A scant two and a half months since writing about
getting sidetracked from some reading plans by other reading plans, it happened
again. This time I have kind of finished though. I should back up.
I already wrote that a reference to The Obesity
Myth sent me to The Panic Virus. What I could not write at that time
because I did not yet know is that it was also going to send me to Voodoo
Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History by
David Aaronovitch, and also Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its
Consequences by John Allen Paulos. (That one wasn't as productive.)
A lot of it was interesting anyway, but the overall
theme became how much people will believe things that are wrong. Sometimes
there are bad actors involved, like Andrew Wakefield. He was on the take, he
lied, he used bad research methods and ignored ethical standards; that coming
to light doesn't seem to have changed anyone's minds about vaccination. Of
course there were people who worried about vaccines before, but he widened the
field and caused real harm.
The intentions aren't always terrible. One of the
conspiracy theories that was covered was the death of Princess Diana. Belief in
a conspiracy (beyond the apparent difficulty in believing that bad things can
happen to beautiful and beloved people) was partly driven by Mohamed al-Fayed,
Dodi Fayed's father. I understood his obsession to be at least partially fueled
by grief, and I can feel compassion for that.
I also suspect some of the fuel came from extreme
wealth, where you feel like you should be able to be in control of things. More
may come from guilt, where the family organization's business practices kept
someone employed who would drink while on driving duty. I can understand
wanting anyone else to bear the blame, but at some point it becomes
irresponsible.
The point of Innumeracy was that poor
understanding of math makes people more susceptible to being misled, which was
a valid point. (Unfortunately, I don't think the execution of getting people
more numerate was particularly effective.) Certainly there are people who skew
facts intentionally, and there are things that seem more memorable, especially
based on what we already know. Sometimes it is just advertising because someone wants money.
That is why I found this article so fascinating:
It leads into this whole other idea of how you get
information known, and studying folklore as a way of doing it.
And those aren't easy answers. It feels like that if
you have good science and know things, you should be able to tell people and
they will get it and we will all move forward based on fact. There is no
evidence of that.
We can wring hands about it (which feels
appropriate) and talk about improving schools (which is definitely appropriate,
though there is disagreement about what that entails), but it won't necessarily
be effective. People are good at ignoring facts. That really comes through hard
in Voodoo Histories.
There are no answers in this post, though there may
be beginnings of answers. It is still something that I find interesting, and
something that reminds me that there is hope. I have seen effective techniques
for cementing disinformation in minds, but it isn't all there is.
It can't be.
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