| Oftentimes people have the tendency to accept things as facts, which fail to stand the test of scientific evidence. Strangely enough, this is sometimes also true for science itself and not only for fields like esoterics, cults, alternative medicine, pseudoscience and of course also in religion. The following explanations may help you to understand the underlying mechanisms that are at work when such logical mistakes happen. |
| Example: Mr XYZ has a severe pain in the back and goes to an alternative healer named ABC, who gives XYZ a homeopathic medicine, which XYZ quite readily takes. A day later XYZ feels better already and says to his wife: "Darling, this man is fantastic. He has cured my back pain! This man is worth every penny!" XYZ's wife is not so easily impressed. She says: "Well, honey, it's fabulous that your well again. However, there are a lot more explanations for this. For example the placebo effect. You may have just cured yourself by believing very strongly that ABC or his medicine will cure you. Or..."
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| Dr. Robert T. Carroll was a full-time teacher in the philosophy department at Sacramento City College from 1977 until 2007. He has written books and articles on critical thinking and has created a very interesting website called "Skeptic's Dictionary". The following keywords can be found in this online dictionary. |
| Task 1. Copy the following list (without the links) into a word document and make notes, if possible in your own words, about how these principles explain our readiness to believe that we know, instead of knowing that we only believe things. 2. What else may Mrs XYZ have responded to her husband. |
| ad hoc hypothesis
communal reinforcement cognitive dissonance confirmation bias Forer effect (a.k.a. subjective validation) law of truly large numbers (coincidences) placebo effect post hoc fallacy regression and the regressive fallacy self-deception shotgunning testimonial evidence (anecdotes) wishful thinking |
http://skepdic.com/adhoc.html http://skepdic.com/comreinf.html http://skepdic.com/cognitivedissonance.html http://skepdic.com/confirmbias.html http://www.skepdic.com/lawofnumbers.html http://skepdic.com/placebo.html http://skepdic.com/posthoc.html http://skepdic.com/regressive.html http://skepdic.com/selfdeception.html http://skepdic.com/shotgun.html |