Science Friction_ Where the Known Meets the Unknown - Michael Shermer [11]
Chapter 4, “The Virtues of Skepticism,” is a brief history of skepticism and doubt, the relationship between science and skepticism, and the role of skeptics in society. This essay began as a tribute to my friend and colleague—the venerable Martin Gardner, one of the fountainheads of the modern skeptical movement—but, as I try to do in nearly all of my writings, I also impart larger lessons for what we can learn about how science works through examining how it doesn’t work. In this case, I examine skepticism itself, with some embarrassment for my own lack of initiative and insight for not doing this in 1992 when we founded the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine. In selecting these names for the society and magazine, one would imagine that we would have carefully thought out their linguistic and historical meaning and usages, but it was not until the late Stephen Jay Gould wrote the foreword to my book Why People Believe Weird Things, in which he discussed the meaning of skepticism, that I got to thinking about what precisely it is we are doing when we are being skeptical.
Part II, “Science and the Meaning of Body, Mind, and Spirit,” begins with chapter 5, “Spin-Doctoring Science,” by demonstrating how science gets spin-doctored during explosive controversies, such as the anthropology wars over the true nature of human nature. This is an in-depth analysis of the fight among scientists over the proper interpretation of the Yanomamö people of Amazonia. Are they the “fierce” people, as one anthropologist called them, in constant battles with one another over precious resources, or are they the “erotic” people, as another anthropologist labeled them, passionately loving and sexual? The answer is yes, the Yanomamö are the erotic fierce people, or the fiercely erotic people. They are, in fact, people, just like us in the sense of possessing a full range of human emotions, and a complete suite of human traits, together comprising our nature as Homo sapiens.
In chapter 6, “Psyched Up, Psyched Out,” I utilize my experiences in the 1980s as a professional bicycle racer, particularly my founding of and participation in the three-thousand-mile nonstop transcontinental Race Across America—the ultimate test in the sport of ultramarathon cycling—to consider the power of the mind in sports, what we know and do not know about its role in athletic performance, and what this tells us about the interaction between mind and body. Since I was an active participant in the race, hell-bent on winning as much as the next guy, I entered the fray not as an objective scientist curious about whether this or that diet or training technique or new technology worked, but as a competitor in search of an edge. The farrago of nonsense I encountered along the way ultimately led to my becoming a skeptic because athletes are especially superstitious and vulnerable to outlandish claims, and I was among the gullible at this stage in my life.
Chapter 7, “Shadowlands,” is the most personal commentary in the book, as I recount the story of a ten-year battle with cancer I helped my mother to wage against brain tumors (to which she eventually succumbed), and what I learned about the limitations of medical science, the hubris