Psychology

Does combatting quackery and pseudoscience through rational argument and ridicule work?

oracknows — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 09:15:13 +0000

Does combatting quackery and pseudoscience through rational argument and ridicule work?

As hard as it is to believe, I've been at this blogging thing for 12 years now. In fact, it's been so long that this year I didn't even remember to mention it when it happened nearly two weeks ago. Over that time period, I've dealt with a large number of conspiracy theories. Indeed, skeptics can't help but avoid it. After all, conspiracy theories are at the heart of a lot of pseudoscience, quackery, and crankery. For instance, the very first bit of pseudohistory that served as my "gateway drug" into skepticism, Holocaust denial, is based upon a massive conspiracy theory that the Jews made up or vastly exaggerated the Nazis' genocide against the Jews and are hiding evidence that it never happened or that far fewer Jews died, to the Holocaust deniers the Jews suffered no more than other groups suffering massive casualties during World War II. Similarly, most believers in alternative medicine believe in conspiracies by varying combinations of big pharma, the government, and the medical profession to suppress their favorite bits of quackery, due to a combination of ideology and (of course!), above all, to preserve big pharma's profits.

One of the most common topics that I deal with is antivaccine pseudoscience. Not surprisingly, antivaccine ideologues believe in many conspiracy theories. Chief among these is that the government and pharmaceutical industry are "covering up" evidence that vaccines cause autism. To them, this conspiracy explains why high quality evidence from large epidemiological studies in the peer-reviewed literature has consistently failed to support a link between vaccines (or the thimerosal preservative that used to be in vaccines) and autism—or any other of the conditions and diseases antivaccinationists attribute to vaccines, such as autoimmune diseases, asthma, sudden infant death syndrome, and a wide variety of neurodevelopmental disorders. Indeed, that's why I've started to refer to this conspiracy theory as the "central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement." the "CDC whistleblower" manufactroversy so quickly blossomed into a full-blown conspiracy theory two years ago and has since resulted in more than one book (such as Kevin Barry's Vaccine Whistleblower) and, of course, the propaganda film VAXXED by Andrew Wakefield and Del Bigtree, all promoting the idea that a troubled CDC scientist, William Thompson, has made claims that the CDC "covered up" evidence that, simply put), the MMR vaccine resulted in a much higher risk of autism in African American males. Thompson isn't portrayed the way he really was, an emotionally troubled man who has nursed a grudge for 10 years against his former supervisors and collaborators because he felt that they didn't listen to his concerns sufficiently and thus ended up spilling his guts to a biochemical engineer turned incompetent epidemiologist Brian Hooker, who tipped off Andrew Wakefield to Thompson's complaints. Hilariously, although Thompson has been silent for over two years, even he doesn't seem to believe Wakefield's claims.

So conspiracy theories are important. Conspiracy theories are harmful very harmful, too. After all, arguably conspiracy theories are a large part of what fueled the election of Donald Trump, who is himself an antivaccine loon and even met with Andrew Wakefield back in August. (There's even a picture.) It's not for nothing that I fear for medical science under Trump.

So it was with great interest that I came across an article about a study on how to counter conspiracy theories Study: Rational arguments and ridicule can both reduce belief in conspiracy theories. The study itself by Orosz et al, carried out by a group in Hungary collaborating with a group in the UK, is entitled Changing Conspiracy Beliefs through Rationality and Ridiculing. The reason it caught my eye is because it goes against two tenets of science communication that I've learned since who knows when, one in particular that I've been pummeled with since time immemorial, given the name of this blog. The first is that you can't change someone's mind about pseudoscience or a conspiracy theory by rattling off the facts and science that refute it because that will make people double down through the phenomenon of motivated reasoning, in which intelligent people are very good at finding facts to support their beliefs and picking apart evidence that does not. (Most highly intelligent people are not skeptics and, through the Dunning-Kruger effect, people often overestimate their expertise in areas outside of their .) The second is that ridicule doesn't change people's minds, a tenet that has led to considerable concern trolling in the comments of this blog and my not-so-super-secret other blog. So a study that suggests that both methods can persuade is at least of interest, even if it turns out not to support the hypothesis.

Basically, the authors looked at three strategies for decreasing belief in conspiracy theories:

In order to change the link between the object and the attribute, further logical pieces of information or logical steps can be provided, thus allowing us to elaborate on the logical structure which can result in a more complex link. (Using facts and studies to refute the belief.)
The second possibility of conspiracy belief change involves increasing the distance between the self and those who hold a certain link between the object and the attribute. To achieve this, one can demonstrate that those people who hold such beliefs are characterized by negative traits or they are targeted as being ridiculous. As practically no one wants to be ridiculed by others, the ridiculing argument can be fueled by the ego-protective function. (The ridicule approach.)
The third form of conspiracy belief change could relate to the identification with the object of the belief. Therefore, in this case, the primary goal is not to change the link between the object and the attribute, but to focus on the reduction of the distance between the self and the object of the CT. (The empathetic approach.)

To test these methods, the researchers recruited 813 Hungarian adults selected randomly from an Internet-enabled panel, including 20,000 members, with the help of the Solid Data Ltd., in October–November 2014. To select the the sample, a multiple-step, proportionally stratified, probabilistic sampling method was employed. As described by the researchers, members of this panel used the Internet at least once a week. Also, individuals were removed from the panel if they responded too quickly (i.e., without paying attention to their response) and/or had fake (or not used) e-mail addresses. The sample was nationally representative in terms of gender, age, level of education, and location of residence.

Respondents then listened to this:

After agreeing with the informed consent form, participants listened to the first audio recording (for the transcript, see Appendix 1 in Supplementary Material). This is a 4:30 min recording that presented a conspiracy super theory including the victimization of Hungary by the financial imperium, the hidden control of Jews over the world, the EU as a non-functional oppressive power, and the bankers who exploit the Hungarian financial system. The text provided vivid, but confusing details about the mechanisms that “actually” shape the fate of Hungary and the world. This super CT met the above mentioned characteristics of CTs in terms of nothing happens by chance, nothing is what it seems, everything is interconnected with everything, and the world is divided into good and evil.

I must admit, having read the text of the speech, I found this to be a doozy, even by my standards. Here's a taste:

The Zionist world strategy, in concreto, can be seen as the global strategy to achieve world hegemony. It can be successfully accomplished if humanity does learn anything about it. For this reason, Zionists practically issued war against everyone who knew about their activity, analyzes it, judges it, and understands and publishes about their world strategy. The international Jewry created the bolshevism, and the same power disintegrated the Soviet Union. Today, the United States is the next. The Zionist monetary world elite have already successfully gained control over the political system of the United States.

After listening to the speech the subjects expressed their acceptance concerning eight questions on four main topics (victimization of Hungary, EU, power of the Jews, bankers). They were also asked about their general acceptance of the conspiracy theory. Then the subjects were randomized to four groups. The control listened to a weather forecast. The rest were randomized to listen to one of three speeches utilizing these strategies:

In the rational condition, the text tackled the claims made in the first recording in a logically plausible manner, using numbers to support the objections, and pointing out the discrepancy between high influence and concealment. This speech pointed out the logical flaws of the first speech and corrected it with in-depth arguments regarding the link between the beliefs' objects and attributes. The goal of this condition was to emphasize the logical inconsistencies and to create a more complex and coherent relationship between the objects of the belief and the attributes.

In the ridiculing condition, the script addressed the same logical flaws, but reasoned against them differently: instead of focusing on certain details, it derided the logical inconsistencies and concentrated on those who believe in the CTs, picturing them as evidently ridiculous (e.g., mentioning the believers of Lizard Men). This text intended to increase the distance between the respondents' self and those who believe in CTs.

The empathetic condition contested the original text's claim in a different manner: instead of focusing on content or those who believe in the content, it placed the objects of the CTs in the center, and compassionately called attention to the dangers of demonizing and scapegoating, while also pointing out the human character of the CT objects (i.e., Jews face similar conspiracy theories and persecution nowadays that the Early Christians faced). This condition intended to reduce the distance between the respondent and the objects of CTs and to raise empathy toward these groups.

Here's a taste of each condition. First, an excerpt from the rational:

Contrary to the text, the world’s financial core does not consist of the above-mentioned housed, nor the Zionist/Israeli/Jewish lobby. The British banks are not the most important. The Chinese banks dominate the international ranking of the banks based on the value of their tools. Among the top 10 biggest banks, 4 are Chinese, while in the top 50, 10 are Chinese, 6 are American, and 5-5 are Japanese, French, and British. In the top 10 enterprises, ranked by Forbes, 5 are Chinese (among them the Chinese ISBC with a wealth of 3124 billion dollars) and 5 are American (among them the JP Morgan with 2353 billion dollars).

Hmmm. Sounds like me...sometimes.

Now, an excerpt from the ridiculing:

The fight against the “global financial empire” and other invisible enemies is the hobby and craze of conspiracy theory believers. The important thing is to always have an evil with whom people can be scared, like the bogeyman crawling out from under the children’s bed. It is the best to choose a suspicious group with a bad reputation as enemy: secret societies, the House of Rotschilds, the illuminati, the Cabalists, international financial capital, Jews, etc. There are people who, following this train of thought, think that Lizard people want to take control over us, and for example the American presidents are disguised Lizard people in reality. Believable, right? The Facebook page of the most famous Lizard people believer, David Icke, is followed by half a million people. According to a research, 2% of the Americans, more than 6 million people, believe in the Lizard people theory. Obviously, it is easier to scare with a bogeyman than to think logically. It has also been proven by research that logical thinking is not a strength of the conspiracy believers. According to a British study, people believing Osama Bin Landen to still be alive, despite the official version, also believe in that he was already dead when American soldiers found him. He lives and dies at the same time. Believable, right?

This sounds like me a bit more of the time, although it's a bit crude. I like my ridicule a bit more amusing.

Finally, an excerpt from the empathetic:

The different influential societies, families, bankers are often accused that they maliciously control countries, the EU and the events of the world from behind the scenes. As a consequence, Hungary often appears as a marionette that is controlled by them. Along other groups in the text, the global monetary empire, the super power whose leaders are the secretly controlling Zionists, alias Jews. It is important to know that the same scapegoat theory has already led to tragedy in multiple occasions. Similar theories constituted the Nazi propaganda about the world dominance of the Jews and resulted in the killing of 6 million people, women and children among them. Not only were the Jews the target of these conspiracy theories by any means. In the Middle Ages, the Jews were accused of poisoning water wells and murdering virgin girls. In the early eras of Christianity, in Ancient Rome, the same accusations were made against the Christians, and they were hunted and killed based on these accusations. A similar logic is behind current Christian prosecutions. The influential societies are often vested with demonic power so that they can be stripped of their goods.

So what were the results? Not being a social scientist or psychologist, I'm not able to judge more than in a general sense the various tools used to assess the subjects' beliefs pre- and post-speeches, but they included:

Conspiracy Assessment Tool (CAT), which was created for this study to assess the individual's attitudes toward conspiracies, assessing beliefs regarding conspiracies related to four aspects: (1) Hungary as a victim of conspiracy; (2) Jews as the leaders of the world; (3) the European Union is a parasitic formation without any function; and (4) the bankers as the leaders of the world.
Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire (CMQ)
Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR)
Big Five (BFI)

The key result is here:

CAT scores, as you can see, decreased significantly among subjects who participated in the rational condition and the ridiculing condition, but no significant decrease was observed in the other two conditions: control and empathetic. From this the authors conclude that rational arguments and ridicule can reduce belief in conspiracy theories. The authors are, as they should be, fairly modest about their findings:

Considering these results and previous studies focusing on the benevolent effects of analytic thinking in CT belief reduction, it can be assumed that uncovering arguments regarding the logical inconsistencies of CT beliefs can be an effective way to discredit them. Our findings on the efficiency of rational argumentation go against the mainstream of the communication literature and “common wisdom,” as well as the current affective wave of social psychology emphasizing that emotions constitute the most important factor behind shaping beliefs and attitudes. Considering the modest effect sizes, we assume that rationality has a bigger impact on shaping (sometimes irrational) beliefs than previously expected, given that in the current communication environment, people are overloaded with emotional messages coming from ads, political and social campaigns. Future studies should also investigate the role of rationality and the “rationality heuristic” in belief change.

I like to joke that we have to be careful about studies whose results reinforce our preconceived biases. In this case, the question, of course, is whether these results are in any way generalizable. For one thing, the sample is relatively small and only involves one country. For another thing, this study only examines very short term measures. Most importantly, for my purposes, this study looked at a general population, not committed conspiracy theorists. In other words, this group is close to the group that I like to refer to as "fence-sitters." In the case of the antivaccine movement, fence sitters are people who might have heard the misinformation about vaccines enough to be concerned but by no means have bought into the full conspiracy theory mindset of the movement or even started to seriously believe the lies.

In this study, the investigators were almost seeking to create fence sitters, as their subjects might or might not have heard about the antisemitic conspiracy theories to which they were exposed, much as new parents might be exposed to antivaccine misinformation. I know, I know, it's a highly imperfect analogy, given how structured an experiment like this must by its very nature be compared to how parents generally find this information through friends and the Internet. Even so, these results give me hope that a combination of rational argument and targeted ridicule can be effective. I'm not so deluded not to think that such a combination probably at best doesn't work and at worst hardens attitudes among the hard-core antivaccine ideologues or believers in other pseudoscience, but those were never my targets anyway (other than for ridicule). They're so invested in their beliefs that changing them is as difficult as getting a fundamentalist to change or give up his religion. It happens, but not very commonly and usually not because of persuasion. Those of us who try, in our own way, to combat the pseudoscience and quackery that are so rampant today can only reasonably hope to try to inoculate the average citizen against such beliefs.

oracknows Fri, 12/23/2016 - 04:15

Tags

complementary and alternative medicine

medicine

Popular Culture

Pseudoscience

Quackery

Skepticism/Critical Thinking

complementary and alternative medicine

medicine

Speaking of ridicule, there's a story in the book "Freakonomics". In the 50s, the KKK was undertaking a recruitment drive. An opponent of them joined in an attempt to find evidence that would damage them. He found lots of evidence that the Klan was engaging in financial impropriety, but there were numerous sympathisers in positions of authority, so his evidence was ignored. Then he went to the producers of the Superman Radio show and revealed the silly rituals of the Klan.
The result took the Klan from a feared organisation to one that was mocked at and laughed. It never recovered.
Derision did what the Law refused to do.

I think an important part of ridicule is preventing people from embracing conspiracies in the first place. When I was growing up, it was common and acceptable to make homophobic jokes. These would now, rightfully, be condemned by thoughtful people. Making a gay joke now would brand me as vulgar and stupid by most people I now know.

Maybe it is wishful thinking, but I think anti-vaxxers are not thought of as "different" and "independent" the way they might have been in years past. They are thought of as dangerous and vulgar.

Hopefully young people will be less likely to be homophobic and more likely to vaccinate, largely because of the ridicule and scorn heaped on homophobes and anti-vaxxers.

Orac writes,

Those of us who try, in our own way, to combat the pseudoscience and quackery that are so rampant today can only reasonably hope to try to inoculate the average citizen against such beliefs.

MJD says,

With that final sentence, you've completely annihilated the empathetic condition.

The belittling words "innoculate the average citizen" makes me want to yell out loud "Orac NO".

It's now very clear why you failed to say "This sounds like me..." after the excerpt from the empathetic example in your posting.

Let me help you by changing one word in that unfortunate last sentence:

Those of us who try, in our own way, to combat the pseudoscience and quackery that are so rampant today can only reasonably hope to try to inoculate the honorable citizen against such beliefs.

I notice in a response to my post that some one was into name calling and that is not an effective way of trying to establish the truth. Any site that allows name calling in not helping the cause. Just maybe they are a selective false news site.

Also I thank Michael and Julian for using their full names.

Peace

Tom Spellman

@MJD #2:

How long did it take you to think up an alternative adjective which would fail so badly?

When you hear terms like 'the average person', 'Joe Bloggs' and 'the man on the Clapham omnibus', do you also nearly yell out loud? Has the concept of idiom completely passed you by?

"The result took the Klan from a feared organisation to one that was mocked at and laughed. It never recovered.
Derision did what the Law refused to do."

I greatly respect what Stetson Kennedy was able to accomplish. Despite his undercover work however, the Klan retained a great deal of power and influence until Presidential action and (finally!) law enforcement stepped in (after Klan violence became intolerable).

Education and ridicule play a part in refuting conspiracy theories and other dangerous nonsense. Making adherents pay a social/economic price (as in the case of SB 277 in California) and in some circumstances face legal consequences should also be part of the equation.

Of course, MJD seems to have forgotten that, according to this study, the empathetic approach doesn't work. :-)

Hmm, I thought that denialists, who it seems generally share conspiracy theories, are only persuadable by authority figures they respect. No?

If you want to be effective, I suggest reading Scott Adams' blog (the Dilbert cartoonist). He has extensively described pacing and leading, which is the way to dissuade believers in quackery. Here's one of his recent posts:

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/152734465316/unhypnotizing-a-clinton-suppo…

Skip down to point 8, which describes how Trump has been pacing and leading. That's how you'd pull someone out of the dark side.

And it's not only pseudoscience and quackery that need debunking:
it's news in general .
Only 30% ( approx.) believe what the media tells them
AND YET
conspiracy sites/ fake news/ naturalnews/ prn get adherents.
( the last two have become CT Centrals devolving from alt med media to an even lower form- if there is indeed a lower form of media)
EASILY.

I think that rationality and ridicule are sorely needed in the political arena as well.
I'm trying. I really am.

At any rate, my dear fellow and sister minions and Orac, have a fabulous holiday ( Christmas/ Chanukah/ Festivus/ etc) that includes food, drink, merry making and other pleasures. Hopefully, it won't be ridiculously cold in the Midwest, Lakes or Mountains.

It's relatively warm here in [redacted] so I'll take a few short trips over the next few days- no planes involved.

Sigh. Another study in which "social science" is but an oxymoron. Of course, the authors are social psychologists, a field that's off in it's own self-referential bubble, and routinely yields stuff like this, which scholars in related fields now just ignore, have spent too much time head-scratching over previous studies.

First of all, the whole stimulus-response model is just useless for dealing with attitudes and beliefs. They don't get either created or changed from one instance of one message. Second, it's impossible for those text passages to isolate the variables they supposedly exemplify. Third, those variables are typically broad amorphous categories that can admit a wide range of otherwise drastically different exemplars, yet they are simply assumed by the researchers to be fixed specific things that are capable of having a consistent unified effect and that can be represented by a single exemplar in the study.* Fourth, since attitudes and beliefs are part of complex structures of thought hat vary by sub-group and individual, looking at averages across random samples may reveal nothing of importance. Fifth, when real-world elements are included in the tested messages -- anti-semitism, in this case -- no consideration is given to the thought-baggage the test subjects will bring in on those elements. Sixth, the test subjects' awareness of being observed by the researchers isn't accounted for -- a pretty obvious problem when you're trying to make general observations about conspiracy theory by having investigators pose questions about anti-Semitsm to Eastern Europeans. (Sheesh!) Finally, across all these matters (and maybe more) the study is absent any sort of controls to rule out other plausible explanations for the observed results.

To Orac's tentative take-away: I'd say the study doesn't get to 'fence-sitters' at all. Fence-sitters care enough about an issue to be aware of it and have given it some degree of thought. They just haven't made up their minds. For a lot of the subjects gathered in a random sample, the issue used as a test example may not even be a real fence. Thus, we might describe their responses as, since they've been asked, imagining what opinion they might have if they actually cared enough to have one.

I'll also note that the 'rational argument' used in the study isn't analogous to "rattling off the facts and science that refute" pseudo-science CTs. All three samples are structured arguments with narrative elements, all include similar levels of 'facts' in support, and they differ primarily in emotional tone. The 'ridicule' and 'empathetic' arguments are not irrational.

As such, the results are hardly surprising or illuminating. The majority of randomly selected subjects will have low investment in the anti-semitic CT. Their initial responses likely reflect recall of what they just been told to read, rather than actual investment in it. The empathetic approach will tend to be more neutral or reinforcing to many of these low-investment subjects, reducing the apparent counter-effect. These people don't need an expression of understanding to their beliefs since they don't really have any. Similarly, the ridicule will be off-putting to some, and in a way that also lowers the effect score, since it likely won't seem justified to the low-investment folk, causing them to question the credibility of anything coming at them with that degree of vehemence. I. e. the tone gets their guard up. On the other hand, the even-tempered 'rational' approach is tuned to 'where they're at.'

As far as 'noobs' to debates on a hot-button issue are concerned, I'd guess the study may seriously underestimate the value of ridicule. If the premise is that ridicule appeals to the ego in terms of 'I don't want to be in that socially disreputable crazy camp' that would work best with noobs, a caution against going in further along a certain direction. But you wouldn't expect that to show strongly in the short term, as the subjects' ego may be on guard by the inference that anyone would even consider the possibility they could be outre in that fashion. Give them time to digest that, separate themselves from it, get some reinforcement that doesn't address them specifically, and I'll wager it would have a stronger purchase against the CTs than the 'rational' approach. Which, I would guess, while more common in the short term is also weaker in most individual instances, and more likely to wane over time.

Which just goes to another problem with this kind of study's short term stimulus-repsonse model. The test subjects are considering these messages in a more isolated and uni-directional way than they would ever encounter them in the real world, which would be more ongoing, developing and shifting encounters in conversations or social media exchanges. This stuff is dynamic, not static, and the more emotionally activated.

In short, this study is all but worthless, nothing to see here, move along....
______________
* For example, I could easily craft four alternative 'ridicule' samples, and four alternative 'empathetic' samples that would be so different from each other and the examplars used in this study that they would produce vastly different responses, at least at the levels of individuals and sub-groups.

rthe text passages that

Unfortunately no amount of rationality and logic will dissuade most people from irrational beliefs. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-people-fly-from-facts/ http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2014-48913-001/

There was another study in the last year along the same vein that demonstrated that logical arguments, ridicule, and empathetic arguments simply strengthened the believers faith that they were correct. Lets face it, if logic was able to change a great many minds, religion would be extinct.

The alternative I've stuck with is to not care if people maintain dippy beliefs. I correct their misconceptions, ridicule them for being ignorant, suggest they educate themselves and carry on with my life. I wish human nature was different, but it's what we are all forced to work with.

@ Anonymous Pseudonym:

I think that there are a certain percentage ( who are not mentally ill or intellectually deficient ) who are unreachable and will continue in their follies for the rest of their lives.
UNFORTUNATELY.

And there is a market for this type of "thinking"/ "writing" that has expanded since 2000.
And it's given me a job of sorts.

The case of historical changes in the KKK is a good example of the folly in this sort of study. The Klan was not just subject to many different types of ridicule -- to which different individuals would have reacted very differently -- but all of this was inextricably intertwined with all sorts of other social changes and shifting influences. There's no way generalize any of this across a broad population over time. A specific form of ridicule, like the Superman shows, probably acted for some young people as Hodor noted in #2, while also acting quite differently for other folks with a greater susceptibility to virulent white supremacism, just as ridicule of homophobia seems to have led to being both less common, but arguably nastier when it does appear.

@ Denice Walter

Pulling a number out of my arse based on my experience (Yes I know the plural of anecdote is anecdotes, not data), that percentage seems to run around 70%.

I catch myself believing bullshit now and again, because I remember reading about something, but misremember the conclusion or the conclusion had been refuted. Now I'm willing to put forth the effort to confirm what I think. How many others arn't motivated enough to bother. Or are motivated by other concerns not to change their minds.

Season's greetings and such.

@ Anonymous Pseudonym:

Nope. ALL those social studies are full of so many 'believing makes it so' assumptions in their methodology as to be totally worthless. This, this one will say 'rational argument' works, and that one will say it doesn't. None of these studies actually demonstrate anything. At best they suggest, and for the most part even the suggestions are totally unwarranted leaps from ultimately meaningless numerical data.

I could just as easily say, "if logic was NOT able to change a great many minds, church membership would not have fallen as drastically as it has".But that claim and yours are equally weak, as 'logic' or absence thereof may have nothing to do with it either way.

professionals in the persuasion game have always understood that messages must be crafted to the specificiities of a target audience. For some people, on some issues, at some times, one sort of approach of the many that could be crafted on principles of 'logic, rationality and facts' will indeed be the best choice.

Even the most broadly generalizable principles with the least level of reliability qualifying as significant will be much narrower than the broad stroke notions that get bandied about.

I hope we see more of this kind of work.

I do want to point out that your point about the study being short term may be especially important for the emphathetic model - that approach may work better in the context of a long standing relationship.

If all I saw of this was the pre/post graph, I'd blow a raspberry and move along without further notice. Put zero on that thing and you could walk up the slopes it they were ice and you were wearing shoes with heated polished steel soles.

The best improvement is about 8%, assuming the scale is linear. If you can get results like that on important matters from a few minutes of work, it seems worthwhile. If it required much effort, I'd take my head away and look for a different wall to bang it against.

What happens to the slopes with continued input? At what CAT score do they become asymptotic? If you consider the assorted people who comment hereabouts, many seem to pack up and push off, regardless of the type of input and its duration, believing exactly what they did when they got here.

As one whose views recently (over the last five months) have changed from aligning closely with the tenets of the anti-vaccine movement (based on concerns about vaccine safety and freedom and suspicions toward establishment media, big pharma, and regulators) to being very critical of it, let me share what I personally found most and least helpful along the way. At first, ridicule on this site and others was counterproductive, giving me the impression that these authors were arrogant and closed-minded. Rational arguments were helpful, particularly when they acknowledged and responded specifically to legitimate concerns voiced by the antivax movement. Most helpful of all was the combination of rational arguments with easily accessible (linked) documentation, and for that, this site and the author's other blog were more valuable than most. Authors with a less insolent style, such as Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, as well as some online friends and acquaintences, were invaluable for persuading me to consider a different point of view and the evidence which supports it. Once I had read enough to be sympathetic to that point of view, I began to find the crass style of Orac and others tolerable, then understandable, and finally somewhat entertaining. But at first it was a major turn-off, and I suspect the same is/would be true for many of my friends and acquaintances who hold moderate-to-strong anti-vaccine views for similar reasons as I did. In terms of tone (to my ears anyway), books like Vaccine Epidemic (or many parts of it, such as the editor's introductory material) sound a lot more reasonable than they are, while blogs like this one sound a lot less reasonable than they are.

Regarding conspiracy theories in general, I believe one difficulty is that, since the mainstream media underreports many actual (proven, incontrovertible) conspiracies, those who ridicule CTs are often less informed about real conspiracies than those who believe CTs (both real and imagined ones). Display of "arrogance of ignorance", to borrow a phrase from this blog, by such people -- which in my experience is very common -- turns off CT believers, who otherwise (those who, like myself, are not fixed in our views) have the most to learn from their articles. The proportion of writers who are informed enough to acknowledge real conspiracies, especially those which are underreported, but skeptical enough to recognize that most CTs are BS, seems tragically small.

I appreciate that anyone even looked at the ridicule part. I have seen a lot of professional scicomm folk dismiss this entirely. And I think they are doing it because of their own bias--that it's distasteful to them, so they don't want to know if it's effective.

And I've now been in an argument about this strategy based on this work as well. The pro-scicommer said that the people in the ridicule condition weren't believers and it wasn't mocking them. I agree with that--I never said it was mocking them.

But I've seen mocking as a tool be very effective. There was a sea-change in attitude about The FoodBabe after the excellent piece by The SciBabe that called FoodBabe "full of shit" and other items at that time. I never expected the FoodBabe would be changed by the mocking. But people who are watching this, or had no idea she was such a nonsense peddler, were affected by this.

And nobody says this is the only strategy. But making some of the nonsense peddlers to be laughingstocks may have some utility. I don't think it should be dismissed because some people don't like that strategy.

Seems to me some people only want to try the empathy stuff on people who have been affected by the nonsense peddlers. But nobody is working on what might stop the peddlers before it got worse.

I welcome better and more research on this. But until now, nobody was really attempting it.

#19 Mark,

Was there an underlying catalyst in your move from identifying with the anti-vax movement, to being critical of it?

If I may, do you have children, and if so, what is there vaccine status?

Thanks.

#21 Delphine,

Two main catalysts, besides what I already mentioned, were the publicity about Vaxxed and news/commentary about the various presidential candidates' views on vaccines. As I have no children, this issue had been peripheral to my consciousness, but this past summer as I read strongly-opposing positions from people I more or less trusted, I was finally motivated to look into it carefully myself. I was quite surprised by what I learned.

One of the most impressive experiences along the way was watching Vaxxed (after I'd started to doubt the antivax position but was still ill-informed), finding it surprisingly compelling, then reading through David Gorski's well-documented review and finding point after compelling point either challenged or blown apart. That helped me appreciate why the terms "anti-vaccine movement" and "propaganda" are merited (even though many, perhaps most, adherents of the movement believe they're standing up for legitimate concerns about vaccine safety and freedom and are neither "anti-vaccine" per se nor willfully spreading "propaganda"). Unfortunately I believe the movie's strongest point, and the hardest one to effectively answer, is the countless personal anecdotes where parents genuinely believe they observed a child's regression following a vaccine, and they feel their observations are discounted and their concerns are not taken seriously. Insulting people like this (and those who sympathize with them), in my opinion, only fuels the antivaccine movement and its members' convictions that the medical establishment and mainstream media are their enemy. Hearing them and responding in a way that respectfully acknowledges their observations, beliefs, and concerns, while also challenging their assumptions and providing information to widen their perspective, I think could do a lot to contain the fire. (I guess this is comparable to the empathetic approach described in the study above.)

Orac writes,

I’ve dealt with a large number of conspiracy theories.

MJD says,

I'm in the process of writing a book about Alheimer's disease and during my research the name David Gorski popped up in a Herman H. Fudenbergs Wikipedia profile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Hugh_Fudenberg.

According to David Gorski, it appears that Hernan H. Fudenberg once claimed that if you have a flu shot for more than five years in a row, there's ten times the likelihood that you'll get Alzheimer's disease.

Furthermore,Fudenberg was a proponent of the theory that there was a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism?

Evaluating his life work, was Dr. Fudenberg a brilliant scientist?

@ Orac,

Please explain why I have been placed in instant moderation?

You're a mean one, Mr. Orac.
You really are a heel.
You're as cuddly as a cactus,
You're as charming as an eel.
Mr. Orac.
You're a bad banana
With a greasy black peel.
You're a monster, Mr Orac
Your heart's an empty hole.
Your brain is full of spiders,
You've got garlic in your soul
Mr Orac
You're a foul one, Mr. Orac.
You're a nasty, wasty skunk.
Your heart is full of unwashed socks
Your soul is full of gunk Mr. Orac.
The three words that best describe you,
Are,and I repeat,David Gorski, David Gorski, David Gorski

MJD: You wouldn't recognize science or rationality if either of them sat on your face.I bet ducks follow you around, mistaking you for one of their own.

Mark Thorsen: Scott Adams?! Scott Adams!? He's a humorless comic writer who pretends to be smart. He doesn't have anything intelligent to say about anything, and I wouldn't trust him with a goldfish. Also, he's a vocal Trump supporter, so he has no interest in science or facts, and anything that comes from his mouth or keyboard should be dismissed immediately.

@16 sadmar :

It seems that is a weakness of sociology due to its nature. People's opinions and actions are a vast sea of grey compared to the black and white of math, chemistry, physics and even to an extent biology. I assume that part of your issue is the design of the experiments, but I'm at a loss to figure how they could be improved without losing any nuance. I guess it boils down to a desire to see objective assessments vice subjective ones.

In my former life, my job was to provide the knowledge of what was happening, as well as an assessment of what it meant, and a forecast of probable actions in the future, In theory I should have tried to persuade the decision makers to my way of thinking, but I never did. Why? Mainly it's not in my personality to persuade people to believe as I do. The decision and the consequences were on their head, and I ensured that was known.

Mark: Unfortunately I believe the movie’s strongest point, and the hardest one to effectively answer, is the countless personal anecdotes where parents genuinely believe they observed a child’s regression following a vaccine, and they feel their observations are discounted and their concerns are not taken seriously.

The thing you got taken in by is that most anti-vax parents are liars and cut-rate melodramatic actors and actresses. They don't really love their children, though you have to be practiced at hearing the sentiments beneath all their wailing. They can't even tell the truth, as they've been lying since their first breath.

#23/24 MJD, as a first-time commenter on this blog, my comments were moderated, as they are on many blogs, I assume to filter spam. I'm sorry that you apparently took it personally and responded with a childish taunt which doesn't invite taking your other questions seriously, in fact invites counter-insults, such as #25.

#27 Pgp, I hope you are speaking hyperbolically, though I'm not sure your purpose in doing so. Maybe it's because you haven't personally known too many anti-vax parents. I've met many anti-vax parents and adults and I think their problem is inadequate education, including judgments of reality which are informed too much by feeling and not enough by clear thinking. (Many of them are also active in the arts, where feeling judgments are of greater importance than in the sciences.) To them, I believe comments such as yours would only further convince them that vaccine promoters (and perhaps even scientists or science types in general) are cold-hearted, arrogant, and untrustworthy. This is not the way to change hearts and minds and advance public health.

#23/24 MJD, as a first-time commenter on this blog, my comments were moderated, as they are on many blogs, I assume to filter spam. I’m sorry that you apparently took it personally and responded with a childish taunt

He's having an imaginary conversation with Orac.

Mark writes (#28),

I’m sorry that you apparently took it personally and responded with a childish taunt which doesn’t invite taking your other questions seriously, in fact invites counter-insults, such as #25.

MJD says,

Mark, my apologies for the childish rendition of "Dr Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas" in post #24.

Although, it has been said that humor is the best medicine.

Is humor an effective communication tool?

In retrospect, I think Orac has a very good style of writing that often diminishes pseudoscience and anti-vaccine views.

Merry Christmas Orac and thank you for being....well, thanks for being Orac.

In my experience, nothing will persuade the true believers. Usually it isn't useful to spend much time trying. But it can be more effective to aim higher up. For example, university presidents don't like being ridiculed. Pile enough ridicule on them and they stop teaching junk science.

I usually just ask questions, mostly asking the person to bring some actual scientific evidence. When they dodge, make more claims, move goal posts or post a useless Gish Gallop of studies by the Geiers, etc... then I will go into mock mode.

Though I have been called a meany just after requesting the studies that support their claims, even before I go into mock mode.

Mark: Coldhearted? I care more about their kids then they do. They're so busy bleaching their children's intestines, giving them enemas, subjecting them to 'scoping' of the stomach and intestines and feeding their kids lupron, that they never get around to realizing that their children are actual people.
I really wouldn't care to know any anti-vax people; from what I've seen online the transformation into a vile curebie is both quick and irreversible.

Mark -

You’re rather new here, so please let me introduce you to MJD.

MJD is a loon. Seriously. See
http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2013/07/628-michael-j-dochniak-denise…

He wrote a book claiming that he knew how vaccines cause autism. Our host took note of this and droped a very small amount of (not very) Respectful Insolence.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/05/10/anti-vaccine-contortions-t…

MJD turned up and tried to defend himself, mostly by saying ‘buy my book’. This did not go well for him. In fact, it turned into a pants down spanking.

For the past 5 years, MJD would turn up in in other threads, spouting his silly ideas. His comments were almost always off topic and were always evidence free. Eventually, after several warnings, our host had enough, and put MJD on moderation, and he is not allowed to post about his fetish.

MJD takes a dim view of this, and will often lash out at our host, as you see above.

I'll leave it to others to clue you in about PGP.

It seems to me that there are people who make their living persuading people to do things that they don't think they want to do, ie, buy something by a certain date.

I've never known a successful sales person who consistently makes their quota through ridicule or factual argument.

While there are a lot of questions over how to be a successful sales person, several things seem to work.

The first is to listen to what the person who is objecting to the sale is saying and then ask them questions about these objections, allowing them to sell themselves on the product.

Whether this approach is empathetic or not is an open question, but it is certainly not ridicule and trying to overwhelm a potential customer with facts goes nowhere.

Edward Murray, and that has to do with safety how?

"The first is to listen to what the person who is objecting to the sale is saying and then ask them questions about these objections, allowing them to sell themselves on the product."

Which in the case of the anti-vaxers does not work. When I ask them questions the responses I get are a spectacular bob and weave to avoid answering honestly. One big claim by them is that the diseases were falling before the vaccines even came out. The big lie in that is they are confusing morbidity with mortality. See:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/03/29/the-intellectual-dishonest…

A few years ago someone on Science Based Medicine complained that the science community only used data from 1950 to show vaccines work. I do not know why that was important, so I searched and found measles incidence rates going back to 1912 in a US Census summary of statistics during the 20th century. So I pulled out the USA measles incidence rates that were tabulated at about five year increments. This is that table of measles incidence in the USA (I am reserving my second link elsewhere, because this site has a two URL limit):

Year.... Rate per 100000 of measles
1912 . . . 310.0
1920 . . . 480.5
1925 . . . 194.3
1930 . . . 340.8
1935 . . . 584.6
1940 . . . 220.7
1945 . . . 110.2
1950 . . . 210.1
1955 . . . 337.9
1960 . . . 245.4
1965 . . . 135.1
1970 . . . . 23.2
1975 . . . . 11.3
1980 . . . . . 5.9
1985 . . . . . 1.2
1990 . . . . .11.2
1991 . . . . . .3.8
1992 . . . . . .0.9
1993 . . . . . .0.1
1994 . . . . . .0.4
1995 . . . . . .0.1
1996 . . . . . .0.2
1997 . . . . . . 0.1

Now something weird happened between 1960 and 1970. I ask what happened, and the answers have very interesting. The next link is the most outrageous, do scroll up to see where I asked that question (it is the second comment):
https://shotofprevention.com/2012/07/26/vaccine-questions-answered-the-…

Enjoy.

Johnny: "I’ll leave it to others to clue you in about PGP."

She is young, has no filters, and is seriously trying to be "skeptical" and "progressive." But she makes many outlandish statements about entire populations with any evidence. I mostly ignore her.

Chris: I report on observed behavior and extrapolate a little to figure out what a given demographic is thinking. For example, if I want to know what an average random dude is thinking, reddit probably knows better than he does what he is thinking at any given moment. Same with anti-vaxxers; don't ask them, ask the 'net. The net is more effective as a form of communication because it allows a glimpse at the id.

No, PGP, you extrapolate a LOT. And you reach conclusions that are frequently absurd and typically obnoxious.

MjD #24:
WTF???? Apology (your #31) not accepted.

I am a five-foot Pole living in the city whose university has a library named after the person whose work you degraded

Most importantly, for my purposes, this study looked at a general population, not committed conspiracy theorists

the question, of course, is whether these results are in any way generalizable.

The study subjects are all Hungarian, right?
My family is from eastern Europe, and I have relatives all over the Americas who GTFO’d post WWII, and lots who still live there.

Most of the Hungarians I’ve met have a wicked sense of humor and are well on board with using ridicule as a tool. On the Polish side – not as much. But, hey, maybe it’s just my family and their friends. Or is there a cultural bias?

I’ve been commenting here and elsewhere for more than 8 years now, and since I’m just a commenter not a blogger I try to tone my comments to what feels appropriate to whom I’m responding. Empathy for those who might to respond to it, and WTF are you thinking!!! for the likes of vinu.

No one approach reaches everyone.

In the meantime, Santa has come to my house and I have to lick the cookie plate clean and put it back on the shelf, per my dad’s cousin (one of the Hungarians).

12 years and he still can't get to the point! If had time I would start a blog re-posting Orac's posts, but edited to 1/4 or less as long.

Most of the Hungarians I’ve met have a wicked sense of humor

The first guy I wound up sharing my office with when I was an undergraduate working in a cosmic-ray lab was Hungarian. He introduced himself by telling some sort of bestiality joke that I didn't understand in the slightest. I just remember that it ended with a peculiar, loud sound effect.

I’ve been commenting here and elsewhere for more than 8 years now, and since I’m just a commenter not a blogger I try to tone my comments to what feels appropriate to whom I’m responding. Empathy for those who might to respond to it, and WTF are you thinking!!! for the likes of vinu.

This mostly tracks my line of thinking.

I think the real insight of this study, such as it is, is not so much which method works best, but which methods work at all. It seems that they all work to some degree, so it's obvious that they should all be used.

That's what our host and the minions do, and why I enjoy this forum. If the content here was fact free and snark only, well, it would be 4chan or something like it. Straight facts I can get from WebMD or the CDC - educational, but dry. Empathy you can find about anywhere. But this is a place to get them all, and, for the most part, in proper doses at the proper time.

"12 years and he still can’t get to the point!"

If after 12 years you are unable to discover the point(s) you are not competent enough to hire yourself out as an editor and not in a position to condense his words. Were I to condense your comment I'd be left with a vacuum.

If the participants were randomly allocated why are their pre test CAT scores different? And why do they all differ in the same direction as the post test scores? As far as can see this research tells us nothing about anything.

To answer my own question, my theory is that the groups with lower CAT scores were less bought-in to the theory so were more likely to respond to reason, irrespective of the method used. This theory fits the data better than claiming that the different strategies had a significantly different outcome.
Orac, I am disappointed in you, you are normally rigorous in disassembling studies like this. This study is pure pseudoscience, no underlying scientific reasoning combined with poor methodology. Dare I accuse you of confirmation bias?

Found a good comment here:
http://www.periodictable.com/Items/033.10/index.html

"For a period during the 1800's green arsenic pigments were popular in wallpaper, including patterns by the extremely popular William Morris. Problem is, when the air is damp, mold can grow on the wallpaper and convert the arsenic into arsene gas, which slowly poisons anyone in the room. People noticed that they tended to get weak and sickly during the damp winter months, and if they moved to a drier climate they got better quickly. Ergo, damp weather is bad for you, vacationing on a sunny island is good for you. It took a hundred years before people realized it was just the wallpaper, and by then the myth of damp being bad for you was firmly established. Homeopathy started the same way around the same time: Doing nothing (i.e. using a homeopathic remedy) was less harmful than many of the common medical treatments of the day, so when you switched from traditional medicine to homeopathy, you tended to get better. And again, by the time people figured out that it was traditional medicine being bad, not homeopathy being good, that accounted for the improvement, it was too late and the myth lives on to this day."

There are a couple things I notice about the story that are relevant to the effectiveness of ridicule:

1) Since the people in the study were "fence sitters", as Orac put it, they could treat the ridicule as being aimed at people other than themselves or those with whom they identified, so they don't feel as much need to be defensive.

2) The ridicule was accompanied by actual argument, so it doesn't look like the table-banging that one may do when one doesn't have a case.

I’m at a loss to figure how [these studies] could be improved. I guess it boils down to a desire to see objective assessments [versus?] subjective ones.

For the most part these studies can't be improved, because they're just built on totally bankrupt fantasy foundations, which result exactly from the desire "to see objective assessments" where objective assessments simply cannot be made because there's no objective thing to assess. Studies like Orosz et al are as subjective as hell, but they just hide all the subjective judgments behind unsupported assumptions treated as 'just so' objective observation. The worst 'acupuncture works' study doesn't even come close to the nuclear burning stupid spewed by Orosz et al.

Look just at the assumptions implicit in using the text above with the Icke analogy to 'test' response to 'ridicule'. 'Ridicule' is construed as some defined essence that will act in much the same way across a broad population regardless of any other qualities of the form in which it delivered. Then the Icke analogy example is offered without question as an exemplar of that essence, such that whatever 'ridicule' may activate, using that text will allow that to be measured quantitatively.

Just imagine as many different responses to anti-semitism as you can that might be labelled as 'ridicule', across different communication forms, styles, tones, degrees of interactivity, levels of skill and knowledge, and presenter personas – amidst a host of other factors. Hell, I'll bet I could dramatically swing responses to the very text they used just by using different sorts of graphic design in the presentation, or by attributing the text to different authors. Now imagine the multitude of permutations of all these factors, and tell me that sample text can produce a valid representative response of how they all function. Now, think about all the factors that will differ on the other side of the communication, the different histories and personas and skills and beliefs etc etc. etc. that the different study participants will bring to the table. Calculate all the permutation of those. Then calculate the combined permutations of 'source', 'receiver' and 'context' variability. Still think this research is credible? The preceding point only scratches the surface of the meshuge methodical mishegoss.

What this study exemplifies is what most media studies scholars refer to derisively as 'the hypodermic theory of communication'.* The research model is essentially that of medical science. In the clinical trial of a new medication:
1. There's a concrete physical thing with unique and consistent defining properties being tested.
2. There are clear indicators of whether it produces the target effect or not (the effect also being a concrete physical condition with unique and consistent defining properties).
3. The effect is a clear bright-line before-and-after change in that physical condition.
4. The effect generally appears more or less directly after the 'injection', and typically doesn't change in nature (only perhaps by degree) over time.
5. This typically all follows along with a scientifically plausible theory of mechanism-of-action.

None of which are the case in dealing with what people think or believe...

Finally, on a different note, given the high ethical dudgeon proposals for placebo research or vaxed-v.-unvaxed studies receive here, I find it telling that no comment on the ethics of this study have appeared. As one of my old professors. joked about one from of 'hypodermic theory' research in the 70s and 80s – which tried to draw a link between porno and violence against women by having college undergrad men watch dirty movies and then measuring their 'aggression' ten-minutes later by methods ranging from attitude surveys to behavior in Milgrom-style delivery of 'electric shocks' to a pain feigning confederate – if the researchers (one of whom was Edward Donnerstein) actually believed their own claims they should rename the Psych 101 sections where the study participants were recruited "Eddie's School For Rapists".

So here Orasz et al fed anti-semitic hate speech to two groups of Eastern Europeans, one without following that with a debunking they expected to work well ('empathetic condition'), and another without following that with any debunking at all (the control group that just heard a weather report). So I'd have to call that 'Gabor's School For Pogroms' ('Look Ma, no Godwin!) if I thought they really believed their own theses down in their heart of hearts.

But I can't shake the thought that reality has to intrude to some degree, and no one in their right might would imagine "a nationally representative probability sample of 813 Hungarians, selected randomly from an Internet-enabled panel" isn't full of folks who've been around the block more than a few times hearing both 'Jewish banker' CTs and arguments against them, or that a 4:30 audio injection of such a CT would turn any of them toward conspiracy theory in any meaningful lasting way, or that a subsequent 3:30 audio injection of any sort of debunking would inoculate them against holding onto to any anti-semitic CT they might have been entertaining before the second recording rolled.

Dare I venture that this may be no more than playing the publish-or-perish game of tenure and promotion? Guess I just did...

Some bad news.
http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_2346_20-ways-your-brain-tricking-you…

Jihad Engineers

gregladen — Fri, 26 Aug 2016 10:08:25 +0000

Jihad Engineers

A disproportionate percentage of Islamist radical actors, including suicide bombers, come from an engineering background. Why?

Right wing and Islamist extremism seem to share this and other traits, while left wing extremism is more commonly associated with individuals from the humanities and social sciences.

This is what we learn from "Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education", by Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog.

An obvious reason that engineers may be more often associated with groups that carry out bombings is that such groups recruit engineers because they would be the idea bomb makers. This, however, is not the case. Indeed, many of the famous goofed up bombing attempts of recent years were carried out by those with engineering backgrounds, while many of the more competent bombers were did not come from an engineering background.

Also note: We keep seeing the term "engineering background" because many of these individuals are not engineers. Many are students who studied, or even got degrees in, engineering, though they may not have ever worked as such. And many are civil engineers, or other kinds of engineers, or studied these professions, rather than some sort of bomb-oriented engineering (though civil engineering might be helpful in designing a bomb-based attack on something).

The basic explanation works something like this. In the Arab/Islamic/Middle Eastern world, there are two professions that men often aspire to for status. Medicine and engineering. Getting a BA or BS is a status symbol, but if one gets a BA or a BS in engineering, that is a better status symbol. Men get this degree, disproportionately, even if they are from a background, and embedded in a family or subculture, where they are not likely to ever work in that profession.

Meanwhile, there seems to be an association with something we might broadly describe as failure to meet one's own expectations, and getting all cranky and jihadi. You think you are cool. You are cool. And smart. And going up in status. You get you degree. You try for an engineering degree, and maybe you barely get past the hurdles and achieve it. But, you are entering a world where more than just an engineering degree, or your own massive coolness, is enough to succeed. The global Bush-Cheney Recession is upon us, and everyone is suffering.

But the thing is, you are not supposed to be suffering. You are cool. You are from a good background. You have a degree. In engineering!

So, you experience what psychologists of yore called "Relative Deprivation." It is kind of a first world problem. You should be father along, higher up, better situated, than you are. But the system, the economy, the government, the godless infidels of the west, have kept you down.

So you get all cranky and jihady and blow them up.

I don't mean to make light of this idea or its consequences. Rather, my snark leads to another point. The people who set bombs and kill innocent bystanders in airports and such are not "cowards" as is often said by Secretaries of States and Presidents and such. Why are spoiled brats. Not that this matters a lot, but one needs to get these things right.

Anyway, Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education is a very interesting academic treatment of the question of the link between engineering and jihad. Since it is rooted firmly in data, the book serves as well as an interesting historical account of much of the terrorism of the last several decades. More importantly, it is one of the rare full treatments of the nature and psychology of this sort of behavior.

I noted that "relative deprivation" is a concept of yore, and it is. The authors have, dangerously perhaps (because this sort of thing is dangerous in Academia) pulled out and dusted off an old concept that was found wanting in its earlier incarnations. But they have modified it and applied it well, so it is more of an homage to earlier workers to call it this. But the name is appropriate. Relative to your life long expectations, you are screwed. So you react, at out, victimize someone else. And you happen to be male and muslim (both traits of the patriarchal fundamentalist islamic world) and maybe you know somebody who knows somebody, and next thing you know you are in a training camp in war torn Syria.

The set of jihadists examined in this study is not everybody, but rather, a subset with common defining characteristics. So, for example, this study does not pertain to ISIL.

And, other extremists may have a similar pattern of association with certain areas of study and their radical decisions, but come from different backgrounds. There is a vague association between being a Nazi in the early days and being in law, history, or economics. Indeed, the pattern of extremist behavior, historical context, and educational or work background is very complicated, not very well understood, and there is no way I can give it justice here. Must read Chapter 5.

Education (of one type or another) does not cause extremism. This is not nearly so simple of a situation. But the link between academic orientation, educational effort, a few other things, and extremist views and action is not random, and does make sense, in the context of the revised and updated theory of relative deprivation. Have a look, I think you'll be convinced.

gregladen Fri, 08/26/2016 - 06:08

Tags

Relative Deprivation Theory

Anthropology

"Why are spoiled brats" -> "They are..."?

As a PhD student in Geology my major Prof was in the engineering Department (Civil) so I was able to see what Students were taking. I think this may be a failure of Engineering Departments to require their students to take enough of the "soft" classes. Even in my major there was a distinct lack of social sciences requirements. This makes students less able to address the consequences of their actions.

...not to mention the purpose of their actions. As well as the purpose of their education.

The purpose of their profession is to serve the greater good of society -- not to serve oneself. (I.e., they're not business majors.)

People from engineering backgrounds, I suspect, are more likely to read their holy books literally. That is, more likely to read *what the book actually says* rather than through layers of gloss and interpretation.

I, too, am "from an engineering background" - I'm a programmer. One of the final things that got me out of Christianity was reading what Romans 6-7 actually says: it's lunacy.

People from the humanities understand myth, the *get* that meaning is a function of the culture in which something was written. Engineers read "And fight with them until there is no more fitna (disorder, unbelief) and religion is all for Allah" and go "well, that's what God wants me to do, then".

And then they do it.

To put it another way: engineers don't know that they are lacking a key part of a complete education: rhetoric. They think they are smart - and they are - but they are lacking an important part of the adult toolbox. The don't understand how persuasion is done, they don't know how to read and think critically. All they get is true and false - you either believe something or you don't.

To put it another way again: I read young adult fiction. That's my level when it comes to literature, I'm afraid. I'm 50. Been making a living programming for 30 years. I know stuff and can do stuff, but in important ways I'm still mentally a teenager. If I'd grown up in different circumstances I, too, would say "My bible says to do this - you either believe it or you dont and its that simple".

Is it possible many engineers have the "authoritarian follower" personality trait? It is a puzzle to me that intelligent and educated people can be persuaded to martyr themselves for an ideology.

I agree with Paul. Science teach people that there is an objective truth, and that everyone who doesn't believe in it is wrong, a crackpot. That may be fine when deciding if a bridge will work or collapse, but apply it to religion and you have a problem.

Paul and Harry's ideas are good ones, but while clearly a factor, they don't bubble, at least in isolation, to the surface of what seems to be going on here, according the the research.

So, would it be reasonable to characterise the hypothesis as identifying a narcissistic personality disorder as the (ahem) fundamental problem?

It might have a lot to do with deep-seated insecurity. Insecurity is often dealt with by attempts to "be in control" one way or another.

So it may be true that during youth, such types view engineering as attractive for what it is: Expertise at knowing how the (physical) world works, and training in how to master it and control it to any desired end. There's power in being an engineer (although we tend to think "politics" or becoming a corporate titan for that).

It wouldn't be a huge leap of intellect to realize that this knowledge/control works VERY well in the physical sciences, works less so in politics & business, and diminishes in other areas.

So the draw of "be an engineer and have control over the world" possibly leads them to getting these degrees, especially if rising to becoming a political leader or a business head is (or seems) out of reach -- often the case in the third world.

Then there's the question of why they resort to rigid religious interpretations and mass murder/destruction...

I suspect this stems from desperation and inner despair over finding out that their romantic ideal of what "being an engineer" would do to solve their core problem doesn't work. All religions promise this (engineering does not), but from looking at their results, religion is one of those dismal areas that doesn't work either.

It could be that at that point, they give up hope/become angry. After all, if that's what you're seeking in life (relief from insecurity), and everything has failed you, what's left? Religion had the audacity to promise it, but doesn't -- yet those who co-opt it and twist its message to justify savagery provide a perverted 'out': Authority, justification, and control, combined with a lovely savage outlet for their anger. Just sign up and start taking control over your fellow man and the world around you as you 'vent' on some poor slob whose head you're cutting off with a hunting knife.

BBD, actually, they don't.

Here's something to keep in mind. Don't think of these "engineers" (really, "people with engineering background" not engineers. People with engineering degrees, not jobs) as the same as Engineers in the US.

As noted, in some societies, a status degree is a degree in engineering. These are individuals who seek status, attain it (because they get the degree) almost like getting admitted into a caste.

Then the status, the caste value, evaporates.

This then feeds the relative deprivation idea.

So this is not so much about engineers, or about American conceptions of what "engineers are like", but rather, how some men respond to their own position in a highly stratified society.

To put it another way, they are not drawn to engineering because of engineering. They are drawn to an engineering degree because it is a high status degree, one of two (the other medical).

Thanks Greg. This trots along with a hobby-horse of mine: if a society commodifies women it gets stratified and volatile men. Add a kick in the nuts of disappointment and a dash of Ignatius J. Reilly and away you go.

I think Greg's points in #10,#11 are important to keep in mind. We are trying to use our won experiences in Western culture and in our own lives to imagine how this works, and it can lead us astray. There also seems to be an implicit assumption in the comments that recruits have a strongly fundamentalist tendency before being recruited. Yes (at least for Western recruits), as a group they lived highly rather secular lifestyle prior to recruitment. I think at least as far as the decision to be recruit-able goes, religion doesn't seem to be a deciding factor ( although those more ignorant of "their" religion are less likely to be able to refute the notion of jihad as a religious duty, than those brought up in the Mosque. So the correlation with religiosity and propensity to join up runs counter to our intuition. I am under the strong impression that at least in the early phases of radicalization that religion mainly serves as an identity marker for a persecuted us who are embedded in a world of "other".

Science teach people that there is an objective truth, and that everyone who doesn’t believe in it is wrong, a crackpot.

There is an important difference between science and engineering that is being overlooked here.

Science tends to teach people to deal with the world as it is. For instance, you learn that this beautiful river valley is at high risk for earthquakes because a major fault line runs through it.

Engineering tends to teach people to deal with the world as they'd like it to be. For instance, you want to build a bridge over this river, despite the earthquake risk. So you find out what you need to do to make sure the bridge will still be standing after an earthquake. Or not, because you aren't given enough budget to build a bridge that will withstand an earthquake, and the people who are paying you really want that bridge to be there. And depending on the location, you may end up displacing some of the local residents so that the bridge can be built.

The latter mindset--that you control the world, rather than vice versa--is more compatible with extremist views, because "death to the infidels" is a method for making the world conform better to your viewpoint, while viewing the fate of said infidels as an acceptable cost. It also explain why engineers are more likely to be right-wingers than scientists, and why, for example, a list of "scientists" who are opposed to the idea that humans are causing global warming will almost invariably consist mostly of engineers, and few if any scientists with any background in atmospheric science.

But there is more to jihadi engineers than that. In the US until recently, being a white Christian male was usually enough to guarantee some status in society. That built-in advantage is disappearing in most of the US, and some white Christian males are sufficiently unhappy with this state of affairs to take up extremist rhetoric (and in some cases, more than just rhetoric). That's not so different from the people in majority Muslim countries who earn engineering degrees only to find there are no engineering jobs for them--some of the latter group become jihadis.

"Engineering, where the noble semi-skilled laborers execute the vision of those who think and dream. Hello, Oompa Loompas of science!"
~Sheldon Cooper

A lot of the engineers I've encountered appear to be Cylons.

I have a few testable hypotheses for this:

Consider an axis of measurement of cognitive style, from high preference for concrete thinking, at one end, to high preference for abstract thinking, at the other end. This is measurable with various psychological instruments.

Now consider another axis of measurement of religious style, from fundamentalist at one end, to mystical at the other end. An instrument could easily be devised to measure that, by asking subjects to what degree they agree with various statements that are expressions of fundamentalist thought and mystical thought respectively.

Hypothesis 1: Concrete thinking will be highly correlated with fundamentalist religious thought, and abstract thinking will be highly correlated with mystical religious thought. This appears to be a fairly mainstream conclusion in comparative religion to date, but it would be interesting to test it specifically.

Hypothesis 2: Engineering students will show a greater degree of concrete thinking than science students and humanities students. This is testable by administering the abstract/concrete instrument to students in various departments.

If both of those hypotheses are supported firmly by data, then we have our connection between religious extremists and engineers.

As for what motivates engineers in general:

First of all there's the delight in building stuff that works, which is very much similar to the mindset of people who are particularly good in the skilled trades.

Second, consider an axis of measurement of a social trait, from "desire to dominate" at one end to "desire to serve" at the other end. A psychological instrument could easily be developed to measure this (if it doesn't already exist).

Hypothesis 3: Engineers are normally distributed on that axis. Some want to "conquer" one thing or another, some see themselves as serving humanity, most are in between.

So, someone with a predilection for religious fundamentalism and a personality trait for desire to dominate others, is already brain-wired to be biased toward violence. Give them the training in concrete thinking that goes with engineering, and it reinforces the exclusivity of their fundamentalist worldview. Individuals of this sort who fail at conventional careers, could be wooed by violent extremist groups.

Thankfully, the tendency to fail at engineering also carries over to a tendency to fail at bomb-making and suchlike. If you review some of these jihadi groups' literature, you will discover that they are laughably bad at some of the things they would need to be "good at" in order for more of their attacks to succeed.

"Some day there'll be a cure."

Are Engineers More Likely To Be Terrorists, And If So, Why?

gregladen — Fri, 25 Mar 2016 07:33:03 +0000

Are Engineers More Likely To Be Terrorists, And If So, Why?

I met a student, I was on his examining committee, who had been a civil engineer for years (he was getting his undergraduate degree late in life). He was politically conservative and cynical about academia. He needed the degree in order to get a major promotion, hated the idea of going back to college, but he held his nose and did it anyway.

Part of the examination process involved asking the student how the completed degree program had changed is life. In this student’s case, one might expect the answer to have focused on the simple fact of getting a doubling in salary and promotion to the head of a major department because he now qualified, having the sheepskin in hand. But that was not his answer. I paraphrase:

“I hated the idea of taking all these politically correct courses this program requires. Then I took the courses, and realized that I’d been a narrow minded asshole most of my life. I’m still probably a narrow minded asshole, but not as much, and I appreciate things more. So-called ‘Liberal Arts’ is good for people like me. Thanks for making me do it.”

That program, by the way, was very heavy in liberal arts. Students would spend considerable effort, typically at the graduate level, focusing on their area of expertise, which was often quite developed in these older students with vast life experience. But at the same time they had to meet all the university liberal arts requirements, plus ones we added that consisted mainly of self reflection and integration of the other liberal arts study with each other and their core area.

The vast majority of engineers are not jihadist terrorists or suicide bombers.

But it turns out that among jihadists and suicide bombers, an alarmingly disproportionate share are engineers.

This is covered in Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education by Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog. I’ve not read that book, but I have read Does Engineering Education Breed Terrorists? by Dan Berrett summarizing the research (hat tip Maggie Koerth-Baker).

(I’ll probably get the book and report back later.)

The researchers seem to have nailed down the data suggesting that more than expected terrorist bad guys have engineering backgrounds. All the objections I was thinking of as I read the article, related to how this apparent bias might have resulted as an artifact of the data, were addressed.

The explanations provided are multiple, and likely, several apply.

One possible expansion, which the data suggest explains part, but not most, of this phenomenon, is the concept of relative deprivation. You put sweat and tears and maybe some blood into developing skills and raising your own prospects, but then you fail because of external or contextual forces. Many of these engineer-terrorists became engineers in societies where they could not actually get jobs or status as engineers, and thus may feel bitter and disenfranchised. In countries where engineers do get high status and have a high employment rate, but otherwise provide a good number of terrorists (like Saudi Arabia) the percentage that are engineers is low. Looking across the data, this concept seems to explain part of the resulting pattern.

Another explanation has to do with the sort of person who becomes an engineer. I’m not going to go into this psychological argument here (read the article or book), though it is key to the discussion. I just feel this is pretty complex stuff and I’ll avoid forming an opinion until I see the book. Suffice it to say that the sort of mind set that makes one more likely to be drawn to engineering, or succeed in engineering training, has features that for a small number of individuals may lead to the determination to go blow oneself up and take a few perceived enemies with you.

That argument involves selection of those who go into the field, but a third argument involves what happens during the process of education. It is generally true that some professions, including engineering, have narrow liberal education requirements than other professions, such as the social sciences and humanities. As I demonstrated anecdotally above, taking liberal arts seriously can expand, change, and enrich minds, but if those requirements are reduced, then not so much.

This can be a vicious cycle of sorts. Large university units (such as a college with in a university, or a major program, controlling the details of undergraduate or graduate education) can move towards or away form liberal arts eduction over time as people “typical” of that subset of academia regularly make programmatic decisions. For example, a technically oriented college may have relaxed language requirements compared to the sister college in the same university system that focuses on social science and humanities.

Anyway, the argument here is that academic training matters. The leftist terrorist groups of yore (back in the 60s and 70s) involved operatives with a disproportionate number of humanities and social science education, while today, rightist (statist, jihadist) terrorists are more of the opposite bent.

But, again, that only explains part of the larger pattern. Yet it may be a factor, and that would be interesting.

The important thing about this study, and the reason I’m going on and on about it, is that it is an interesting and apparently well done look at the cultural and social nuances, and the role of lived experience, behind important geopolitical factors that matter. There is some good anthropology to be done here, if we can find some good anthropologists to do it (I don’t think there is much anthropology going on these days in this area, and what is done is mainly critical theory, so not much pragmatic use.)

gregladen Fri, 03/25/2016 - 03:33

Tags

Anthropology

engineers

Liberal Arts Requirements

Psychology

terrorists

Anthropology

Based on interactions on the internet, amongst climate 'skeptics' there certainly seem to be a high proportion of those with engineering backgrounds. I'm not saying all climate 'skeptics' are terrorists; but, well, you know...

I've noticed the same. Talking about savaging the hand that feeds you... Stabbing the mother who gave you life...

I have also noticed the higher than average number of engineering types who are skeptical of the 3C or higher climate sensitivity number, and skew towards the lower end of the range (1.5C).

I attribute that to left brain types being more analytical than average, and therefore more attracted to engineering jobs.

Terrorists have to design and build bombs. They cannot manufacture them and ship them to their destination - but typically have to be built at the point of use.

Therefore, it is not to surprising that terrorists tend to be technical, which is perhaps a skill which is necessary to build bombs, design remote triggers or other terrorist related jobs.

Perhaps the job skills of being a terrorist tend to self-select toward the engineering or chemistry type background?

I don't know this - I just throw it out there for consideration.

Maybe it's just a matter of access. Countries are more willing to let in someone they think will be useful to their society. So will they give a visa to the guy with a stem degree, no degree, or the one with an African literature degree?

Recruitment has not focus on engineers. Many of the engineers looked at in this study found the organizations on their own, showed up, and volunteered, without being sought out. So, what you are suggesting seems really likely to be true (I had the same thought) but didn't turn out to be a major factor.

Of course, once someone shows up, I imagine things might be a bit different.

Engineering is about designing something to behave the way you want it to. This can work in certain narrow areas, like building a bridge or an airplane or a robot. But it doesn't always translate to larger society. Good engineering programs teach their graduates to learn when engineering skills suffice and when more is needed. But not all engineering programs teach this meta-skill successfully. And some engineers who learn this lesson the hard way don't take it well.

Other fields of study don't have this same emphasis. Yes, when you work in a lab you have to acquire some engineering skills so that the apparatus you need for your experiment will let you make the measurement you need to make. But your ultimate goal in this case is to study nature as it actually is, and you learn that nature will often surprise you. Graduates of good humanities and social science programs also learn that the world does not always work as expected. So this lesson is less likely to be painful than it is for mediocre engineers who graduate from mediocre programs.

I love the phrase "engineer terrorist."

Deniers of observed reality (climate change, evolution, the heliocentric model of the Solar System, Earth not being flat) who are also educated are often engineers: Young Earth Creationists and Flat Earthers. Economic disenfranchisement among the uneducated (who are not subjected to "liberal arts") don't revolt: in fact, they tend to vote for and worship the people oppressing them.

Engineering is largely a matter of learning a systematic way of solving problems and optimizing solutions to fit requirements as prioritized.

An example might be that you need to get a million people a day across a river a quarter mile wide. A given design can can be optimized for safety, build time, cost, or durability, and any number of other criteria, but optimizing for one is gong to lower others in complex ways.

The old joke was that you can optimize for quality, cost, and build time ... pick two.

A bomb for use by a suicide bomber is a interesting engineering problem. It has to be portable and so It is constrained in size and weight. The use of rolling luggage, and attacking an airport and train station, where such rolling luggage is common, was clearly an attempt to get around those limits.

You are limited to readily available materials so they go with a cheap, easily produced low-grade explosive that is inherently unstable. And, of course, they want to optimize the design for maximum damage and casualties so they pack nails around the explosive.

A couple of decades ago I read a book by a anti-nuclear activist, she wrote about getting to know the nuclear engineers designing nuclear weapons. She related that they were all very bright, energetic, and driven to find the 'best' solution as an exercise in problem solving. This pursuit of the best solution was almost entirely detached from the fact that they were designing devices that would kill and maim millions and destroy entire civilizations.

In this context it might be this ability to abstract the problem as a puzzle independent of context and intention that makes engineers good at doing this sort of thing.

It must also be noted that the one of the most well represented profession among tyrants, top level torturers and terrorists are medical doctors.

This makes sense. Doctors are trained to selectively ignore the pain of the patient and to be ruthless in pursuit of treatment. Extracting a tumor requires a certain level of ruthlessness and willingness to inflict pain and suffering to gain a cure. If you abstract the wider society as a body and disruptive persons as a tumor it is easy to see how they are wiling to engage in mass murder and ethnic cleansing.

But in both cases it seems to me to be the ability to abstract goals of warfare and techniques of terrorism as a puzzle that needs to be solved and the body politic and populous as a single human body that needs to be violated violently to be treated.

Primitive peoples have a long history on Earth of worshiping the perceived gods and deities behind the forces of nature that oppress and kill them, destroy property & crops, etc. regularly.

I guess you're saying that nothing has changed.. among the ignorami.

At the heart of this essay is a canard that engineers aren't that interested in the Liberal Arts. We've all heard this said over and over, for so many years, that many seem to accept it without actually testing to see if it is true. (The anecdote given is just that... and the plural of anecdote is not data.)

I'll give a counter anecdote: My husband was a computer programmer... who also has two degrees in music. I'm a prolific high tech inventor, with nearly a hundred US patents issue... Oh... and together, we have a library of nearly 10,000 volumes, mostly liberal arts, history, etc.

Consider: MIT is one of the best liberal arts institutions...

I have another item to consider... what characteristic is the SINGLE most common for terrorists? IT's not religion, education, age, ethnicity, etc... Its SEX. Nearly all are MALE.

Lets talk about it.

The first requirement for being a scientist is honesty.
So let's be honest.
Terrorism correlates with Islam over 100 times more than with any other factor including education, poverty, race, nationality.

Vivarto: "Terrorism correlates with Islam over 100 times more than with any other factor including education, poverty, race, nationality."

Well of course: in Islamic regions, the terrorists are Islamists. In the USA it is Christians who are the terrorists; in much of central and south Africa it is also Christians who are the terrorists. Why even mention it?

Desertphile, sorry but you are very mistaken.
In America many more people died from Islamic terror than from all other terror combined.
Still many more attempts of terror on mass scale have been prevented. Some of them would have killed more people than 9/11.

Besides I am wondering if you are including Paris and Brussels, Stockholm, Colon, Madrid, London, Bombay, etc into the "Islamic regions".

Unfortunately our media is lying about this. Strangely opposing Islam is supposed to be a "right wing" politics. While leftist have allied themselves with this darkest force on the face of our planet.

In America many more people died from Islamic terror than from all other terror combined."

No.

Desertphile,
You think that by asserting "NO" the facts chang?
You forgot about 9/11 my friend.
And also tens of Islamic attacks that have been prevented since then.
Another thing is that our media is lying about this.
For example the Fort Hood shooting is classified as "Work Place Violence" rather than Islamic terrorism. Even though the murderer there shouted Allahu Akbar while killing his fellow Americans.
Many other terror attacks have been misclassified in the same way.
And still, even after 9/11 there are more victims of Islamic terror than of "Christian".
I'd be happy to point you to statistics.
For example "only" 8 people have been killed by anti-abortion idiots since 1990s.

Unfortunately our media is dishonest and does not report the truth about the Islamic terror.

*NO*
Hmmm, I suppose 9/11 was perpetrated by the Buddhists...

The only true correlation is discrimination and disenfranchisement.

Has nothing to do with Islam, other than the fact that snobby white assholes like Vivarto use that as an excuse to discriminate against others who don't look and act like himself.

Brainstorms: "Has nothing to do with Islam, other than the fact that snobby white assholes like Vivarto use that as an excuse to discriminate against others who don’t look and act like himself."

Exactly so. If Syria were predominately Christian, it would be Christians running around bombing and shooting The Wrong Kind Of Christian--- not Muslims. Almost all terrorism is engaged in by people who believe (falsely or accurately) they are "evening the score." When Saudi Arabians attacked targets in the USA in year 2001 it was in retaliation for three decades of abuse at the hands of the USA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_terrorism

Religion gives the excuse, not the motive.

Brainstorms, you are clearly not intelligent.
First of all, how do you know that I am White?
Secondly, what does Islam have to do with the skin color?
It is an ideology, not a race.
FInally, no, it is not a question of being disenfranchised.
Poor, and disenfranchised Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Christians do blow themselves up in restaurants, or commuter trains.
Only Muslims do.

100 is a nice round number, which facilitates is passage out nice round orifices.

Speaking of science, correlation is not the same as causation. And in the social sciences in particular, we learn to be suspicious of convenient monocausal explanations of complicated phenomena.

Obstreperous Applesauce,
100 is a figure of speech, the reality is likely worse than that.
Do some math.
I Sweden 85% of assault rapes are committed by Muslims who constitute 5% of the population. This means that in Sweden Muslims are 107.7 times more likely to be rapist than non-Muslims.
The numbers from Norway, Denmark, Britain are simmilar.
======
Back to the subject. You are indeed correct. Correlation is not the same as causation.
There is correlation between drunk driving and the number of deadly accidents.
We cannot say that drunk driving causes death, as there are many other factors involved.
Killing under influence of Islam, or under influence of Alcohol is not fully explained by that influence alone, however, just like we ban drunk driving, we should also ban Islam.

Desertphile, you have been misinformed.
Terrorism has everything to do with Islam.
The founder of Islam, prophet Muhammad was a terrorist, a child abuse, rapist, and a mass murderer. He commanded his followers to fight for the sake of establishing the rule of Allah (Sharia) on the whole Earth.

Now there are many countries that have mixed Christian populations. Germany about 30% of the population are Catholics, and 30% Protestants. They are not killing each others. In Syria however Sunnis are murdering Shiites and Alawites, they have been murdering each other for the last 1400 years.

Now Christians have committed horrible crimes in the past, but they were not following the example of their founder - Jesus.

"Now Christians have committed horrible crimes in the past"

Idiot.

Desertphile, Brainstorms:
vivarto is simply the ignorant bigoted asshole version of the climate denier on a different post. Interacting with this low life will do nothing, as facts mean nothing to them.
Disengage and he'll slither back to the hole he came from.

dean,
You are committing a logical error of ad hominem.
You are attacking me (and rather crudely), saying nothing about the subject matter.
Now INTELLIGENT people seek out those with opposing views, rather than abuse them.
To you however, having a different view from yours, equals to "ignorance", "asshole", "bigoted".

You will never know the truth about Islam.
Nor about the climate for that sake, since in both cases your pre-conceived conclusions preclude you from honest exploration of the subject.

I am surprised to find people like you on a science blog...

"Disengage and he’ll slither back to the hole he came from."

I like that idea. Done.

As for Muslims being the problem, there are scores of towns and villages in central and south Africa completely depopulated by Christians who swept through and killed everyone in the past four years.

I am surprised to find people like you on a science blog

I am sure that is because you are as uninformed on science as you seem to be on terrorism.

I did not, by the way, make an ad hominem. I simply described you, using the evidence you provided in your comments.

You will never know the truth about Islam.

I really have no interest in religions, but I'm pretty sure you don't know jack squat about Islam either, besides the dogma you've been fed by the far right.

Brainstorms, you are clearly intelligent.
First of all, how do you know that I am White?

Vivarto, I never said you were white.. or blue, or green. You're guilty of the very thing you're attacking everyone else here.

You are ASSUMING ad hominem (likely because you realize the criticism is fitting?)

I said, "... snobby white assholes like Vivarto use that as an excuse..." which does not mean "Vivarto is a snobby white asshole" (which could be true); it means, "snobby white assholes who embrace and act on the same abhorrent attitude displayed here by the likes of Vivarto".

Secondly, what does Islam have to do with the skin color?

You tell me; I made no such connection in what I stated.

... disenfranchised Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Christians do blow themselves up in restaurants, or commuter trains.

Your statement; I didn't change your words. This is the only thing you wrote that is accurate.

I am surprised to find people like you on a science blog… So, Vivarto, you may slither away again. Back to your dark hole!

Another troll who has nothing of value to add to the topic of a posted article (this one about engineers) but prefers instead to ride a hobby horse in frenzied ignorance.

VIvarto at 21:

P1. Admits to bull sh**ting.
P2. Changes subject.
P3. Claims to change the subject back with falacious argument by analogy.
Elsewhere spews stock Islamophobic bile, and waves banner of climate denialism.

(By comparison, a more thoughtful approach to the study of certain aspects of terrorism:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/03/22/new-normal-for-europe/xN…

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2006/09/05/nationalism-not-islam-moti… )

@14.,16,,19, 21,22. Vivarto :

See :

http://www.globalresearch.ca/non-muslims-carried-out-more-than-90-of-al…

For an actual factual assessment of the percentages of who is behind terrorism in the United States of America.

An FBI report shows that only a small percentage of terrorist attacks carried out on U.S. soil between 1980 and 2005 were perpetrated by Muslims.

& specifically

Based on our review of the approximately 2,400 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil contained within the START database, we determined that approximately 60 were carried out by Muslims. In other words, approximately 2.5% of all terrorist attacks on U.S. soil between 1970 and 2012 were carried out by Muslims.* This is a tiny proportion of all attacks.

So, Vivarto, you are factually in error which doesn't surprise many readers here but may surprise you and, well, now you know.

See also links from there regarding Europe.

.. less than 1% of terror attacks in Europe were carried out by Muslims.

I doubt even with the recent attacks this figure or percentage has changed much.

Thanks for the link.
It appears that you are the only intelligent person on this forum.
Everyone else could simply not handle views different that theirs. Instead of factual discussion they reacted with rude and often exceedingly crude personal attacks on me, rather than staying with the subject.

You on the other hand, provide reasonable objection to my proposition. Something that we can analyze together. Let's look at it carefully.
The first thing that comes to my mind is
Why are they excluding 9/11 from their statistics. Why start statistics after 9/11?
Second question your article claims that: "Jews who committed acts of terrorism based on their religious passions, just like Al-Qaeda and company."
Googling for Jewish terrorism I only found articles on JDL, but no actual list of terror attacks. Also, I believe that comparing Jewish terrorism can be compared to Al Qaeda is a fallacy. Jewish religion does not command Jews to force Judaism on non-Jews. Islam does so explicitly and so do the words of Muhammad. (Hadith) These are binding commandments for Muslims.
Next: The article claims that 300 Americans were killed in terror attacks since 9/11. I'd very much like to see the list of the attacks. Without the list, I don't know what to think about this.
Another problem with the report is that they are mixing general mass-shooting with terror attacks. It is not relevant to our inquiry.
Next problem. They claim that there have been only 33 killings by Muslims since 9/11. I found 90 confirmed killings with additional 334 wounded.
I have the data in my Excel spreadsheet, paste it below, but unfortunately the formatting will be lost.
You can copy it and paste to your own spreadsheet and analyze. Then compare with FBI database. Each case is exactly described including the date and the location, so that you can take samples and test them.

Here is the tabe.
As I said above. You can copy it, and then paste into your Excel or other spreadsheet for easy viewing.
Thanks again for staying on the subject.
DateLocation DeadWoundedDescription
2002.03.19Tuscon, AZ10A 60-year-old man is gunned down by Muslim snipers on a golf course.
2002.05.27Denton, TX10Muslim snipers kill a man as he works in his yard.
2002.07.04Los Angeles, CA20Muslim man pulls out a gun at the counter of an Israeli airline and kills two people.
2002.09.21Atlanta, GA10Muslim terrorists gun down an employee at a liquor store.
2002.09.21Montgomery, AL11Muslim snipers shoot two women, killing one.
2002.09.23Baton Rouge, LA10A Korean mother is shot in the back by Muslim snipers.
2002.10.02Wheaton, MD10Muslim snipers gun down a program analyst in a store parking lot.
2002.10.03Montgomery County, MD50Muslim snipers kill three men and two women in separate attacks over a 15-hour period.
2002.10.09Manassas, VA11A man is killed by Muslim snipers while pumping gas two days after a 13-year-old is wounded by the same team.
2002.10.11Fredericksburg, VA10Another man is killed by Muslim snipers while pumping gas.
2002.10.14Arlington, VA10A woman is killed by Muslim snipers in a Home Depot parking lot.
2002.10.22Aspen Hill, MD10A bus driver is killed by Muslim snipers.
2003.08.06Houston, TX10After undergoing a 'religious revival', a Saudi college student slashes the throat of a Jewish student with a 4" butterfly knife, nearly decapitating the young man.
2004.04.15Scottsville, NY12In an honor killing, a Muslim father kills his wife and attacks his two daughters with a knife and hammer because he feared that they had been sexually molested.
2006.06.16Baltimore, MD10A 62-year-old Jewish moviegoer is shot to death by a Muslim medical student in an unprovoked terror attack.
2006.06.25Denver, CO15Saying that it was 'Allah's choice', a Muslim shoots four of his co-workers and a police officer.
2006.07.28Seattle, WA15An 'angry' Muslim-American uses a young girl as hostage to enter a local Jewish center, where he shoots six women, one of whom dies.
2008.01.01Irving, TX20A Muslim immigrant shoots his two daughters to death on concerns about their 'Western' lifestyle.
2008.07.06Jonesboro, GA10A devout Muslim strangles his 25-year-old daughter in an honor killing.
2009.02.12Buffalo, NY10The founder of a Muslim TV station beheads his wife in the hallway for seeking a divorce.
2009.04.12Phoenix, AZ20A man shoots his brother-in-law and another man to death after finding out that they visited a strip club, in contradiction to Islamic values.
2009.06.01Little Rock, AR11A Muslim shoots a local soldier to death inside a recruiting center explicitly in the name of Allah.
2009.11.02Glendale, AZ11A woman dies from injuries suffered when her father runs her down with a car for being too 'Westernized.' (10-20-09)
2009.11.05Ft. Hood, TX1331A Muslim psychiatrist guns down thirteen unarmed soldiers while yelling praises to Allah.
2009.12.04Binghamton, NY10A non-Muslim Islamic studies professor is stabbed to death by a Muslim grad student in revenge for 'persecuted' Muslims.
2010.04.14Marquette Park, IL52After quarrelling with his wife over Islamic dress, a Muslim convert shoots his family members to 'take them back to Allah' and out of the 'world of sinners'.
2011.04.30Warren, MI10A 20-year-old woman is shot in the head by her stepfather for not adhering to Islamic practices.
2011.09.11Waltham, MA30Three Jewish men have their throats slashed by Muslim terrorists.
2012.01.15Houston, TX10A 30-year-old Christian convert is shot to death by a devout Muslim for helping to convert his daughter.
2012.11.12Houston, TX10A 28-year-old American man is shot to death by a conservative Muslim over an alleged role in converting a woman to Christianity.
2013.02.07Buena Vista, NJ20A Muslim targets and beheads two Christian Coptic immigrants.
2013.03.24Ashtabula, OH10A Muslim convert walks into a church service with a Quran and guns down his Christian father while praising Allah.
2013.04.15Boston, MA3264Foreign-born Muslims describing themselves as 'very religious' detonate two bombs packed with ball bearings at the Boston Marathon, killing three people and causing several more to lose limbs.
2013.04.19Boston, MA11Jihadists gun down a university police officer sitting in his car.
2013.08.04Richmond, CA10A convert "on a mission from Allah" stabs a store clerk to death.
2014.03.06Port Bolivar, TX20A Muslim man shoots his lesbian daughter and her lover to death and leaves a copy of the Quran open to a page condemning homosexuality.
2014.04.27Skyway, WA10A 30-year-old man is murdered by a Muslim fanatic.
2014.06.01Seattle, WA20Two homosexuals are murdered by an Islamic extremist.
2014.06.25West Orange, NJ10A 19-year-old college student is shot to death 'in revenge' for Muslim deaths overseas.
2014.09.25Moore, OK11A Sharia advocate beheads a woman after calling for Islamic terror and posting an Islamist beheading photo.
2014.12.18Morganton, NC10A 74-year-old man is shot several times in the head by a 'radicalized' ISIS supporter.
2015.07.16Chattanooga, TN52A 'devout Muslim' stages a suicide attack on a recruiting center at a strip mall and a naval center which leaves five dead.
2015.12.02San Bernardino, CA1417A 'very religious' Muslim shoots up a Christmas party with his wife, leaving fourteen dead.

American press is not reporting on Muslim horrors in Europe.
1% in quoted in article is a lie.
Have you heard about
400 children rapedmy Muslim gangs in Oxfordshire?
How about 1,400 children gangraped and exploited for prostitution in Rotherham?
In all of Britain over 10 thousand children raped and forcibly prostituted by Muslim gangs.

Have you heard just this last New Year Eve what happened in European cities?
In Cologne alone, nearly 1000 girls and women beaten, robbed, and sexually attacked on the street, right in front of the famous cathedral and the railway station. Several rapes roported, at least one confirmed gangrape, right there on the street.
Have you read that Muslim rape have made Sweden the Rape capitol of the World. 30 years ago, they were among the safest countries in the world. Everything changed when they opened the doors to Muslim mass immigration.

StevoR,
I took your challenge seriousry and searched for the list of terror attacks motivated by Judaism. I found none.
I did find one mentally ill Jewish teenager, Joshua Ryne Goldberg, posing as Jihadi, KKK, and other personas on the Internet. There is not indication that his crime was related to Jewish religion. He is not in a mental hospital.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrorist_plots_in_t…

PLEASE PROVIDE THE LIST OF TERROR ACTS IN AMERICA COMMITTED BY PEOPLE INSPIRED BY JUDAISM.
Your reference claims that there were more Jewish terror attacks that Islamic. If we don't find such list, we should consider the information in your source unsubstantiated. Likely a propaganda lie.

Damn Vivarto BTFO all the liberal art majors. Well done lad.

"y and searched for the list of terror attacks motivated by Judaism. I found none."

Well, apart from those in Palestine and the occupied territories....

DERP.

PLEASE PROVIDE THE LIST OF TERROR ACTS IN AMERICA COMMITTED BY PEOPLE INSPIRED BY JUDAISM.

The subject isn't "Are engineers more likely to be terrorists in the USA". Your artificial insistence on changing the thesis is a lie and another DERP for you.

Herpy derp.

American press is not reporting on Muslim horrors in Europe.

Uh, Charlie Hebdo? Je suis Charlie? Ring a bell???

Of course, the rightwing nutjob "news" in Fox insist that there are terrors that don't even exist. Such as Birmingham, W Mids, being a muslim city.

So you're not even wrong, you're ANTI-wrong. They're not merely reporting the horrors, BUT MAKING MORE UP!!!!

But I get it, they're darkies and don't believe in your god, so they're all evil satan worshippers.

American press is not reporting on Muslim horrors in Europe.

Uh, Charlie Hebdo? Je suis Charlie? Ring a bell???

Of course, the rightwing nutjob "news" in Fox insist that there are terrors that don't even exist. Such as Birmingham, W Mids, being a muslim city.

So you're not even wrong, you're ANTI-wrong. They're not merely reporting the horrors, BUT MAKING MORE UP!!!!

But I get it, they're darkies and don't believe in your god, so they're all evil satan worshippers.

Young Autists Next Door

aardvarchaeology — Fri, 24 Apr 2015 12:20:11 +0000

Young Autists Next Door

My house is near an LSS housing unit. Lagen om stöd och service till vissa funktionshindrade, "The Law of Support and Service for Certain Disabled People", mainly caters to the needs of people with autism and the like. In 6½ years on Boat Hill, the young people living there have never caused us any trouble at all.

But I still cringe a little when I recall my phone conversation with the man who runs the municipality's LSS housing units. I called him because I was curious about who the young folks living next door are, what diagnoses they have etc. I made it very clear that I was not afraid of them, I was not hostile to them and I had experienced no trouble with them whatsoever. I just wanted to learn about them, and I didn't feel it appropriate to ask the kids themselves. "Oi, woss wrong with you then?"

This guy immediately went on the defensive and clearly assumed that I was trouble. He explained what the law does, but refused to say anything specific about what sort of disorders will get you an LSS apartment in my municipality. He retreated into surly monosyllables.

But our conversation ended well after I told him I like prog rock and recognised his name. He's the bass player of one of Stockholm's longest-active 70s prog bands.

aardvarchaeology Fri, 04/24/2015 - 08:20

Tags

As a guess, information about their clients is legally off-limits in the same way that any medical records are.

I do think that perhaps they should be more proactive in informing people living nearby about their activities - an open house or similar might be a very good idea.

I fully understand the need for confidentiality on the individual level, but I was asking generally about what the municipality's LSS housing is for. I learned considerably more from reading the law than from talking to the guy in charge.

Interesting story. I hate it when you go out of your way to illustrate you simply have an inquiry and there is no offense intended and people still take offense or get defensive. I don't like having to preface questions but I find at times it is easier.

Which band?

Trettioåriga kriget.

Ah - a great band!

(OT) I have just read an original Chinese SF novel, The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu. Recommended.
--- ---
Venus is very bright in the evening sky. If you live further south, you will be able to see Mercury in the same region, closer to the horizon. Jupiter is a bit to the left. Apart from this, not much interesting is happening for the naked-eye skywatcher.

Birger - we should now know we need to qualify "naked eye skywatcher", given the evidence that some naked eye skywatchers can see a great deal more than some others.

Critical Thinking Training Makes Kids Smart And Also Atheist

aardvarchaeology — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 07:47:10 +0000

Critical Thinking Training Makes Kids Smart And Also Atheist

I'm weeks late to the party here. If you pay attention to atheist issues you've probably heard that a recent major meta-study* concludes that at the population level, atheists are a bit smarter than religious folks (mainly Protestant Americans and English in this case). Not dramatically so, but in a statistically significant way. The difference persists even if you control for gender and education level. This means that if you look only at poorly educated people, the unbelievers are a bit smarter, and likewise if you look only at highly educated people, or women, or men. Here are some thoughts about this.

Intelligence is, to the extent that it is measurable, caused by both genetics and environment. Take a pair of twins and give one good nutrition, care and education – and withhold all this from the other twin. Then the first twin will score better at IQ tests than her sister. On the other hand, kids with smart parents tend to grow up smarter than other people even if they are separated from their parents at birth. The new study documents a drop-off in the difference in intelligence between atheists and believers after higher education. Atheists are still smarter, but the difference shrinks. That is very telling to me.

I don't think having atheist beliefs makes you smarter. Nor does being smart make you more likely to become an atheist. The study's authors suggest that the main explanation for the difference is that “intelligent people do not accept beliefs not subject to empirical tests or evidence”. This is almost certainly the wrong explanation. It may be an observational truth, but it is not a causal explanation.

Here's how I think it works. It has to do not only with the amount of education controlled for by the study, but with the content of your early indoctrination and later education – specifically, whether you are encouraged to think critically or not.

By definition, religious upbringing and education teaches acceptance of some scriptural authority. Not only on ethical issues, but on matters of fact, such as “Is there a god and what's her name?”. This is why religious affiliation runs so strongly in families, communities and cultures. There are an awful lot of Hindus in the world, for instance, but geographically and culturally they are sharply delimited. This religion's success has nothing to do with smart people in India looking over the global options and picking the best one. It is due to everybody in that area, smart or stupid, being indoctrinated in the readily available and culturally accepted default faith. Religious people often attend religious schools and universities.

Non-religious upbringing and education, on the other hand, tends to be equally big on the ethics but more critical and open on factual issues. My kids, for instance, often get the reply “Can you guess?” when they ask their dad questions. This, I believe, gives a child's intelligence a big push. The fact that this correlates with atheism is simply an epiphenomenon. If taught critical thinking, kids become more intelligent and also happen to be less open to accepting untestable or empirically false religious beliefs. Critical thinking training makes kids a bit smarter – and also atheist.

* Zuckerman, M.; Silberman, J. & Hall, J.A. 2013. The Relation Between Intelligence and Religiosity: A Meta-Analysis and Some Proposed Explanations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, Aug. 6, 2013.

I was inspired to write this blog entry by the discussion on episode #100 of the excellent Skeptikerpodden podcast. Congrats guys, keep up the good work!

aardvarchaeology Fri, 08/30/2013 - 03:47

Tags

My thought on your hypothesis is that while I agree one's religion is most commonly the product of indoctrination, Atheism (or even agnosticism) isn't, in my experience. Surely there are some who grew up in rational households, that nurtured critical thought, but most (myself included) had an ecumenical upbringing.

SDTerp, I take it you agree then. Atheism is a product of other factors in a person's upbringing.

Article: The study’s authors suggest that the main explanation for the difference is that “intelligent people do not accept beliefs not subject to empirical tests or evidence”. This is almost certainly the wrong explanation. It may be an observational truth, but it is not a causal explanation.

But isn't {not accepting beliefs not subject to empirical tests or evidence} part of critical thinking, and doesn't critical thinking develop naturally, the more so, presumably, in those of higher intelligence?

John, no, there are lots of intelligent people in societies with a very low incidence of atheism as well. It's just that if they hadn't been brought up to believe in dogma they would probably have been even more intelligent. And more likely to to be atheist.

@ sdterp
My thought also. I note that the analysis seems to be based to a large extent on studies carried out in the US where the percentage of households professing no religion is very low compared to Sweden. However I have only read the abstract.

Hi Martin R.

I disagree with your gist and the assumed backdrop.

First, I see atheism as cutting-edge scientism and the underlying attraction - to be frank - tends to be arrogance. Similarly intelligence and arrogance tend to go together (although ultimately arrogance is un-intelligent, although may not effect test scores).

The generic criticism of religion is that it tends to encourage rigidity. Fine. On the other hand the fundamental position of science(/scientism/atheism) is that life is a material-only affair and the rigid adherence to that position is easily on par with that encountered amongst religions. And rigidity hinders intelligence.

Your statements on the relationship between religious belief and indoctrination are not correct. See the book "Born Believers".

The topic is about intelligence and ironically raises a serious problem. They are not finding any significant DNA basis for the variation in intelligence! Beyond this, the basic presumptions of the world's most famous atheist 'DNA beget you (and you are so lucky to be alive!)' after enormous efforts are still to be corroborated. That is the Missing Heritability problem.

There is a large variance found between twins (presumably you mean monozygotic) which challenges the logic you have laid out in your twin experiment.

Finally, if you would like to allow your critical thinking to look outside the science-box you might take at look at the paper I wrote at the new medical site Cureus,
www.cureus.com/papers/2286
A number of these points are touched on there.

Sincerely,
Ted Christopher
Rochester, NY

the underlying attraction – to be frank – tends to be arrogance

But if arrogance causes atheism, then why is atheism so irregularly spread across the globe? Why are countries with more affluent and well-educated populations less theistic? Are you arguing that affluence and education makes a person arrogant? And that religious people are generally humble?

the fundamental position of science(/scientism/atheism) is that life is a material-only affair

No, science would be happy to accommodate a non-materialist view of life if there was any evidence for such a position. Science is about finding out how the world actually works. It has turned out that no set of religious scriptures offers opinions on such matters that can be squared with the evidence.

Martin R.,

Sorry about the delayed response here but I was expecting an e-mail alert indicating a response.

You apparently haven't read much of what I wrote. Although the lead-in is perhaps in the vicinity of philosophical, the rest of my points aren't. The origins of our religious inclinations are innate - not indoctrinated. That is the central point of "Born Believers" (a somewhat overlong book) and the associated field (from reports in the book) has a heavy atheist presence amongst its research community.

Science's central pillar about our lives - your individual aspects as beget by DNA - has seen enormous efforts to confirm it. They have overwhelmingly been failures.

When you write something like "science would be happy to accommodate a non-materialist view of life" it is essentially a confession "I will not question the assumptions of science or my own idealizations about science". Science absolutely rejects even considering the possibility of a non-materialist contribution to life. I have encountered this repeatedly. In trying to get my paper published the relatively open-minded people at Cureus acknowledged the enormous rigidity of scientists on this point and the head guy - a neuro-guy - acknowledged "Science is in many ways it's own religion". With of course its own following.

Finally, as a simple example of a strong rebut to the material-only purview consider the following paragraph from my paper,

BEGIN_PARAGRAPH
A suggestive final example was found in Darold A. Treffert’s fascinating book, Islands of Genius [24]. The description of a modern prodigy there was as follows [24 (pp. 55-56)]:
BEGIN_QUOTE
By age five Jay had composed five symphonies. His fifth symphony, which was 190 pages and 1328 bars in length, was professionally recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra for Sony Records. On a 60 Minutes program in 2006 Jay’s parents stated that Jay spontaneously began to draw little cellos on paper at age two. Neither parent was particularly musically inclined, and there were never any musical instruments, including a cello, in the home. At age three Jay asked if he could have a cello of his own. The parents took him to him to a music store and to their astonishment Jay picked up a miniature cello and began to play it. He had never seen a real cello before that day. After that he began to draw miniature cellos and placed them on music lines. That was the beginning of his composing.
Jay says that the music just streams into his head at lightning speed, sometimes several symphonies running simultaneously. “My unconscious directs my conscious mind at a mile a minute,” he told the correspondent on that program.
END_QUOTE
This was an example of what led Treffert to conclude that prodigal behavior typically involves “know[ing] things [that were] never learned”. Additionally, whatever their origins some prodigal capacities seem to challenge biological feasibility. This last example introduces the remainder of this paper and its consideration of some remarkable intellectual phenomena.
END_PARAGRAPH

"Are you arguing that affluence and education makes a person arrogant?"

I certainly would argue that. People who have enough wealth and political power to avoid many kinds of suffering and enjoy many material benefits tend to start thinking that they deserve that good fortune and will always have it. Too many Americans seem to think that they should never experience loss, harm or offense, or ultimately death, and that they should be able to have whatever they want when they want it; then too many of them go bananas when those assumptions are challenged. It has nothing to do with religious belief systems, as theists are equally liable to arrogance.

I think Roger Poole (philosopher) pointed out that scientists (and the like, skeptics, atheists, etc...) have just as much "faith" as anyone else. i.e. Faith that the world can be made entirely sensible and is logical in all respects and so can be investigated fully and fully understood. allowing a nice reductionist stance. positivism if you like,

I suspect such faith can lead to or can be "scientism", the belief science has not just truths but is the truth. However, unlike Ted's belief, I am not sure this necessarily always involves arrogance. It might involve impatience though and frustration with the obvious not being acknowledged. i.e. the dishes are not done, no problem for me as I just don't "see it", but a big problem for my wife "who does see it" and wants me to acknowledge it (and clean them, thank you).

Perhaps education (formal and informal, wide and varied), if it's a meaningful one, pries one out of certainty about existential realities even as it confirms the solidity of natural events at the local level or the mechanical.

And this is the balance point or grey area perhaps. Atheism (and the scienticism that may attach itself) is in ways like religion in that it lives across a range in how "intense" it may be felt and what it pays attention too.

If anything, being "smarter" (and I shudder at even using that term, what kind of intelligence are we talking about??-though I am sure we can bring out the neuro science to try to nail it down, which itself rests on certain presumptions about what ways of knowing are to be valued-chicken/egg anyone?) should leave people at least agnostic, less sure, more flexible in consideration, more humble, more "forgiving"(?)

For me I am agnostic I admit. There aren't I wonderful. lol. You knew I was going there didn't you. :-)

Not arrogant enough (I hope) to think the human prefrontal cortex will reveal all, though I have an abiding respect and love for that little piece of flesh.

This makes me think that perhaps the surge in neuro science, will inevitably, take us through a scientism of neuroscience for a while, until we come out the other side (again, as in all the "newest" way to understand) and realize, we know a lot, we just won't know it all, likely never.

I do natural science at times and I do social research and I love it. But really, the more I know, the more I think those with the hardened positions of belief (religion or atheist, i am agnostic about my agnosticism. lol) are like one small grain of sand on a huge beach, shouting out "there truth is where I am placed."

I appreciate some of the comments made following my comments. I add a bit.

I will dodge (and return to) the topic of arrogance. The confidence science has - and broadcasts - in its material-only vision is extraordinary and appears to be largely unquestioned officially. As a simple example, find an NYT article in the last 10 years that meaningfully questions this material-only vision (and no the philosophy exercises like Nagel's recent piece do not count)?

Yet real-life rebuts to this vision are readily available as I introduce via some examples in my paper.

Back on arrogance. This summer I was at a table in which an engineer was talking about his experiences in helping with some hospital work. At one point he said simply, 'Basically you can not tell a doctor they are wrong'. That kind of arrogance is also prevalent - if not inflated - amongst scientists on fundamental issues. And that kind of arrogance carries over within the following of science which of course is reflected amongst the atheist movement. Simply read the readers comments at NYT on some religion vs. science article.

As a relatively neutral example I followed some religion vs. science discussions at a (western) Buddhist website. In the back and forth between those taking Buddhism literally (as the religion it has been for thousands of years) and modern-ites (some rallying around the term "Buddhist atheists") where do you think the impolite comments (to put it politely) came from?

Unfortunately, there has been too much emphasis given to critical thinking, which is not a good approach. Instead of critical thinking, our children should be trained to think creatively, as creative thinking is the only way we can produce quality people.

To those who disbelieve: “science would be happy to accommodate a non-materialist view of life” consider the placebo effect. Medical science was happy to test whether a placebo (by definition the most non-materialistic of medicine) works, did so, and accepts it as of definite although limited efficacy. Thereby fully disproving the effectiveness of psuedo-science medicines as devoid of any effect other than of a placebo.

"Unfortunately, there has been too much emphasis given to critical thinking"

There is no such thing as too much in this case! The human race needs MORE critical thinking if we wish to have any hope of surviving for more than another 100 generations or so. Maybe you don't care, but I feel we have a responsibility to our descendants, even those to be born millions of years from now. If we want to give them a chance, then we must become more science oriented, more rational, or else we will die off before long, having used up this planet like a parasite without a new host available!

Thoughts of Violence Past in a Peaceful City

aardvarchaeology — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 13:20:32 +0000

Thoughts of Violence Past in a Peaceful City

Ferdinand Balfoort contributes a guest entry upon a recent ancestral pilgrimage to Stockholm.

I gladly agreed to write something for the blog after being introduced by Martin to a book by Frans G. Bengtsson about Early Modern Scottish brigades (and brigadiers) in the Nordic region including Sweden. I visited Stockholm in December on my quest to find my 16th century ancestor Gilbert Balfour who lost his head during a public decapitation procedure with a sharp implement, somewhere in the Old Town. So far I am no closer to retrieving his head or his grave site, but some illumination has been provided by the good people of the Swedish National Archives (Riksarkivet), who sent me a scanned copy of another book by a Swedish author named Fridolf Ödberg: Stämplingarna mot Konung Johan III, "The Plot Against King John III" (1897). My ancestor and his antecedents are duly noted, and on the face of it the story is not a wholesome one.

Gilbert Balfour (and his brothers) are noted for their various involvements as ringleaders or participants in conspiracies against several notable persons in Scotland and Sweden. The Riksarkivet noted rather bluntly that it would be unlikely to find my ancestor’s last resting place in the hallowed ground of Riddarholmskyrkan church, and I appear to have opened a can of worms as far as family geneology is concerned, in all meanings of that popular saying. Which takes me to observations about Stockholm.

One key observation is that the city (and the people here) are very peaceful considering the often violent past. That is no different from the rest of Europe and many places are still wrestling through the violent cycles towards calmer waters. It begs the question as to why such violent pasts have created the current stability and relative peace that is built around consensus rather than the sword, especially in the northern part of Europe. Since this blog lists an eclectic mix of topics, including brain functionality, it might therefore be interesting to tie family history and neuroscience to Vikings. For it appears that a specific gene called the “Warrior gene” (see Science Daily) is responsible for somewhat sociopathic or very psychopathic tendencies, where the MRI scans of such perpetrators as Anders Breivik appear to show a differently coloured pattern in the neocortex. The milk of human kindness appears to dry up in such individuals, but it is also apparent that our evolution necessitated such genetic evolution.

In present-day Palestine, an author of research into the warrior gene – himself the proud possessor of an underendowed neocortex due to the apparent presence of no less that 16 violent murderers in his ancestral matrilineage – has found that through generations of conflict the warrior gene is now establishing dominance in the Palestinian gene pool. His hypothesis is that the more violent males attract mates due to a higher chance of survival for progeny fathered by those with the warrior gene. And so the process selectively advances and causes a cycle of violence which have less to do with politics and more with human evolution. As more violently tending persons are born, this begets more violence and so forth.

As the Riksarkivet person noted, Gilbert Balfour was a rather violent person, who was put to death in a rather violent period of history. And we have fortunately arrived at a much more benign state of affairs, which sees Sweden (and the Nordic countries) ranking highly on the quality of life index, anti corruption, civil society etc. It may in fact all be a case of selective breeding as I have noted. Our ancestors were partners and actors in progress and it is good to know they were there along the way. I am glad myself to now be able to visit Stockholm and enjoy the warm hospitality and the people without fear of being taken off to the Stortorget for a public decapitation. We have come a long way since those unruly days. May it long be so.

Ferdinand Balfoort is a nomadic governance and risk expert dealing mainly with accounting and auditing. In his free time he pursues studies of genealogy, ethics and neuroscience, Sufism and other metaphysics, and plays the trumpet.

aardvarchaeology Thu, 01/10/2013 - 08:20

Tags

LSD, Hangover Cure?

jtoney — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 11:26:15 +0000

LSD, Hangover Cure?

Alcoholic Anonymous founder Bill Wilson put forth the controversial idea of using LSD, yes, LSD to reduce alcohol abuse. Is there any scientific evidence for this?

Published today in the Journal of Psycholpharmacology, researchers took a careful look at a wide range of studies ("meta-analysis") and concluded:

...repeated doses of LSD - for example, weekly or monthly - might elicit more sustained effects on alcohol misuse than a single dose of LSD.

And:

Of 536 participants in six trials, 59% of people receiving LSD reported lower levels of alcohol misuse, compared to 38% of people who received a placebo. "We were surprised that the effect was so clear and consistent," says Krebs.

I certainly would not recommend using hallucinogenic drugs to help alcohol abuse, trading one addiction for another, but this result does open up interesting questions about the underlying causes of alcoholism at the neurological level. Do drugs such as LSD interact with similar sites in the brain (receptors) as does alcohol? Can brain cells become more and more resistant to such stimulation? Is the effect permanent, or can it be reversed with another drug, or better yet, by cognitive behavioral therapy, through sessions with a psychologist?

jtoney Fri, 03/09/2012 - 06:26

Tags

Neurology

Pharmaceutical

Psychology

Jesus, Ã la Carte

jtoney — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 09:10:51 +0000

Jesus, Ã la Carte

Is that Jesus looking into a mirror? A recent study shows that Christian conservatives and liberals reflect themselves upon the image of Jesus, and it's not an ordinary mirror.

Below is an excerpt from their Abstract:

The present study explores the dramatic projection of one's own views onto those of Jesus among conservative and liberal American Christians. In a large-scale survey, the relevant views that each group attributed to a contemporary Jesus differed almost as much as their own views. Despite such dissonance-reducing projection, however, conservatives acknowledged the relevant discrepancy with regard to "fellowship" issues (e.g., taxation to reduce economic inequality and treatment of immigrants) and liberals acknowledged the relevant discrepancy with regard to "morality" issues (e.g., abortion and gay marriage). However, conservatives also claimed that a contemporary Jesus would be even more conservative than themselves on the former issues whereas liberals claimed that Jesus would be even more liberal than themselves on the latter issues. Further reducing potential dissonance, liberal and conservative Christians differed markedly in the types of issues they claimed to be more central to their faith. A concluding discussion considers the relationship between individual motivational processes and more social processes that may underlie the present findings, as well as implications for contemporary social and political conflict.

And from Science's Editor's Choice:

Conservatives rated Jesus as being more in favor of higher taxes on the wealthy and more opposed to gay marriage than they themselves were, with an opposite pattern for liberals. By placing more weight on issues on which they projected Jesus as being more extreme than themselves, individuals on both sides of the spectrum were able to reduce dissonance, which might be better characterized as social rather than cognitive, owing to the collective nature of religion.

Those posturing with rock solid religious beliefs never seem to be bothered with inconsistencies between their own views and that of their religion. Based upon such a study, this could be because they pick and choose whatever fits best. Jesus, Ã la carte.

jtoney Sun, 02/26/2012 - 04:10

Tags

Faith

Politics

Psychology

"taxation to reduce economic inequality "

Seriously? Is THAT why secular depressives think we pay taxes? Well, it isn't. it is to maintain crucial infrasctructure,to maintain a proper military to defend the homeland, and to keep government. Outside of this most everything else is optional.

If we could go back toa simple government with limited power instead of unlimited power. we would all be richer and better off.

I never once read in the Bible where Ceasar collected taxes to help "poor" people. I also never read where Jesus instructed Ceasar to confiscate wealth and redistribute it. He couldn't. Stealing would go against one of the Ten Commandments.

Gene wrote "I never once read in the Bible where Ceasar collected taxes to help "poor" people."

You do know that there were already organisations around which helped the poor in Jesus' day didn't you? In fact Caesar's main reason for collecting taxes was to help himself and only secondarily to pay for the army etc.

Gene continued "I also never read where Jesus instructed Ceasar to confiscate wealth and redistribute it. He couldn't. Stealing would go against one of the Ten Commandments."

Just a few points.
1) Taxation isn't stealing.
2) Jesus wrote to render unto Caesar what was Caesar's. Remember that? That was Jesus' response when asked about taxation.

This is the problem with people who try and interpret a text with no knowledge of its cultural and historical context.

Sorry my comment should have read:
An anonymous author wrote that Jesus said to render etc.

It is of course true that Jesus, if he existed, wrote nothing.

If you do not believe that Jesus even existed, then how could you possibly debate something a non-existant entitiy never said?

Taxation in itself is not stealing, but to overtax people and use it to give freely to those who would support your politcal campaign is in fact STEALING!

Wealth redistribution is NOT Biblical nor is it constitutional. Article I, section 8 makes no mention of "taxing the rich" and redistributing wealth to maintain political support in future elections.

According to the Bible one is supposed to WORK for his/her own pay, not get a free handout. Of course this would not apply to elderly or sick people (not talking about a head cold either)or disabled. All able bodied men, according to the Bible should work or starve.

Now please, if anyone wishes to debate this, at least have the decency to believe what you are debating. If you do not believe that Jesus is the Son of God who was present at creation 6500 years ago and who chose to die on the cross and was ressurected on the thrid day, then please refrain from said debate. Serious inquiries only.

Sorry, but the Bible nor the constitution mandate wealth redistribution, free handouts, contraceptives, giving taxpayer money to fund rogue entities like the UN, etc.

Jesus did talk about helping the elderly, sick, and poor, but he instructed His followers, the church, not the government to do it. Technically the church used to take care of people in their own comunities. Communties grew larger and more secular and kept doing so until government took over the role of church and si still trying to take over things that was never intended on government taking over - healthcare, ethanol, education, abortion, marriage, etc.

Anyone else on these blogs would be smart enough not to light the fuse... At any rate, Gene, when you decide to tell others what they must believe in order to discuss a subject with you, you're admitting that you can't really openly debate them. Let me put it in a slightly different way. If you are going to argue what is ethical or unethical and then state that all support must be based in scripture, you're not really arguing about ethics. The Bible states pi=3. This in itself doesn't make Christianity wrong, but it renders many of the claims of some Christians as ridiculous. Personally, I do math for fun. Some of the books have the wrong answer in the answer key. This doesn't make the main body of the book wrong. It simply means that an answer or two is off. The Bible is an account of a group of people trying to understand the world they lived in and how they perceived God. Suggesting that one must be a Christian in order to discuss it's ethical teachings is ridiculous.

Mike Olson +1

OP, quoting the article abstract:

The present study explores the dramatic projection of one's own views onto those of Jesus among conservative and liberal American Christians.

Wouldn't it have been simpler of the original authors to simply quote Shaw?

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

...as clearly evidenced by "Gene Cornwall" aka Rob Hood, the undertreated mentally ill poster who haunts SB, particularly Greg Laden's and Orac's. He has a few obvious tells - 'Secular depressives' is one, as are discussions of YEC, aluminium in vaccines, HAARP and (my personal favorite) "flouride" in drinking water.

Once outed, he tends to rant a bit (search SB for examples) in multiple sockpuppets, so if our gracious host has a policy against such behavior, he may want to keep an eye out.

The US Constitution also makes no mention of Atomic Energy, Computers, or photons. But still, laws regarding them can be constitutional.

A tax rate of 99% is Constitutional presuming it was properly voted for, and enacted. Stupid, short lived, wrong; yet Constitutional.

NJ is easily recognizable. All ya gotta do is recognize his style, out him and prod him a little bit. And out comes a torrent of looney. The truly funny thing is that he doesn't realize that he's making a permanent record of his being unhinged.

Viewed objectively, it's a sad testament to the failure of his mother and father to teach him wrong from right.

He has a few obvious tells - aka Robin Hood is one, as are discussions of SB, Orac, (my personal favorite) puppeteered socks and underwear.

Once outed, he tends to rant a bit (search SB for examples) in dazed flouridated confusion, so if our gracious host has a policy against such behavior, he may want to keep an eye out.

FIFTY.

--------

@ Mike

Math for fun? The only fun I ever had in math was daydreaming about throwing a turd at the teacher for making us learn that crap that I still haven't used to this day. Well, algebra anyway. A useless husk of complete waste of time.

...and out comes the real Rob Hood personality, now thinking that he is oh, so clever using my 'nym to sign his rant.

...and out comes the real NJ personality, now thinking that he is oh, so clever by crapping his pants. A modern flouride overdosed canadian if I ever saw one.

Keep it up. I'll tell what Nj really stands for and then you'll really be mad. One hint: William Flowers. Figure it out.

Okay, I thought this would be a thread worth following, or that their might be merit in some discussion here. Instead it appears only as if one commenter has posted repeatedly under different pseudonyms. None of these things are particularly pertinent to the discussion at hand. ::::::::I do feel compelled to respond: I graduated college with never having had a class in Trigonometry or Advanced Algebra. Let alone Calculus. I joined the Navy, became a lab tech and for the first time since about the fourth grade felt as if I were learning new science. I loved it and wanted very badly to pursue a degree related to the things I'd learned for that job. In that pursuit I had to take more math. At that time I realized my greatest past flaw was two fold: 1) I lacked discipline. 2) I thought that enjoying math was only for savants/aspergers types or for those wildly gifted. I really came to love math because it is the purest of logic. Also the more you learn the more applicable it becomes. I'm not gifted, but I have a huge appreciation for it and recognize how understanding it has lead me to a greater appreciation of the world and science. One of the more difficult things I've had to deal with is that for many Christians math and science is virtually at the bottom of those things they value. I think for many that de-valuing either accomodates some really stupid beliefs held out of fear or allows legitimately valuable science to be dismissed out of wishful thinking. I'm a Christian. I see those who are literalists and fundamentalists as doing more to destroy the entire religion than any heretic they ever imagined.

My sympathies Mike; I agreed with the commenter in #6 that you had something serious to discuss. As you have seen, though, our unwell friend tends to cause threads to degenerate. An unfortunately common occurrence.

@Mike

Literalists? Fundamentalists? Destroying the religion?

Literalists and fundamentalists ARE the foundation of the religion. It is the apostates that are destroying things. Apostate churches pretend to follow Biblical principles but ignore the fact that SATAN and SIN are the underlying reasons as to why REPENTENCE is necessary and that EVIL exists. Satan is a real literal being just like God and Jesus and angles that have not fallen. Apostate churches ae false churches that deny the very foundation of why the church exists.

The entire reason behind Jesus coming to earth and dying for us is becuase of what literally happened in Genesis. If sin had not entered the world shortly after the creation of the universe then we would not be having this discussion. Apostate or false churches do not even recognize sin as real and evil as real. They tend to accept secular principles more than Biblical principles. Mike is one of those apostates who probably throws God out the door and invites darwinism in and throws God law out the door and invites gayism in as a normal way of life. It is not natural or Biblical. It is anti-biblical and anti-Holy.

If a church cannot accept Genesis, then it is a false church becuase the entire concept of Jesus began in Genesis. If you want to understand christianity go back to Genesis and it expalins the rest of the Bible and modern times as well.

NJ usually interrupts and gets me off topic with his fetish about Robin Hood men in tights. he needs serious mental help.

Satan is a real literal being just like God and Jesus and angles that have not fallen.

Are fallen angles straight angles or lines?

"Don't do what the church does, do what the church says"

Don't do what the secular depressives do, do what the secular depressives say.

"NJ" linking to "iamastupidcanadian.com" aka Rob Hood @ 17:

Don't do what the secular depressives do, do what the secular depressives say.

Rob, the undertreated mentally ill guy who skulks around SB is now pre-emptively using my 'nym to post comments. Sadly for him, he can't avoid the little giveaways like 'secular depressives' or 'flouride' that identify him to one and all.

Clearly, I am living in his head rent-free. Too bad the furnishings are out of date and the place needs badly to be fumigated.

Psychopaths in the Boardroom?

jtoney — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 06:09:41 +0000

Psychopaths in the Boardroom?

My colleague Prof. Mark Boguski at the Harvard Medical School shared a provocative quote: True?

Not all psychopaths are in prison. Some are in the Boardroom.

Over at MedPageToday, they just completed an intriguing and informative series of articles about the psychology of psychopaths. According to Prof. Boguski:

...our 3-part series on psychopathy just concluded yesterday on MedPageToday.

Here's a summary of some of our tweets about it:

WANTED: Charming, aggressive, carefree people who are good at looking out for #1 http://bit.ly/kmj5oM

Also...

Corporate psychopaths: the sour cream rises to the top

What's the difference between successful & unsuccessful psychopaths?

Psychopaths know the words, but not the music

Chainsaw Al redefines psychopathic traits as exemplary leadership qualities

Not all psychopaths are in prison. Some are in the Boardroom.

jtoney Fri, 06/24/2011 - 02:09

Tags

health care

Psychology

science communication

This is from Prof. Boguski at Harvard Medical School. Explain to readers your qualifications. Thank you.

Not true. The modern corporate environment doesn't suit psychopaths; the sociopaths outcompete them at every turn.

Very true Pierce, they're no match against sociopaths.

"Pyschopath" and "sociopath" are both non-clinical, interchangeable terms referring to a person suffering from "Antisocial Personality Disorder". In fact, "psychopath" was the preferred clinical term, vs. sociopath, until the 1980's when the third edition of the DSM was published. Even today, "psychopath" is used, casually, by mental health professionals to refer to people about whom you would say "uh-uh, they're SOCIOpaths".

It isn't as though people need a psych degree to know these things. If you're going to be technical nitpickers, at least do it right. Is Googling so difficult?

... What.

Psychopathy in psychology in my experience just means psychopathy as measured by Hare's Psychopathy Check-List. It's a distinct phenomenon. I wouldn't know what sociopathy could mean in this context.

Corporate world? Also, politics.

No matter if theyâre a sociopath, psychopath, or a schizophrenic, you shouldnât be surprised that theyâre in the board room rather than prison. A great deal of personality disorders are based on fantastic characteristics that are used for negative purposes. Depending on the individualâs self-control, these skills can easily work to their advantage. Unfortunately climbing to the top of of a career may involve a lot of decisions that someone with a larger conscience could not handle in a way someone with a personality disorder could. Narcissists also tend to be very successful themselves because of their magnetic charm and persuasion.

What Americans Regret The Most

jtoney — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:41:13 +0000

What Americans Regret The Most

What do Americans regret the most? Regret can weigh you down, leading to focusing on the past rather than a brighter future. Each of us has a bundle of regrets; I will spare you my own list - it is unlikely you have the time or interest to lend a sympathetic ear. What's on your list?

Researchers at the University of Illinois and Northwestern University set out to answer this question by surveying a randomized sample of adult men and women across the U.S.

How did they do the study?

A total of 370 adult Americans (207 were women) completed a survey via telephone (in exchange for $5; mailed). The response rate (i.e., the proportion of eligible respondents who
completed the interview) was 20.5% and the refusal rate (i.e., the proportion of eligible respondents who refused the interview or broke it off after starting) was 49.1%.

Participants were asked to report one salient regret in detail, and then to provide further information about the nature of the regret. Participants next answered single questions reflecting variables of interest (listed below); two other variables were coded from participants' responses.

Action effect. ''Does the regret focus on something you should have done, or something you should NOT have done?''

The researchers concluded:

The most frequent regrets of Americans are about love, education, and work. Romantic regrets--America's most common--focused on lost chances for potential romances, and relationships that did not live up to their potential. The other common regrets for Americans involved family, education, career, finances, and parenting. Women were more likely to have regrets about relationships (romance, family), and men were more likely to have regrets about work (career and education). It was the lack of romantic relationships and the lack of higher education that were regretted most.

Do these results reflect American values and lifestyles or can they be applied globally?

While not surprising, the relative value of work and love for men and women is particularly striking. Any recommendations of how to bridge that gap?

Sources:
AAAS Eureka Alert.

You can read the full paper here.

jtoney Wed, 06/08/2011 - 10:41

Tags

Psychology

Aren't you assuming that regret=value? It could be delayed realization of value; the men may have taken more romantic risks in the first place, and the women may have chosen jobs based more on fulfillment than a big paycheck, for example.

Indeed. See: "Keeping Women In The Picture - How Paris Hilton Saved Mika Brzezinski's Job"

http://scienceblogs.com/deanscorner/2011/05/keeping_women_in_the_pictur…

I wonder if a more specific breakdown will be forthcoming?

How about not getting more education, not leaving town, wasted years? I've read elsewhere that 60 - 70% of American parents wish that they hadn't had children.

Shame must play a significant role in regret. More than the absence of the positive (value) regret is also an experience of the negative (primarily shame affect).

By definition regret is personal yet it is commonly used impersonally. I assume the study was clear to differentiate this for the respondents.

It would be helpful if the next steps in this work could shine more light on the specific affects involved and their coimplications with the cognitive content.

I suspect that you would find different results on a global scale, especially if the surveys were done in less developed countries.

Regret is typically based on choices, so ironically, if you have fewer choices, you will probably have fewer regrets. If your life opportunities are limited, you have little access to education, you have an arranged marriage and children are something that happens rather than a decision -- well, that would suck in so many ways, but one small consolation is that you are spared the "if onlys".

Regret is also a personal thing; you regret what you did or didn't do, not what happened externally to yourself. So, if you live in an individualistic society where success is (in theory anyway) based on merit, then your missed opportunites are "your fault" -- and therefore more likely to be regretted.

Opportunites and individualism are generally Good Things, but they do leave open the door to regret.

Thank you for your thoughtful, insightful comment.

So, if you live in an individualistic society where success is (in theory anyway) based on merit, then your missed opportunites are "your fault" -- and therefore more likely to be regretted.

Don't you think people who live in more collectivist societies also blame themselves and have regrets for not living up to the social ideal?

"Opportunites and individualism are generally Good Things, but they do leave open the door to regret."

To add even another layer: to the degree the "opportunities and individualism" are often an illusion used by those in power in first-world countries to manipulate the populace, people may be suffering from "false regret"i.e. blaming themselves when there was probably not a lot they could have done about the situation (or at least not nearly as much as they imagine).

If you've been sold an illusion of a perfect fairy-tale future since childhood, perhaps anything less than that will feel like failure. And in a society where people constantly hear about people pulling themselves up from their bootstraps, hitting it big on Wall St or American Idol; or about "the secret" and "creating their own reality by focusing on the positive" and other self-help nonsense, who is to blame when things don't work out great but themselves?

Why do we need to close the gap? Do women need to regret more about their career, or do men need to regret more about their love life?

I think women are more likely to have regrets about relationship-related choices because, for women, there is more of a time limit on these choices. It is much easier for a man in his 50s and 60s to find a partner and marry or remarry than it is for a woman, thanks to the differences in the availability of younger partners. So if a man makes a mistake that leaves him alone at that age, the mistake isn't as costly. Same with the opportunity to have children. A 50 year old man just needs to find a significantly younger partner--not the easiest thing perhaps but not impossible. A 50 year old woman is SOL. If this hypothesis is correct, if analyzed the make/female difference by age group, you should find that it significantly interacts with age.