Science Friction_ Where the Known Meets the Unknown - Michael Shermer [5]
Experimental evidence of such cognitive idols has been provided by Princeton University psychology professor Emily Pronin and her colleagues, who tested a generalized idol called “bias blind spot,” in which subjects recognized the existence and influence in others of eight different specific cognitive biases, but they failed to see those same biases in themselves. In one study on Stanford University students, when asked to compare themselves to their peers on such personal qualities as friendliness, they predictably rated themselves higher. Even when the subjects were warned about the “better-than-average” bias and asked to reevaluate their original assessments, 63 percent claimed that their initial evaluations were objective, and 13 percent even claimed to be too modest! In a second study, Pronin randomly assigned subjects high or low scores on a “social intelligence” test. Unsurprisingly, those given the high marks rated the test fairer and more useful than those receiving low marks. When asked if it was possible that they had been influenced by the score on the test, subjects responded that the other participants were negatively influenced, but not them! In a third study in which Pronin queried subjects about what method they used to assess their own and others’ biases, she found that people tend to use general theories of behavior when evaluating others, but use introspection when appraising themselves; but in what is called the “introspection illusion,” people do not believe that others can be trusted to do the same. Okay for me but not for thee.
The University of California, Berkeley, psychologist Frank J. Sulloway and I made a similar discovery of an “attribution bias” in a study we conducted on why people say they believe in God, and why they think other people believe in God. In general, most people attribute their own belief in God to such intellectual reasons as the good design and complexity of the world, whereas they attribute others’ belief in God to such emotional reasons as it is comforting, gives meaning, and they were raised to believe.
Such biases in our beliefs do not prove, of course, that there is no God (or Martians or Virgin Marys); however, in identifying all these different factors influencing (and often determining) what it is we see and think about the world, it calls into question how we know anything. There are many answers to this solipsistic challenge—consistency, coherence, and correspondence being just three devised by philosophers and epistemologists—but for my money there is no more effective Reliable Knowledge Kit than science. The methods of science, in fact, were specifically designed to weed out idols and biases. Some patterns are real and some are not. Science is the only way to know for sure.
Cancer clusters are a prime example. As portrayed in Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 film Erin Brockovich, staring Julia Roberts as the buxom legal assistant cum corporate watchdog, lawyers can strike a financial bonanza with juries who do not understand that correlation does not necessarily mean causation. Toss a handful of pennies up into the air and let them fall where they may, and you will see small “clusters” of pennies, not a perfectly random distribution. Millions of Americans get cancer—they are not randomly distributed throughout the country; they are clustered. Every once in a while, they may be grouped in a