When both received the same question, the child answered correctly. But when the child and facilitator were asked different questions, the child typed the answer to the facilitator's question.3 In another compelling study, a thin wall was erected between the child and facilitator. Each was then shown different items and asked to identify them. The item identified by the child was what the facilitator saw, not what the child saw. These studies clearly demonstrate that it is the facilitator, and not the child, who is responding during facilitated communication. The facilitator is simply guiding the child's hand, likely without even knowing it.⁴

All it takes to test the claims of facilitated communication are a few simple experiments. Yet, people are willing to accept the belief that it works on the basis of unscientific evidence. Why? We often believe what we want to believe. Parents desperately want to communicate with their children. Facilitators also want to help the children. They may also be motivated by professional prestige and greater funding opportunities. Unfortunately, when such motivations are not held in check by rigorous scientific testing, we can believe things that just aren't true. This desire to believe is so strong that many of the proponents of facilitated communication are still defending it, even in the face of compelling contradictory data.

THE PERVASIVENESS OF WEIRD AND ERRONEOUS BELIEFS

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

—Bertrand Russell

The variety of strange things that people believe seemingly knows no bounds. Many people believe that aliens have visited the earth, psychics can foretell the future, astrology works, crystals can heal sickness, Bigfoot exists, the Bermuda triangle swallows up ships and planes, people can levitate, houses can be haunted, near death experiences prove that there's an afterlife, and psychic detectives can find murderers. In fact, a Gallup poll conducted in June 2005 indicates that the majority of us (73 percent) hold at least one paranormal belief.

	Table 15
	Percent of People Holding Various Beliefs
41%	extrasensory perception
37%	houses can be haunted
42%	people are sometimes possessed by the devil
31%	telepathy, or communication between minds without the five senses
24%	extraterrestrial beings have visited the earth
26%	clairvoyance, or perceiving things not present to the senses
21%	people can communicate with the dead
25%	astrology
20%	reincarnation
	From a Gallup poll, June 2005.

We believe even though there is little or no credible evidence to support these beliefs; in fact, many are contradicted by hard evidence. Take, for instance, the so-called Bermuda Triangle. We have all probably seen or read something about the mystery surrounding the triangle. It's commonly believed that an extraordinary number of ships and planes have disappeared there, apparently because of paranormal or alien forces. However, a close examination reveals that these losses can be explained by a variety of normal causes. In fact, when you consider the increased rate of traffic in the area, there are actually a smaller proportion of losses in the Bermuda Triangle as compared to the surrounding areas.6

Weird beliefs are found in every segment of our society. Our federal government, for example, has made a number of costly decisions based on faulty beliefs. The Pentagon has spent millions trying to develop weapons based on ESP and psychokinesis (the ability to affect physical objects simply by thinking about them). The Defense Intelligence Agency and CIA has spent $20 million on the Stargate program alone, investigating psychics' supposed ability to view objects that are hundreds of miles away. And our government continues to give large grants to investigate such bizarre claims. This money is spent even though belief in these phenomena contradicts many of our well-established principles of science. 7 Might this money be spent better elsewhere?

Corporations make similar errors in judgment. Major companies in Europe and the United States have used graphologists when making their hiring decisions. A graphologist analyzes a job applicant's handwriting to determine what kind of person he is—not by the content of what he writes, but by how he loops his letters and cross his Ts. Research shows that graphology is totally useless, but you may have been denied a job in the past if a graphologist said your handwriting indicated you're not trustworthy.⁸

What about our leaders? Does it trouble you to learn that the actions of one of our presidents, arguably the most powerful person in the world, were guided by astrology? As noted earlier, and as reported by Donald Regan, White House chief of staff for President Reagan, “every major move and decision the Reagan's made during [his] time as White House Chief of Staff was cleared in advance with a woman in San Francisco who drew up horoscopes to make certain that the planets were in a favorable alignment for the enterprise.”⁹ It probably shouldn't be too surprising, since an American living in the twenty-first century is more likely to take astrology seriously than a person who lived during the Middle Ages.¹⁰ We live in an era that has witnessed a rise of so-called New Age thinking, which rejects much of western science, and has given us “channelers” who speak with the dead, crystals possessing the power to heal, and the books (and lives) of Shirley McLaine (more than eight million sold).

Influential writers are also not immune to believing weird things. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the celebrated author of the Sherlock Holmes series, created a character known for his ability to solve crimes by using a superior capacity for reason and logic. You might expect that the creator of such a rational character would value critical thinking above all else. However, Sir Arthur also believed in fairies. In 1917 and 1920 two girls from Cottingley, England, took five photographs of fairies that, they claimed, played with them. When Doyle saw the pictures, he became convinced that fairies actually exist. Years later the girls admitted that the pictures were a hoax—the fairies were simply cut out from a children's book.

Figure 1. Picture of a little girl with “fairies” that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle accepted as good evidence for the existence of fairies (reprinted by permission of the Granger Collection, New York).

University professors can be believers in the weird as well. Harvard professor and psychiatrist, John Mack, wrote a book in 1994 titled Abduction in which he argued that several hundred thousand, and possibly as many as several million, people may have been abducted by aliens or had related experiences, oftentimes without even knowing.11 Dr. Mack believed this because of the stories he heard from a number of people about their abduction experiences. No hard physical evidence exists to support these abductions, only stories.

So, is there any credible evidence to support these extraordinary claims? Numerous scientific investigations reveal that when such claims are put to close scrutiny, the evidence falls away.¹² In fact, the James Randi Educational Foundation has offered $1 million to anyone who can demonstrate a true psychic or paranormal phenomenon under well-controlled conditions. To date, no one has won the prize.

We also believe many things that, on the surface seem reasonable, but just aren't true. Research has shown that many commonly held beliefs turn out to be false when put to empirical test. For example, many people believe we only use 10 percent of our brains, but there's no basis in neuroscience to support this claim. What about the supersensitive hearing that the blind are said to develop? Not the case. How often have you thought that crime and drugs are out of control in the United States? Data show that violent crime rates have dropped 33 percent over a ten-year period ending in 2003, and the number of drug users is also down.13 While many people think that low self-esteem is a cause of aggression, empirical research indicates no connection.¹⁴ How about the perception that religious individuals are more altruistic than less religious people? Once again, a closer look reveals that religious people are no more likely to be charitable or help their fellow man than people who say they're atheists. Do opposites attract? Not according to the research. If you're happy in your job, will you be more productive? Not necessarily.¹⁵ But that would seem like “common sense,” wouldn't it? We all believe in common sense. As psychologist Keith Stanovich notes, however, 150 years ago it was a matter of common sense that women shouldn't be allowed to vote and that blacks shouldn't be taught to read.¹⁶ Faulty thinking can lead us to hold many unfounded beliefs.

THE IMPACT OF THE MEDIA ON WEIRD AND ERRONEOUS BELIEFS

Television programs on Atlantis, Bigfoot, psychic powers, the existence of ghosts, as well as a variety of other equally weird topics appear every week on cable TV channels like The Learning Channel (TLC), Discovery Channel, History Channel, and the Travel Channel. For example, a recent TLC show reported on psychics who used remote viewing to pinpoint unknown military installations in the Soviet Union during the cold war, and who correctly predicted movements in the silver markets nine times in a row (allegedly proof of psychic powers).¹⁷ Shows on such extraordinary topics are even aired on the national networks. ABC ran a program called the “World's Scariest Ghosts,” which was filled with personal accounts of ghostly encounters. My favorite quote from the show was, “I knew right away it was a ghost because there was no other way to explain it.”

These shows typically provide only a one-sided view. Rarely do they report on scientific data that refutes the claim, or interview one of the many competent skeptics, such as James Randi, Michael Shermer, or Joe Nickell, who might provide other plausible explanations for the phenomena. For example, the TLC show failed to report on the scientific evidence that demonstrates remote viewing doesn't work. Why? The sensational sells, so viewers are typically not made aware that extraordinary claims have been tested by legitimate science and found to be false. Nor did the show interview a skeptic who might have pointed out that the psychic's ability to predict the silver markets could easily be explained by probability theory. If skeptics are interviewed, their comments are often limited to a few choice sentences, which are quickly dismissed with comments such as, “Could the skeptics be wrong? There appears to be something the skeptics can't explain.”

The fact is, the phenomena reported in these shows can usually be explained by scientific knowledge—but that information is not reported. Why is this important? Failing to report the scientific evidence can have a significant impact on the beliefs we hold. Research has demonstrated that shows about paranormal phenomena, such as UFOs, are more likely to foster belief in the paranormal if they don't carry disclaimers than if they do.18 To see the power of the media on our beliefs, just consider one of the greatest accomplishments of the twentieth century—man walking on the moon. With all the evidence to support a successful landing, a poll in July 1999 revealed that 11 percent of Americans thought the lunar landing was a hoax. Incredible—but more striking was the fact that the percent doubled after Fox televised “Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?”¹⁹ Simply reporting a number of fantastic and unsubstantiated claims changed the views of millions.

My intent is not to uniformly bash TV or the popular press. They report on many well-researched topics that provide us with valuable information. Unfortunately, they also provide us with a great deal of misinformation, so distinguishing between the two is not always easy. One reporter, who often wrote stories about psychic abilities, was asked if he believed those stories. He replied, “I don't have to believe in it. All I need is two Ph.D.'s who will tell me it's so and I have a story.”²⁰ Since there are many people who hold strange beliefs, and among them some have doctorates, the media can often report bizarre things with “expert” testimony.

In fact, budding reporters often hold extraordinary beliefs themselves. A recent poll of students at Columbia's graduate school of journalism revealed that 57 percent believe in ESP, 57 percent believe in dowsing, 47 percent believe that you can read a person's aura, or energy field, and 25 percent believe in the lost continent of Atlantis.21 With Columbia's journalism students holding such beliefs, their future articles written on these subjects are likely to be slanted. In fact, articles in the popular press supporting topics like ESP, ghosts, and astrology outnumber skeptical articles on these issues by about two to one.²² Whatever people find interesting will find its way to TV and the print media, no matter how bizarre.

The media not only fosters beliefs in the weird, they can also affect our beliefs concerning things that are not bizarre. Studies reveal that the amount of media coverage of various health dangers is often inversely proportional to those dangers.²³ Drug use is one of the lowest ranking risk factors for serious illness and death, yet it receives about the same amount of coverage as the second ranked risk factor, diet and exercise. Over a period when our country's murder rate dropped by 20 percent, the number of murder stories on network newscasts soared by 600 percent.²⁴ Such biased reporting can affect the beliefs we hold. One study analyzed the number of stories that contained the words “drug crisis” as well as the changes in public opinion over a ten-year period. At times, nearly two out of three Americans thought that drugs were our most important problem, while at other times only one out of twenty believed drugs were most important. Not surprising, changes in public opinion coincided with changes in media coverage.²⁵

The media often distort the facts by focusing on personal accounts rather than scientific or statistical data. In 1994 stories about flesh-eating bacteria gobbled the media's attention, replete with graphic videos of disfigured patients. Even though medical authorities pointed out that you're fifty-five times more likely to be struck by lightning than to die from flesh-eating bacteria, the media dismissed that fact. As stated on ABC's 20/20, “Whatever the statistics, it's devastating to the victims.”²⁶ Flesh-eating bacteria is, no doubt, devastating to its victims. However, these vivid personal accounts make us worry about an event that has almost no chance of occurring. Similarly, during the summer of 2001, the cry was “Stay out of the water!” out of a heightened fear of shark attacks, and in 2002, the hot media story was child abduction. In each case, the facts did not warrant a greater concern, as there was little or no change in the frequency of these events as compared to previous years. But media coverage led many of us to conclude they were on the increase. With such biased reporting, it's no wonder that we form incorrect beliefs. While crime rates were actually dropping throughout the 1990s, two-thirds of Americans thought they were climbing. The number of drug users was cut in half by the late 1990s compared to a decade earlier, but nine out of ten people thought the drug problem was out of control.27

These incorrect beliefs can affect the decisions we make. For example, in a year when the number of deaths from violence in our nation's schools was at a record low, and only one out of ten public schools reported any serious crime, Time and U.S. News & World Report ran stories with headlines like “Teenage Time Bombs.” As sociologist Barry Glassner indicates, these media accounts heighten public awareness, and result in spending considerable money to protect children from dangers that only a very few will experience. At the same time, about 12 million American children are malnourished and 11 million have no health insurance.²⁸

And so, media coverage can affect our individual beliefs and our society's public policy decisions. Television producers, and newspaper and magazine editors often gravitate toward the sensational stories that grab their audiences' attention. Unfortunately, many of the most sensational reports concern weird and erroneous beliefs. Therefore, we have to be vigilant in how we think to counteract the media barrage. We would be less likely to be taken in by such reporting if we didn't naturally make errors in how we think. A main problem lies in our tendency to rely on anecdotal evidence.

TELL ME YOUR STORY—OUR BIAS FOR ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE

A few years back, women started reporting a variety of major illnesses after getting silicon breast implants. The women went on national shows to talk about how breast implants caused all sorts of diseases, from rheumatoid arthritis to chronic fatigue and breast cancer. As the number of women with such stories grew, the talk shows began interviewing some doctors who also said that implants could cause such serious health problems. How did the doctors know this? They had patients who developed serious illness after getting the implants, and when the implants were removed, the patients got better. On the basis of such stories, Congressional hearings were held, and, in 1992, the US Food and Drug Administration banned the use of silicon breast implants for the general public.

The media continued to play up the risk. Lawsuits were filed and juries awarded women up to $25 million for illnesses caused by their implants. In 1994 a federal court granted $4.25 billion to plaintiffs in the largest product liability settlement to that date, compensating women for illnesses caused by leaking implants. Dow Corning, the manufacturer of the implants, was forced into bankruptcy proceedings.29

So, do silicon breast implants cause serious illness? The evidence seems quite compelling, but it isn't based on science. Very intelligent women and doctors were making a very serious, yet common, decision error. They were relying on anecdotal evidence, such as personal stories and individual accounts, to prove that implants cause chronic disease. Not being considered here is that there are other plausible explanations for the women's problems. Just because women recently had implants and then got sick doesn't mean the implants caused the disease. The illness and the implants could have happened coincidentally.

So what should we do to determine if there's an implant-illness link? We need to compare a sample of women who did not have breast implants to a sample of women who did to see if the two groups differ in their incidence of major disease. That is, we need a scientific study to determine if women with implants have a significantly higher occurrence of serious illness. If they do, then there's reason to believe that the implants cause problems. If they don't, then implants are not causing the problems, and the women are erroneously attributing their problems to the implants.

One of the first scientific studies examined the records of over seven hundred women with, and over fourteen hundred women without, implants. The study found no difference in the rate of connective tissue disease between the two groups, which implants were accused of causing.30 Of course, we shouldn't rely solely on the results of one study, especially on such an important issue as this. In science, a study has to be replicated before we can place much confidence in its conclusion. Over subsequent years, a number of other studies were conducted, and the evidence suggests that implants do not cause breast cancer or other chronic, major disease.³¹ Of course, there can be complications from the surgery (as with any surgery), including infection and hemorrhage, and pain may occur from hardening of the breast tissue, but these complications are not major connective tissue diseases, the basis for most of the million-dollar lawsuits. To explain why so many women and doctors were erroneously concluding that implants cause serious disease, Marcia Angell, the executive editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, observed that the evidence they were depending on was exclusively anecdotal—the personal stories of individuals.³²

Research demonstrates that we prefer to rely on stories instead of statistics. As an example, one study had people view a taped interview with a prison guard. Some saw an interview with a guard who was humane, while others saw a guard who was extremely inhumane. Half of the subjects then received information indicating that the guard was either typical, or not typical, of the majority of prison guards. It turned out that the information concerning how representative the guard was of guards in general had little effect on individuals' opinions. Instead, people relied more on the information conveyed in the single interview, and ignored how unreliable or unrepresentative that interview might be.³³ Even experienced doctors are affected by anecdotal data. Research shows that doctors who deal with the effects of smoking (e.g., chest physicians) are more likely to quit smoking than are doctors in general practice.³⁴ All doctors surely realize the health hazards of smoking, but those that see the personal effects in their patients are affected the most. While statistical information is typically the most relevant evidence to consider, we respond more to personal accounts.

Interestingly, the news media recognizes our penchant to rely on anecdotal evidence. Most of the television news magazines, such as Dateline and 20/20, report on personal stories. Even 60 Minutes, the show with a no-nonsense reputation for getting to the facts of an issue, doesn't report a lot of data and statistics. In fact, Don Hewitt, the producer of the show, says that he wouldn't accept a segment from Mike Wallace, Lesley Stahl, or any other reporter unless it had a story to tell. In effect, Hewitt implicitly recognizes our desire for a good story. As a result, the media plays up personal stories and downplays the science and statistics. While this may be good for TV ratings, personal accounts can lead us to believe things that science has shown to be false.

Relying on personal testimonials is particularly troubling because they can be easily manipulated. A few years ago, magician and renowned skeptic James (The Amazing) Randi demonstrated just how easy it is to create bizarre testimonials. While on a New York talk show, Randi told the audience that he saw a number of orange V-shaped objects flying overhead when he was driving in from New Jersey. Within minutes, the station switchboard lit up with a number of eyewitnesses confirming the sightings. These calls actually contained many details that Randi didn't mention, including a report that the objects made more than one pass. Great talk radio, but Randi made up the whole story—there were never any V-shaped flying objects! With this simple example, he clearly demonstrated how worthless personal testimonials can be. It's possible to generate testimonials to support just about any bogus claim.35

So what can we take away from all this? Our cognitive makeup naturally gravitates toward anecdotal evidence when we form our beliefs and make our decisions.³⁶ We like to hear, and respond more strongly to, stories. However, this doesn't mean we should set our beliefs on the basis of such evidence. Anecdotes are just stories told by potentially biased human storytellers. As such, fifty anecdotes are no better than one. Instead, what we need are rigorous scientific studies to determine if breast implants cause serious illness or if facilitated communication actually works. Before we believe that humans are being abducted by extraterrestrials, we should ask to see some physical evidence, some tangible proof of this extraordinary event, as opposed to relying solely on personal abduction accounts. If not, we will fall into the trap of thinking like a pseudoscientist.

PSEUDOSCIENCE

We live in an age of science, but as we've seen, many of us hold unscientific and pseudoscientific beliefs. Pseudoscience refers to “claims presented so that they appear scientific even though they lack sufficient supporting evidence and plausibility.”37 Some refer to it as junk science, or voodoo science. Essentially, pseudoscience is an endeavor that pretends to be a science, but lacks the rigor of science. The conclusions of junk science are typically drawn from low-quality data, such as anecdotal evidence and personal testimonials, as opposed to carefully controlled studies. Most fields of science have a corresponding pseudoscience. For example, some may view the investigation of ancient astronauts to be archeology, tinkering with perpetual motion machines might seem to be physics, and the shared study of stars and planets links astronomy and astrology in some people's minds. And, of course, there is the science of psychology and the pseudoscience parapsychology.³⁸

Claims made in the pseudosciences have a couple of common features. First, the claim is controversial because, while people can point to some supporting evidence, the evidence is typically of dubious quality. Second, the claim is often at odds with current well-established scientific principles. As an example, consider the case for levitation. There are people who claim to have levitated, and some photographs show people apparently floating in midair. Supporters point to this evidence, but the quality of the evidence is quite flimsy, especially considering how extraordinary the claim is. Personal testimonials can be wrong and photographs can be tampered with. In fact, if levitation works, our entire understanding of how gravity operates would have to change.³⁹

One of the foremost examples of pseudoscience is parapsychology. Parapsychologists test a range of phenomena that supposedly occur due to extrasensory perception, such as telepathy (reading another's mind), clairvoyance (perceiving things not present to the senses) and precognition (seeing the future).⁴⁰ J. B. Rhine began investigating these phenomena at Duke University in the 1930s, using what are called Zener cards—five cards with different symbols on the back, such as a plus sign, square, or wavy lines. In a typical experiment, an assistant would select and observe a card, and a subject would try to identify the card by reading the assistant's mind. Rhine found greater than chance accuracy in identifying the cards, and coined the term extrasensory perception. However, a review of his methods revealed many other potential explanations for the accuracy achieved. In some cases, the subjects could get subtle cues from the experimenter. In other cases, the cards were printed with such pressure that the subjects could actually see or feel the indentations on the backs of the cards. While the evidence appeared to support ESP, the experiments were not tightly controlled, and so the credibility of the evidence is questionable.

Numerous ESP studies conducted over the years point to one overriding conclusion. Studies supporting ESP consistently lack proper controls, and studies with proper controls consistently find no support for ESP. This has led prominent psychologist and parapsychologist Susan Blackmore, who has worked in the field of parapsychology for nearly thirty years, to reluctantly conclude that psi does not exist. After analyzing a recent series of experiments that were said to have found evidence of ESP, she stated, “These experiments, which looked so beautifully designed in print, were in fact open to fraud or error in several ways…the results could not be relied upon as evidence for psi.”41 The fact is, decades of ESP research has not produced a single example in which an ESP phenomenon has been replicated under tightly controlled conditions. The main reason ESP is not investigated by mainstream psychology today is that it has been examined over a number of years and nothing has come of it.⁴² And yet, 41 percent of the people recently surveyed by Gallup believe in the power of ESP.

PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC THINKING

Why do we hold many pseudoscientific beliefs? Probably the main reason is that we want to believe in them. As the noted astronomer Carl Sagan observed, pseudoscience and other weird beliefs often meet our emotional needs.⁴³ They make us feel good; they're comforting. They may make us feel more in control of our lives. They even may give us hope that our diseases will be cured. We want simplicity in our lives, and belief in superstition, fate, the supernatural, and other pseudoscientific beliefs often provide simple explanations for life's events.

Pseudoscience also has many of the trappings of science, and so we have a hard time distinguishing pseudoscience from real science. For example, Edgar Cayce's Association for Research and Enlightenment, where ESP research is conducted, occupies a big, modern building, with professionally appointed offices and a research library. It appears official and authoritative, and so we're more likely to accept what the organization says, even though it may say some pretty weird stuff.44

Many of us also find the topics of pseudoscience interesting and intriguing, and we all want to be entertained. It's fascinating to think that ancient astronauts created the pyramids or that someone has the power to read other people's minds. Finally, pseudoscience is everywhere in our popular culture, while skeptical treatments are harder to find. There are hundreds of books and countless TV shows on the Lost Continent of Atlantis, but it's typically not reported that plate tectonics indicates there couldn't have been a continent between Europe and America ten thousand years ago.⁴⁵ Atlantis remains lost while belief in pseudoscience abounds.

	Table 2
	Characteristics of Pseudoscientific Thinking
(1)	Preconceived notion of what to believe.
(2)	Search for evidence to support a preconceived belief.
(3)	Ignore evidence that would falsify a claim or belief.
(4)	Disregard alternative explanations for a phenomenon.
(5)	Hold extraordinary beliefs.
(6)	Accept flimsy evidence to support an extraordinary claim.
(7)	Rely heavily on anecdotal evidence.
(8)	Lack of tightly controlled experiments to test a claim.
(9)	Employ very little skepticism.

With such powerful desires at work, we have to be careful in how we form our beliefs. How do pseudoscientists arrive at their erroneous beliefs? Table 2 lists some of the more common faults of pseudoscientific thinking. In general, pseudoscientists have a preconceived notion of what they want to believe. This creates a strong motivation to search for evidence that supports the belief, and to ignore evidence that falsifies the claim. Pseudoscientists typically focus on only one explanation for a phenomenon, quickly brushing aside alternative explanations. And, in their desire to support their belief, they are willing to accept flimsy, oftentimes anecdotal, evidence.

Before you start thinking that these pseudoscientists are a pretty lame lot, you should realize that many of these same characteristics are evident in our everyday thinking. Like pseudoscientists, we also make these errors when shaping our beliefs. Why? We're all human, and our general cognitive characteristics follow very similar patterns. So this type of thinking isn't limited to just bizarre topics—it affects how we form beliefs and make decisions in every aspect of our lives.

PROBLEMS WITH PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC THINKING

As we've seen, pseudoscientific thinking can lead to poor public policy decisions, inappropriate lawsuits, and wasteful spending: Things we all want to avoid. However, some may ask, What's the harm in holding a few pseudoscientific beliefs? If you believe in facilitated communication, psychic ability, fringe alternative therapies, or talking with the dead, you're not hurting anyone, and they can, at times, provide you with a great deal of comfort. The problem is, they often have insidious negative effects that we're not even aware of.

Consider the case of facilitated communication. Parents certainly find solace in thinking they can communicate with their autistic child. However, they are being misled because it's the facilitator, and not their child, who is interacting with them. In addition, considerable money is spent to have a facilitator sit with a child at school, when it turns out the facilitator is actually the one taking and passing exams. The negative effects are even more dramatic—children have accused their parents of sexual abuse during facilitated communication.46 Of course, the facilitator was making the claim, but if you believe in facilitated communication, you would likely believe that the claim was true. In fact, people have been imprisoned because of child molestation charges obtained from facilitated communication. Our desire to believe can ruin lives.

What harm is there to believing in things like astrology, psychic readings, and fringe alternative therapies? Most psychics on television charge about $4 per minute, or a whopping $240 an hour. That's about twice the fee of a professional psychiatrist! Some people have spent thousands on phone bills because of psychic hot lines. Hundreds of millions are spent each year on questionable medical practices, including homeopathy, magnetic therapy, urine therapy, reflexology, iridology, therapeutic touch—the list goes on and on. And worse, many of us have eschewed proven drug remedies in favor of these fringe alternatives, negatively affecting our health and even our lives.

Pseudoscientific thinking can also affect us in a variety of more subtle ways. We're more inclined, for example, to develop erroneous stereotypes. Many of us believe that homosexuals are more likely to be pedophiles. Numerous studies of pedophiles refute that belief. In fact, one study found that a child is one hundred times more likely to be molested by the heterosexual partner of a close relative than by a homosexual. Nonetheless, the stereotype persists and represents the pernicious effects of pseudoscientific thinking. 47

Pseudoscientific thinking can also lead to misplaced fears. We have been sensitized to murder in the workplace, listening to stories of disgruntled employees with guns and office massacres. But did you know that, out of approximately 121 million people who work, only about one thousand are murdered on the job each year, and that includes high-risk jobs like police and taxi drivers. Furthermore, about 90 percent of these murders are committed by people attempting robbery. The chance of being murdered by someone you work with is less than one in two million. You're several times more likely to be hit by lightning than to be done in by Frank in shipping. In fact, the often-used term going postal is a misnomer. Postal employees are actually two and a half times less likely to be killed on the job than the average worker.

Perhaps you're afraid that one of your children will eat poisoned candy or an apple containing a razor blade on Halloween. You're not alone. An ABC News/Washington Post poll in 1985 revealed that 60 percent of parents were afraid that their children could be victims of a Halloween treat gone bad. Why? They heard stories. However, a study investigating all of the reported incidents up to that time found that not a single death or serious injury occurred from Halloween candy received from strangers. In the two instances in which children died, apparently from eating poisoned candy, it turned out that family members deliberately spiked the candy.

As sociologist Barry Glassner states in The Culture of Fear, “We waste tens of billions of dollars and person hours every year on largely mythical hazards like road rage, on prison cells occupied by people who pose little or no danger to others, on programs designed to protect young people from dangers that few of them ever face, [and] on compensation for victims of metaphorical illnesses.”48

So what harm can be caused by pseudoscientific thinking? Plenty! It leads to a decline in critical thinking and scientific literacy, it decreases our ability to make well-informed decisions, it diverts resources that could be spent on more productive activities, and it leads to monetary losses and even death. Clearly, we should be looking for ways to improve our thinking processes so that we can avoid such problems.