On Conspiratorial Thinking

I recently had a e-mail exchange with someone who wanted me to read one of the many books out there that claims that some particular food additive is poisoning everyone. I'm not linking to the stuff, so I'll call the book's author Dr. Cassandra, for short. We argued about data and mechanisms a bit, but my correspondent also brought up what he felt were many other conspiracies around food and health, and I couldn't agree with him on any of those, either. That led to me writing this to him:

Let me get philosophical: one of the big problems with this sort of thinking is deciding what to trust. If you decide that Most Of What You Think You Know Is Wrong, then you have some work ahead of you. If these various authorities and well-documented sources of primary material are faked, then what *isnt'* faked? How do you know that the stuff you've decided to believe is on the level? My usual answer to someone who tries to convince me of the 9/11 stuff, etc., is to lower my voice and say "Well, yeah, but that's just what they want you to think". It's a universal answer. You can't falsify it.

Too often, what happens is that someone chooses to believe the things that fit their worldview, and dismisses the stuff that doesn't. That's human nature, but scientific inquiry is alien to human nature. If you start in with the conspiratorial stuff, then you end up skipping through the fields of data and sources, picking a daisy here and a cherry there, until you've made a wonderful centerpiece out...

Source: In the Pipeline - August 26, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Snake Oil Source Type: blogs