Scientific hazard symbol? Forget about it!

I like to think of myself as a lifelong skeptic. As an adolescent, my favorite book was Martin Gardner's Fads and Fallacies, I rejected God at age fourteen; I've spent much of my journalistic career as a basher of UFOs and like silliness; and I'm Carl Sagan's biographer. I've also read and enjoyed your magazine for more than a quarter of a century. In addition, I still have a sense of humor. That's why I'm hoping Alan J. Scott was really kidding in his self-professed "whimsical" proposal to develop a "hazard symbol" for the labeling of pseudoscientific literature--a sort of Good Housekeeping seal for distinguishing between good science and goofballery (May/June 2007).

Unfortunately, tongue-in-cheek schemes for social reform sometimes run away from their creators. I fear that'll be the fate of this one, too. I've been to enough CSI gatherings to know that there's a tiny but irritating minority of self-righteous windbags out there (you know, the ones who bend your ear for thirty minutes with their theory of what caused Moses's "burning bush") who might try to turn Scott's light-hearted scheme into reality.

If so, then please, for Sagan's sake, forget it! The last thing skeptics need is to be perceived as epistemological meter maids who run around issuing parking tickets for "scientific affronts." We'd look like a gang of Inspector Clouseaus! Let's stick to reasoned discourse and skip the simple-minded gimmicks.

Keay Davidson

Science Writer

San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco, California

Alan J. Scott replies:

I see Davidson's concern and, for the most part, agree with his statements. For me to run willy-nilly around stamping everything I deem as pseudoscientific sludge with a symbol that people should mindlessly support goes against every bone in my body. Davidson is preaching to the choir on this point. It flies in the face of a common fallacy of argumentation--the appeal to authority--mentioned in Sagan's pivotal book A Demon-Haunted World. It runs counter to developing people's critical and scientific thinking. Such thought-police actions should incite a backlash of intellectual criticism.

I offer some more common ground by which most readers of the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER can agree upon, concerning my whimsical symbol. Scientific affronts have a taxonomy, and each category in this taxonomy can have a spectrum of deleterious affects on society. It is important for people to know this so as to better manage and function in a world awash in junk information. This is the main point of my article.

The symbol is simply a quick summary. It is analogous to an "A" grade for a well-done term paper in college. It is analogous to the fire-diamond hazard symbol where a number in the blue diamond represents a level of health hazard.

The symbol relates to an economy of thought. It can make plowing through the muck of nonsense easier. If the symbol is used without careful thought, consensus of scientific experts, and protection against haphazard application, then it should never see daylight and be locked away, kept as an intellectual curiosity.

COPYRIGHT 2007 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning