Don Prothero is the author of just over 30 books and a gazillion scientific papers covering a wide range of topics in paleontology and skepticism. Mike Haubrich and I spoke with Don about most of these topics, including the recent history of the skeptics movement, the conflict and potentials between DNA and fossil research, extinctions and impacts, evolution in general, and the interesting projects Don is working on now.

The interview is here. Please click through and give this fascinating conversation a listen!

Wainer is a statistician, formerly with the famous Educational Testing Service, and a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is well known for his work in statistics and data presentation.

You know what “truthiness” is. It is a term coined by Stephen Colbert in 2005 to refer to assertions that are clearly true because of how they look, feel, smell, but that are in fact, not true. But they are truthy. You get the point.

Wainer’s book is an exploration of cases that demonstrate the difference between truth and truthiness, with an eye towards training oneself to tell the difference, and in some cases, develop arguments about the true and truthy. Does Fracking really cause earthquakes? Are school children in the US over tested? Is tenure what it is claimed to be? For these and other questions, one needs to have evidence, and to know how to evaluate that evidence.

This is a good book, and it is fun. You can read many of the various chapters independently to follow your own interests. To give you an idea of what is included, here is the table of contents:

Part I. Thinking Like a Data Scientist:

Part II. Communicating Like a Data Scientist:

Part III. Applying the Tools of Data Science to Education:

But there are some who see variation from year to year, and there is variation, in a rather unrealistic way. Here is a graph comparing how climate science denialists view arctic sea ice over time, compare to how “climate realists” (i.e., smart people who can read graphs and such) see it:

Go HERE to see the source and learn more about what is behind this graph.

Earlier polls have shown increase and decrease in concern about global warming, and changes in what people think of news about climate change and the severity of the problem. Recently, there has been a shift towards greater concern which follows a low point, which, in turn, follows a period of global concern.

One question involves reading off a list of specific concerns related to global warming and asking participants to rank their concern over that issue, and then averaging the responses. This produces a graph of percentage of “worry” at higher levels that looks like this:

According to Gallup, the breakdown underlying this graph indicates that

33% of Americans worry about global warming “a great deal,” 25% worry “a fair amount,” 20% “only a little,” and 23% “not at all.”

The take home message here is that 58% of Americans see global warming as serous while a mere 23% see it as not an issue at all. Denialists together with those who just don’t know are in a small minority. Also, 54% of Americans acknowledge that the effects of global warming have already started.

Even though a mere 23% of respondents don’t seem to think global warming is a problem, even fewer, 15%, think that it “will never happen” while 81% think that the effects of global warming have already begun or are to be expected in the future. Here’s the graph of those responses over time:

Related to all this is the way Americans view news stories about global warming. A plurality, but a declining number, tend to see news stories as exaggerated, but the combined number who see stories as either correct or underestimated is over half. Notably, those who see stories of global warming in the news as underestimates of the severity of the problem have been increasing in number in recent years.

Prior to a recent nadir in about 2010, over 60% of Americans recognized that there is a scientific consensus that Global warming is occurring. This number has recently risen from that recent dip to 52% nearly to it’s high point of 65% and is now as 62% and perhaps rising. Only a tiny percent responded that they think most scientists do not believe global warming is occurring.

The number of people who understand that humans are the primary cause of global warming also underwent a dip aroun 2010, and that number is rising again to pre 2010 levels.

And finally, a large percentage of Americans recognize that the effects of global warming will have a negative impact on their lives:

Gallup is expected to release information on attitudes about global warming based on political orientation. The present study can be found here.

Meanwhile, we should note that the scientific consensus is much stronger than the public consensus. It looks more like this (from here):

So, I receive nasty horrid verbal attacks from people who hate me and what I stand for, but do I get these nasty horrid verbal attacks in the way that, for example, Rebecca Watson or Amy Roth or Jen McRight get them?

No, I don’t. I don’t really feel like I am at much risk of being physically attacked or raped, although I do not regard physical threats as unimportant. It is just that I am a very large, muscular man with martial arts training who never goes anywhere without my pit bull, and I always carry a gun. I am also famous for kicking ass, generally. Nobody will attack me. Also, even though men are in fact raped now and then (I myself was sexually assaulted a couple times as a teenager, by women) it is a much more likely thing to happen to a woman and the stakes are different. So really, I’m not worried.

Also, I have received a steady trickle of threatening missive from creationists for longer than most of my colleagues in skepticism even knew such a thing was possible. My first threatening notes were on Compuserve in the 1980s, the first act of violence perpetrated against me in person because of my politics not carried out by a police officer was probably in about 1986, the first letter I ever got (that’s like email but on paper) threatening me with death or dismemberment was in 1998 or so. So when the Slime Pitters or their kind, or the regulars over on Whats Up With That blog, take my comments out of context and attempt to bludgeon me with them, lie about what I’ve said or done, or threaten to kill me with their favorite Glock, it is something I’m a little used to.

For various reasons, then, while I do receive these nasty notes and threats and am the subject of harassment now and then, there are a few reasons why it might bother me less than it would bother some others. And all that is context for what I am about to say to you.

Here’s the thing. If you see any of the notes that climate scientists get, or that the Skepchicks or various female bloggers get, and you are a typical person with any degree of empathy at all, you would probably see it as a bad thing and you would understand how receiving such a note might be difficult. But really, you might also very easily write it off as “nothing but trolls” or you might figure that anyone who gets into the business of taking a sociopolitical stand should expect this treatment and while it is not good and while you don’t want to blame the victim, you might figure that it is not really all that bad after all.

And you would be a little bit right, but you would be mostly wrong. Let me help you to be mostly right instead.

The Skepchicks, to take one example, or high profile climate scientists like Michael Mann, to take another, receive an order or two magnitude more of this crap than I do. This does not make it easier for them, it makes it harder. And, threats that involve highly violent sexualized language and rape threats are some large factor worse for the Skepchicks and other woman than anything I get. So, when I, a guy who receives these things, sees what happens to them, I have to adjust how bad it is for me by a considerable amount in order to know what it is like for them, so I can potentially get what it is all about, and it is still only a guess. On the other hand, when YOU, assuming for the moment that you are a person who does not receive these threats, sees examples of the obnoxious tweets, threatening emails, discovers that there are entire web pages and twitter accounts created just to have a place to put awful comments about one person, or hears about some hateful person showing up at a conference someone is at with a t-shirt designed to do one thing only … to make that person feel bad … you have to multiply your experience of zero by some large number in order to be able to get it.

Problem is, zero times some number, any number, turns out to be zero. I don’t know why they invented arithmetic with this highly inconvenient flaw, but they did. So, the thing is, maybe you can’t really know what it is like to be Amy Roth. Or even me.

Well, there probably is a way, and the truth is that if you are one of the haters, you are going to figure out a way to deny the damage you and your friends do, and if you dislike the whole hate people who stand up for feminism or science or who speak out against sexism or racism, etc. thing, then you will reach into your own experience and find something that is not zero that you can multiply by some number to reach a rough idea of what it is like.

vreify, at Teen Skepchicks, has written a blog post following up on one written several days ago by Rebecca Watson, in which she notes that these things, the threats and harassment, probably turn people away from the skeptics movement, people who should not be turned away. That is probably true, and that is probably why the slime pitters and other haters do this. Not because they don’t like skepticism. To the extent that they have a clue as to what skepticism is, they probably support it. They just want this community to be more like themselves, to be less inclusive of people who make their sexism and racism and other isms uncomfortable. They are children with a clique and they are having a big tantrum at everyone else’s expense. Shame on them.

I don’t like what vreify said at the end of her post:

Yes–sexist behavior is damaging to its targets. But it’s also damaging to the community. If skeptics want to quibble about old pictures of the Loch Ness monster, it doesn’t really bother me. No harm done, even if we’re not focusing on issues that I care about more. But if skeptics want to vehemently hate women who are making their minds and voices heard–honestly? It makes me think about getting outta here.

I don’t like that because I don’t want to see more people driven out of the skeptics movement, especially younger folks and especially women.

There is a solution to all of this, not a grand fix it all solution, but a smaller, doable one that will make a difference, even if it does not repair all the damage and stop all the haters. But I will not say what it is out loud. Let me know if you want to know what it is.

I may or may not have exaggerated about the pit bull, the gun, and the marshal arts. I have been going to the gym a lot lately though, so watch out!

But it is not. Much more recently, the SCA appointed as a co-director for one of its state groups a guy who has developed a very firm reputation as a Mens Rights Advocate and overall Sexist Misogynist Creep. Or at least, so it appears.

The individual in question is Justin Vacula, and he’s been appointed as co-chair of the executive council of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the SCA. I’ve got some information below on why this is a bad move, but I want to say right away that the SCA Executive director has already stated on a blog her answer to people’s concerns:

… the Secular Coalition for America has not “hired” anyone in any state. We have a staff of seven in DC. We are staffing state coalitions in 49 states, DC and PR. The state coalitions are made up of interested groups and individuals in the states and particupation is voluntary. We are willing to work with as many affiliated and allied groups and individuals as possible. We are seeking volunteers in the states and are thankful to those that are willing to assist. We have much work to do at the National and State level and request that all interested parties please consider joining the SCA in our mission as given to us by our member organizations. Please sign up at secular.org. Edwina Rogers

When Rogers was first hired, she made a big deal out of the fact that she’d be overseeing the development of a state chapter in every state. We are now being told that the SCA of which she is Executive Direct really has nothing to do with the state chapters. The “hired” vs. “Volunteer” distinction means nothing in relation to the present question.

Vacula published a piece on Men’s Rights Activist site “A Voice for Men” in which he attacks modern feminism and equates feminists with vampires and piles on with the attacks already underway designed to silence the Skepchicks (a group of women skeptics with whom I’ve worked for a few years) in particular Amy Roth Davis See this link for details on the attack on Amy. This act and related activities by Vacula clearly place him in the camp of anti-feminist anti-women pro-sexist activists who should not be leaders in a humanist movement which does, pretty much, have liberal and progressive political values. He has also been a regular member of the famous “slime pit” which, sadly, was a product of this very blog network (though it has been expunged).

Apparently, Vacula has been criticized for being less than smart i the arguments he’s made about various legal positions, and for showing poor leadership. The details are summarized in the writeup for the following petition which I urge you to sign:

National Geographic Channel has run a poll in which they found that 36% of Americans “believe UFO’s exist.” This is in line with previous results. There are other findings as well, but one item is new. The survey asked people who would do a better job of fighting off Aliens if they come to earth and, well, wanna fight. Obama killed Romney on that question.

So just keep that in mind when you are in the voting booth, America.

The last time something came up that wanted me to repost my story, it was this:

Nineteen former pilots and government officials … told reporters their questions can no longer be dismissed …”We want the US government to stop perpetuating the myth that all UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth, conventional terms,” said Fife Symington, former governor of Arizona… “Instead our country needs to reopen its official investigation that it shut down in 1969,” Symington told a news conference. [source]

OK, so, now for the original story about how I was almost abducted by aliens.

I saw an UFO (pronounced “ooofo,” I think) once too. It was a sight I can never forget. Let me tell you about it.

I was in an airplane, a 7-something-7 to be exact, departing from Boston. It was night (early, but the sun was down for the count) and it was one of those nights you often get in Boston when the fog runs all the way from the bay to the clouds. In other words, for Boston, a pretty clear night. I’d lay odds you could almost see the Citco sign from Memorial Drive as plain on the Irish on Mayor Flynn’s face.

I was on the right side of the plane in the window seat.

After takeoff, we were gaining altitude and engaged in a steady left turn. Then we switched to a steady right turn. I don’t remember where the plane was going, but I’m pretty sure it was somewhere in Europe.

I’m the kinda guy who sleeps during takeoffs and landings. I get groggy on airplanes. There’s something about the pressure changes and the pungent smell of fresh jet fuel and the constant muffled chatter of the flight attendants and passengers settling into their routine of avionic boredom that turns my reticular formation into mush. So my memory of these turns is a bit foggy. Foggy like one of those nights you so often get in Boston.

I was asleep, but I was aware, like a cold snake must be aware of its surrounding but unable to, or maybe just uninterested in, doing anything about it.

Just then the crappy little airplane pillow they give you in economy to make you feel less like the chump you are for flying on this two-bit airline slipped from where it was jammed between my noggin and the edge of the window, jolting me awake. That’s when I happened to glance out the window, and I saw it.

There was no doubt in my mind that it was an UFO. It was a cigar shaped thing hovering there among the wisps of clouds, who knows how far away. It had lights all along its side, and it was flying above us, keeping pace with us, then disappearing in the clouds, and then reappearing again. It was not an airplane, I could swear to that. That was as plain to me as the Irish on Mayor Flynn’s face.

After a moment of continued grogginess, I suddenly realized I was seeing an UFO, and that this was my Big Chance to try to get to the bottom of this UFO thing.

So I snapped awake and started taking notes. The object came back into view again, still above us and to the right. Then slowly it settled down, its lights as strong and visible as ever, to exactly our level, following along side, keeping pace. Like it was tailing us. Then, slowly, it started to sink lower and lower …. still passing in and out of visibility … until it was way down below us.

It was just then that I realized that the plane I was in was coming out of the right turn I mentioned above. The sensation that the “cigar shaped object” was above me was actually an effect of relativity. The old pre-Einsteinian relativity that still pretty much applies in real life. Not that hot-shot academic Cosmic Relativity that only seems to work when you are traveling at unthinkable speeds or if you are unthinkably massive, like a Black Hole.

Since we were in a turn, and I could not perceive the horizon or anything else that would objectively tell me where the Earth was, and since I was waking up from a sleep, I understood the earth to be somewhere directly below my keester … right where it is supposed to be, below the seat I was sitting in, because that was the direction of my perceived gravity field.

But as any freshman Physics Major, even the pimple-faced snotty kind they seem to breed at MIT could tell you, gravity and acceleration are the same thing. The Earth was exerting gravity off to my right somewhere, but that was small change gravity compared to the acceleration caused by the turn the airplane was taking. The acceleration was exerting a sensation identical to gravity from roughly the direction of the bottom of the 737 or even a little to my left. The combined effects of Mother Earth’s gravity and this airplane’s acceleration provided my senses with a hypothesis my senses could not disprove in the absence of visual cues, like the horizon, or the Islands in Boston Harbor, or a sexy blond dame in a trashed out night club in Somerville with legs that go all the way from her bad attitude down to the grimy, beer soaked floorboards. This relativistic lie caused my inner ear, my eyes, and my brain to perceive of this large cigar shaped object with lights all along its side as being above me, when it was actually below me the whole time.

Boy, was I being taken for a ride. I felt like such a chump.

This UFO was nothing more than a run of the mill cruise ship plying its way across Massachusetts Bay, playing its dubious role of playground for the not so rich and not so famous who were really nothing more than wannabe world travelers who couldn’t stand the idea of being away from their golf greens, their kidney bean shaped swimming pools and their cranberry juice cocktail martinis.

Hey, do you think the pilot saw it too?

So, the Ex Governor of Arizona believes in UFOs. Who else believes in UFOs? I have a theory that the number of people who believe they were abducted by aliens compared to the number of people who believe that they are aliens works out about right. In the cosmic scheme of it all.

Somehow, I think the following additional bits of information are relevant here:

“The subject of UFOs came up in a recent debate among presidential candidates, with Democrat Dennis Kucinich saying he saw a UFO.”

Uh oh…

Six percent of the American People believe that the Apollo Moon Landing was faked (wikipedia). So, that means that 18 million Americans think the Apollo Moon Landing was faked.

Ten percent, or three million, Canadians believe in UFOs and and in fact claim to have seen one.

One source indicates that about 18 percent of Americans are pretty sure that we’ll eventually find Bigfoot … alive … as well as the Loch Ness Monster.

It is said that 15% of the population has on at least one occasion experienced the “Old Hag Phenomenon,” which is where you think an Old Hag is sitting on your chest … “[this is] often accompanied by strange smells, the sound of approaching footsteps, apparitions of weird shadows or glowing eyes…”*

Since it is well known that about 4% of the population are Old Hags, this all works out if one Hag sits on an average of slightly more than three people. Or should we call them victims. I don’t know.

Seventy-one percent of Americans claim to have had a paranormal experience.* Funny. Somehow I knew that was going to happen.

About one percent of pretty much any surveyed population is full-blown schizophrenic, but closer to 30% of Americans are said to have had at least one psychotic episode.* Which, by the way, is high as industrialized nations go.

So it all pretty much works out. As plain as the Irish on Mayor Flynn’s face.

Photo of alien in the UFO Museum and Research Center, Roswell, New Mexico by Ron Sheridan

But the Skeptic faces more than just uncritical thinking, incorrect facts, or poor scientific judgment. The Skeptic must also wrestle with … The Anti Skeptic.

Of which there are several kinds.

Of late we’ve seen an epidemic of Antiskeptic activity occur within the skeptical movement itself, with people who call themselves skeptics because they find the movement interesting, who came to this party because they head there were girls here or because they thought it was a good way to look smart, or in some cases, because they encountered some annoying belief system (bigfoot or ancient aliens or something) and thought this was a good way to purge their experience of it. But they are not willing to be skeptical, or even thoughtful, about other things in their life. They want the thrills but don’t want to invest in too much of their own critical thinking. They don’t understand that skepticism does, really, have a political edge to it, not because skepticism in inherently political, but because so many political views don’t stand up to critical analysis, and because so many skeptical or scientific perspectives have been taken up by various parties and made political. When these Antiskeptics discover that their dearly held Libertarian or “Independent” (have you ever noticed that almost all “independents” have almost identical views on most issues?) perspectives are intellectually bankrupt they quickly erect the “skepticism is not political” smokescreen and try to hide there. Doesn’t work, but that’s what they do.

But I don’t want to talk about those annoying people here. Nor do I want to talk about the professional Antisketpics … the denialists such as those in the Anti-Global Warming game, who often use the word “skeptic” to label themselves although they are almost all crazy people with a chip on their shoulder and easily led by a charlatan such as Lord Monkington or Andrew Watts.

(Threats of law suits for saying something mean in 3 … 2 … 1 …)

No, I don’t want to talk about those annoying people either.

The Antiskeptics I want to talk about are the people who don’t even know that they are Antiskeptics, and they probably don’t even know what a “Skeptic” is. They lead their lives with a mixture of critical and uncritical understanding, a lot of received knowledge, often (but not always) woo-ish beliefs. Most importantly, though, they have a vague understanding that there is a “truth” out there that is more correct than the truths they live with, but that it is too much work, and often, against their own personal self interests, to embrace it. And, even though such folks may be unaware of a “Skeptics movement” they are at least vaguely aware that you are up to something…that you are a bit more prone to correct some belief they have, or to introduce critically evaluated knowledge into the conversation, or to mention some dumb-ass thing someone is doing with the particular disdain that comes from knowing how wrong it is. Even if done politely.

This Antiskeptic is your brother or sister or mother or child or cousin or neighbor or teacher or student or coworker. Over time, they see you coming. Subconsciously or not, they are pretty good at deflecting knowledge. In some cases, that may be why they are an Antiskeptic (rather than the other way around). They may just be good at avoiding learning something new.

And there are techniques. There’s a dance, a game, a modus operendus. I think you know what I’m talking about because you’ve seen it all before.

Here is a formulaic (literally) example of one possible interaction with an Antiskeptic. Your intent is to say something quite straight forward, like “2 + 2 = 4”

So, you say “Hey, 2 + 2 =…” and just then the Antiskeptic interrupts you and says, “I know! 2+ 2 = 3!” and then they move on to the next topic quickly. In order for you to get your “2 + 2 = 4” into the conversation you have to stop and reverse and change course and do all kinds of fixing up of stuff and that rarely goes well. This is known as the Interrupting Antiskeptic.

Then, less interesting but more common, is the Evasive Antiskeptic. Simply put, this is the person who hears what you say but then dismisses it without much fanfare, obviously uninterested in engaging in an argument.

“Hey, 2 + 2 = 4,” you say.

“Yeah, whatever. How ’bout them Red Socks,” is the reply.

Then there is the Watch the Monkey Antiskeptic. This is more of a technique than a type of Antiskeptic. You are making an argument and the counter argument consists of something totally unrelated but that seem really important.

“Hey, 2 + 2 = 4,” you say

“Numbers are the hobgoblin of the Patriarchy!” is the reply. Which, of course, is true, but not really the point.

Then there is the Mine the Harbor Antisketpic. This is usually a friend you see only now and then, or a co-worker you only meet every few weeks, but they are totally on to you. With this person, almost all conversations start like this:

“I know you are going to tell me that 2 + 2 equals something other than 4, but I just think it is important to know that everybody is entitled to their own opinion.”

And thus, your critical thinking is bound to bump into that little socioculture land mine, fair or not, like it or not.

There is one other kind of Antiskpetic I’d like to mention. This is rare, and it usually requires two people who have been doing this together for a long time. Often, a married. A few years back I encountered such a couple who were ani-Vaxers, but there are other couples where this routine applies to many other aspects of life. This is where the mention of, say, two and two equaling four and stuff leads immediately to an argument between the two members of the couple, which takes off so far into the stratosphere, and does so much damage to reality, that you realize that your humble efforts to assert arithmetic have created a black hole of numerical stupidity involving calculus, trigonometry and analytical geometry (to stretch the analogy to the limit).

You say to Mary and Bob, “Hey, 2 + 2 = 4”

Mary: “Bob is so bad at math we bought a couch last month and it was two feet too long”

Bob: “I thought you told me that the couch was two feet to short! I re-ordered a shorter couch, two feet shorter than the first one”

Mary: “If it is two feet shorter than the one that is too long, then it’s going to be twice as too short!”

Bob: “No, that’s not how it works at all. Just trust me.”

Mary: “Last time I trusted you we ended up with a window air conditioner that fell out of the window after you installed it”

Bob: “That was not me, that was your brother. You’re thinking of the time I hitched up the trailer to the wrong car and we drove all the way to North Dakota without the trailer”

Mary: “No, that was the time we drove all the way to North Dakota without the kids, not the trailer. The trailer was a totally different time you screwed up”

And so on and so forth.

What is your favorite kind of Antisketpic?

Photo of bigfoot attacking biker by ( kurtz )

Sarah Moglia is the event specialist for the Secular Student Alliance¹ and has written an interesting piece on “Why [she doesn’t call her]self a Skeptic” in which she asserts that there are people who call themselves “Skeptic” who are not, at least sometimes, and there are those who are rather “skeptical” (as we like to define it) most of the time but don’t bother with the label. She does not name names; I’ve made the same observation and I’m not going to name names either either. But we both have had plenty of opportunity to observe, and even a practicing Skeptic would not toss aside our unattributed observations.

Unless, of course, said practicing Skeptic simply does not want to accept our shared conclusion and wishes to use the lack of naming names in favor of their argument. It’s a matter of choice, really: Believe Sarah and Greg, and maybe make a few of your own observations, or insist on clearly enumerated cases as evidence within the same blog post that makes the assertion. You can call it either way. Demand the highest level of proof or assume that well meaning observers who prefer not to name names but may have made valid observations. It’s your choice, as a skeptic, to pick one way or another.

And the fact that it is a choice is evidence that skepticism has a cultural aspect.

It, Skepticism, also has a political aspect. I don’t think it is a coincidence that I find myself in a state of mutual understanding about skeptical matters with people with whom I also mostly share a political point of view (though such things as political points of view are big and messy, so we can’t expect perfect alignment). Like Sarah. The main political feature of Skepticism is the division between those that a) believe that a purely skeptical life is the apolitical life; b) believe that one can be political and skeptical but while a person may partake in both the two must generally be practiced separately; and c) those who believe that skeptical thinking and a particular range of political views go hand in hand. Group “c” is of course correct, members of group “a” are deluded and usually think this sort of thing because it is convenient for them to do so. Members of group “b” are probably just trying to keep everyone happy but secretly agree with me (oh, I’m in group “c”) … as all people who on the surface disagree with me surely must, at some deep level or another.

But seriously, yes, Skepticism is never apolitical. And it is never acultural. Having said that, it is a mechanism for thinking about the world more clearly than you get with other methods, within the unavoidably cultural and political world in which we live.

Sarah hits on a point that is absolutely correct and if you don’t know this you need to. “Skepticism” is not a thing, but rather, it is a process. Once you understand the processual nature of Skepticism, you will be a better skeptic. Until then, you’re just a dood with a T-shirt. Sarah notes:

To me, skepticism isn’t something you are. It’s something you do. While yes, we do have words that classify people by things they do (for example, a vegetarian or a hockey player), I don’t think skepticism is the same. … I think people should be able to tell that I’m a skeptic by how I behave (do I ask questions? Do I make decisions based on sound evidence?), not by what I call myself.

Please read Sarah’s post!

¹I’ve probably got that slightly wrong. I don’t know the structure of the SSA well enough to be sure. Feel free to correct in the comments.

This cluster of questions occurred to me when I noticed that one of the anti-Watson commenters, one of those insisting on using a sexualized misogynist term to refer to Rebecca, also happen to blog (on his own site) that he was looking for a job. It occurred to me that if I was hiring in his area, I might be in the habit of “googling” applicants, and if I did so I’d discover that this applicant was blatant about verbally abusing women, and regardless of any justification he may have, or regardless of my opinion as some manager in an IT company of his opinions, or anything else, I’d view his hiring as a ready-made potential HR nightmare. That made me wonder if googling applicants was acceptable behavior, and how HR departments dealt with people’s outside presentation of self (my understanding is that sometimes it is none of their business, but sometimes it is their business, depending on the job and the nature of the employment). And then it struck me that the most interesting thought experiment was the one I proposed in the above paragraph: Suppose a group of employees for Big-Giant Inc started repeatedly calling one of the other employees by a sexualized sexist icky and insulting term. Even if the recipient of the misogynist epithet “deserved it” for some reason (which is hard to imagine and certainly is not the case here) it certainly would not be acceptable behavior in the workplace.

“But wait a minute,” you say. “The blogosphere is not a workplace! This is an entirely different situation.” And yes, yes, I understand that and I agree with that. Indeed, while with one hand (my right hand) I’ll strike out (metaphorically) at those who choose to senselessly and obnoxiously hurl sexist slings and asshatish arrows at a colleage and friend, I will with the other, somewhat less enthusiastically wielded hand, defend their right to be the dicks they are being, if for no other reason than that tone and word choice have sufficiently subjective sides to them that we are better off erring in favor of 12 year old mentalities now and then. But we need not like what is being said and we need not refrain from calling an adult acting like a 12 year old “immature,” and we need not refrain from referring to any person berating a woman with what is generally considered offensive language as dicks.¹

So no, there is no HR perspective to actually apply to the present conversation about whether or not a woman can express a mild level of discomfort and/or annoyance at insignificant but telling male cluelessness which does in fact rest at the mild end of a wide spectrum of behavior that includes rape, dismemberment, slavery, genital mutilation, and stuff. This is a thought experiment, not an admonishment.² But this comparison — between the skeptics community and a theoretical corporation — could be more than a thought experiment. It could be a launching pad.

There has been discussion in public (see this blog post) and in private (don’t click this) about how the skeptics community can improve itself, and there has been immediate push-back. Like, things like feminism and other “politically correct” philosophies are unrelated to skepticism, which embodies, embraces and emits nothing but pure rational thought. Maybe. Maybe not. But the comparison beetween skepticism as a movement and, well, real life, remains important because skepticism IS a movement with real life goals, there are organizations that are “skeptical” in nature, and as such there is a style, a trope, a reputation, a personality, a culture that exists, like it or not. And they can see you. If one in five prominent skeptics were found to be mass murderers, for instance, we would have to forgive all the none skeptics some skepticism about our legitimacy as a set of institutions linked to a movement. We would have to disband and come back with different labels and try to separate ourselves from the really bad reputation we got when it was discovered that every other speaker at TAM #14 had tortured and killed six or more people, or whatever.

Fortunately we don’t have that problem, but we do have another problem. The Sketpics Movement (and notice I’m not saying “The Atheist Movement,” because I think this may be one way in which the two are different) is one that includes a lot of sexism. If it was revealed that a significant proportion of the executives and workers at Target Corporation were calling women “twats” there would be outrage. If it was revealed that many of the people running The United Way believed that women and men faced the same exact set of risks of sexual harassment or abuse, and therefore sexual abuse was a problem best dealt with via self defense lessons by potential victims, The United Way would lose a lot of its donations.

Well, fellow members of the Skeptics Movement, we’ve got this problem. We could legitimately be seen as an organization (or a loosely knitted together set of organizations and informal groups) with a sexism problem.

Our allies include academics. Academics tend to be “politically enlightened” (though not to the same degree in all fields). If the skeptics movement becomes identified as essentially sexist, academics will not continue to show up at Conventions and other venues to speak about science and stuff.³ This would be a problem.

Our movement presumably operates in part with private donations. Are donors going to flock to skeptical groups or run away from skeptical groups when the output of these groups includes a strong dose of misogynist effluence? Well, I suppose it depends on the donors. And, donors who prefer a misogynist movement would probably provide positive feedback (and by positive I don’t mean good). So this is a problem.

The skeptics movement was not represented by witnesses for science at the famous trial in Dover, and the skeptics movement is never represented by witnesses called to US Congressional hearings on global warming, or health related issues. But many of those individuals are in fact part of the skeptics movement. But you never see this:

“Mr Smith, thank you for coming to Congress, as a Skeptic, to testify about How to Save the World.”

“Certainly Speaker Pelosi, I see it as my duty.”

“Excellent. Now, Mr. Smith, would you please tell us why you should be considered a qualified expert in this area?”

“Well, madam speaker, I have a Masters Degree in Science, and years of research experience, and I am a fellow at Big Giant Institute of Smart Stuff.”

“Is there anything else, Mr. Smith, that we should know about your accomplishments?”

“Yes, madam speaker, I’m a Skeptic and a member in good standing of the JREF, and the CFI, have been awarded a Medal of Skeptosity by the Richard Dawkins Foundation and I have had my photograph taken next to The Amazing Randi and Penn and Teller on several occasions.”

“Ooooh, Mr. Smith, now THAT is impressive! Shall we get on with the testimony?”

No. You don’t see that. And do you know why? Because members of congress have staff who know how to use google. They can see us there. Potential expert witnesses (and there is an informal system in place for identifying experts for various purposes) who highlight their membership in the skeptics movement on their public c.v. invite background checking in that area, and if the skeptics movement becomes known as a collection of socially dysfunctional geeks and nerds stuck in a late 20th century anti-feminist push-back mode and prone to calling women they disagree with by sexualized misogynist terms, they’re not going to get invited to the Large Marble Buildings Where Actual Decisions are Made. Sure, they may be on the speaker’s bureau lists for various skeptical organizations, but what for? To go give talks for other skeptical organizations? Well, I suppose that’s good. But then again, masturbation can be good too.

Putting this a slightly different way: If you think sexism is unimportant or a mere distraction from your mission as a skeptic, and if you think words are just words or you think this whole thing with the patriarchy was fixed by some legislation in the 1960s or by the introduction of “Ms” into our language or if you think the face of feminism is best conceived of as a sex positive furry,⁴ then you would do well to embrace the idea of a shrinking, not expanding, skeptical movement, because that is what you will have. That is, indeed, what you will cause.

¹Yes, it is true. I just acknowledged my own responsibility to defend someone’s right to do something that I think is wrong in calling someone a “twat” — which is, essentially, a variant spelling of “cunt” — while at the same time declaring that if they do, they are being “dicks” — which is a variant spelling of “prick” and either way is not as bad as “cunt” or “twat” as is so often the case when we use the lower forms of our language to bitch at each other about being bastards. If this is beyond you, then you have some catching up to do, because I’m here conversing in Nuance-Land and you are not.

²But it will be taken that way. See comments below, if not now, then eventually.

³Oh, and if when you were reading that paragraph the term “politically correct” came into your mind with a negative connotation, then you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

⁴And I mean no offense to sex positive furries.