Here at Edinburgh Skeptics, our previous Chair, Ben Makin, coined our pithy motto: Respect People, Challenge Ideas. We think it encapsulates the standards we believe we should aspire to. And, though we don’t always live up to it in every interaction, we are always conscious of it when talking with believers in pseudoscience, either in person or online.
A few similar attempts have been made over the years to focus on similar concise phrases. The LBC radio host James O’Brien created Contempt for the conmen, compassion for the conned for instance, about the Brexit campaigners, which, although it has the benefit of being alliterative, has the disadvantage of being gender specific. Hey, women can con people too!
But none sparked the furore within skepticism that the astronomer Dr Phil Plait ignited with his talk at 2010’s The Amaz!ng Meeting where he implored to his audience: “Don’t be a dick!”.
Phil Plait, also known as “The Bad Astronomer,” is an American astronomer, skeptic, and science communicator. He has made significant contributions both in his field and in public science education, via media and podcasting, and on his Bad Astronomy blog. He has authored three popular science books: Bad Astronomy, Death from the Skies, and Under Alien Skies. These works demystify complex astronomical concepts for the general public. He has also appeared in several science documentaries on The Discovery Channel and has been a regular on skeptical podcasts such as A Skeptics Guide to the Universe as well as hosting his own Crash Course in Astronomy series on You Tube.
For those of you who are too young to be aware (or too old to remember), The Amaz!ng Meeting (abbreviated to TAM) was a precursor to the much-loved QEDcon. It was held in Las Vegas, with a brief pair of London events. In 2010, Plait was invited to give a presentation at the Vegas meeting and his speech focused on what he felt was an increasing problem in organised skeptics’ interactions: specifically, people acting in an obnoxious and dismissive way to others, especially to believers in pseudoscientific ideas.
Plait thought the tone of skeptical outreach had deteriorated substantially. He asked attendees whether they had previously believed in things like bigfoot, UFOs, and alt-med, and if so, what had caused them to change their mind? Was it people getting in their face, mocking them and using names like idiots, the r-word, or other ableist slurs?
He put forth a rhetorical question: how do we, as skeptics, convince people that they are not thinking clearly, when they are not thinking clearly?
Using studies to reinforce his ideas, Plait talked about how engaging confrontationally with believers can often lead to them double down in their errant beliefs. It is hard to get someone to change their mind, especially with a message that can be discomforting for many people, often requiring huge shifts in how they view the world. Humans tend to identify profoundly with their beliefs, be they political, religious or worldview-based, and will react defensively if they feel these are coming under attack.
Readers will likely agree that science and an understanding of reality can be profound, glorious or even magical (in the sense of awesomeness), but not everyone feels this way. Skepticism is, by its very definition, seen as negative. I’m sure many of you will have had the experience of family or work colleagues talking about a TV show they watched on UFOs, or announcing they saw a reiki practitioner for their leg pain and it really helped, and then disparaging you when you push back with some skeptical facts. No matter how gently and well-meaning you think you’ve done so.
Plait asks an important question: what is the goal of the skeptical movement? Is it to counteract pseudoscience specifically, and bad thinking in general? Or are we just a social group for freaks and geeks and simples – to borrow a line from a song – where we can rail at the stupidity in the world? If our goal is to help people walk away from the irrationality that causes harm to them and wider society, then we need to be conscious of how we do that.
One point of later criticism of the talk was that he did not give any specific examples, and that left the door open for detractors – and there were many – to dismiss this accusation of bad behaviour, because Plait was talking in generalities without evidence. Especially, as he accused “some atheists and skeptics” of hubris and of being dickish to others. Some, who wondered if they were the ones who had been dickish and hubristic and therefore the ones being attacked, pushed back. But as Plait himself later remarked:
“I was thinking fairly generically when I wrote the talk, and though I did have some specific examples of dickery in mind, the talk itself was not aimed at any individual person”.
There is no doubt that the skeptical movement had changed during the noughties. Previously, while dominated by the JREF, CSI (formerly CSICOP) and magazines like Skeptical Inquirer and Skeptic in the USA, and The Skeptic in the UK, the focus had been principally on pseudoscience and the paranormal – topics like UFOs, alien mysteries, astrology, cryptozoology, ghosts and the supernatural. The great and the good of those driving the focus were largely from either academia or from the performing arts, especially the world of magic. There is an argument that, as successful as the movement had been thus far, there was often too much focus on things that were usually seen as harmless eccentricities by much of the public.
However, in the post-9/11 era, there was a greater interest in, and identification with, the increasingly organised atheist lobby – the so-called New Atheists. This led to a welcome influx of younger and less academically based people into the mix. The subsequent explosion of blogs, podcasts, videos on social media meant that there was a wider audience – and range of activists – prepared to challenge beliefs that had until then been much more socially accepted in wider society. The increasing success of the movement meant that some people were now applying the tools of skepticism to more entrenched ideas, especially ones that had held unwarranted, or even sometimes damaging, power over them as individuals in the past.
Anger, especially deriving from a sense of injustice, can be an immense driver, and understandable in many circumstances, but Plait saw a change in the community where younger, more enthusiastic skeptics were being deliberately and ruthlessly provocative to people who did not agree with them, regardless of the subject matter and regardless of who they were talking to. They were bringing anger where it was arguably not warranted, and in doing so they were causing reputational damage to the movement, which too often was counterproductive to the goal of changing people’s minds.
There was much pushback to Plait’s talk from within the skeptical/atheist movement, ranging from ‘He’s right, but…’, to calling him an ‘accommodationist’ and an apologist for dangerous beliefs. He was accused of pandering to the old guard, and of not understanding the trauma of people trapped in religion, especially fundamentalist Christianity and Islam, and therefore demanding that others surrender to the extremists.
This debate within skeptical circles has arguably only become more strident and entrenched with time. There is no doubt that as the movement diverted from its more traditional focus, political differences came much more to the fore. A movement that had been predominately male for a long time was starting to grapple with the importance of diversity, and activists – of all genders – sought to challenge the status quo. Others were uncomfortable with this and felt that skepticism and atheism should focus simply on the task at hand, and ignore all the Social Justice Warriors.
This polarisation continues even now. We’ve had pushback when Edinburgh Skeptics has announced that we are inclusive, that we support transgender rights, or that we support Pride, or ensure our speaker lists are largely gender equal; that we are progressive and happy to support people.
There are many outliers and you don’t need me to go full Godwin’s to show you these, but most people – especially those not actively involved in hoodwinking the public – hold ideas for reasons they themselves don’t fully understand and it is unlikely their mind will be changed by calling them morons or idiots. This is simply what Plait was referring to.
There is no doubt that the current political landscape demands that we fight robustly against misinformation and those who want to restrict the rights of so many others, but rather than simply making ourselves feel good about how right we are, if we want to be effective, compassionate skeptics, we need to think about how we communicate and heed Phil Plait’s advice. Don’t be a dick.
