Denialism.com

Monday, April 9, 2007

The Unified Theory of the Crank

Based on comments and emails I get from people it's still not entirely clear to everybody what the purpose of denialism.com is. Very simply, we want to help people identify the difference between legitimate science/policy debate - between opponents with opposing but substantiated views - and illegitimate debate, in which one of the opponents uses illegitimate tactics and is essentially not an honest broker in the discussion. Denialism is not merely disagreement. This can not be emphasized enough. It is about tactics, and identifying denialist tactics is both necessary and useful.

In the way of a for instance, we often see in media coverage the desired goal of "parity". That is, the journalists attempt to cover both sides of the debate. While balance in journalism is desirable, the obvious flaw in this type of journalism is that say you're going to write an article about the global positioning system, should you contact the flat-earthers and see what they think? Or if you're going to write about the moon landing, are you going to give equal time to people who deny it ever happened? Should articles about holocaust survivors include interviews with people who deny it ever happened? In other words, how does the journalist tell the difference between a legitimate opposing view, or alternative interpretation of the available data, and a total and complete crank? How do non-scientists in particular differentiate between legitimate debates about scientific interpretations of data, and people who are essentially lying or deceptive about their objectives, and their use of the facts? The examples of flat-earthers and holocaust deniers are pretty obvious, but sometimes it's not so easy.

I think we've been successful so far at identifying patterns in arguments all different types of denialists use that are not legitimate, and have identified a few of the major sites that use this type of false argument to sow confusion about science. We believe there are five criteria that overlap in most denialist arguments, that is, the use of conspiracy theories, the selective quotation of scientists or of data, the employment of false experts, the moving goalpost or impossible expectation, and finally, the routine use of logical fallacies, such as arguments from analogy, appeals to consequences, appeals to ignorance, and straw men. It doesn't really matter what the denialist is arguing about, it's specifically the use of these tactics that makes them a denialist, and they use these five tactics almost exclusively to acheive their goal.

It's time to move onto the next of my goals for denialism.com.

I've been thinking a lot lately about cranks, and how we all have observed how they argue. But what exactly is a crank? Why do people become cranks? What motivates cranks? Why do they persist in being cranks when there seems to be no apparent benefit?

I've got my own ideas but I think I'd like to involve the community in a discussion of cranks.

From my observations of cranks I find their unifying feature is that they've fallen victim to what psychiatrists would call an "overvalued idea". An example of an overvalued idea would be racial superiority, as is the case with holocaust deniers, or in biblical literalism, which is the case for some evolution denialism. But within each denialist group there is often more than one simple overvalued idea. I think some holocaust deniers simply are trying to avoid a sense of personal or national guilt or avoid thinking about the potential inhumanity of man. HIV/AIDS denialists seem to be split between people who don't want to admit the origins of their own disease, a group of racists who want to believe the worst of all white people, and a bizarre group of egotists who seem to feel superior because they have an unpopular belief. Some evolution deniers clearly don't believe in biblical literalism, but don't want to let go of a belief in their idea of an ordered universe. The mercury/autism denialism seems to stem again from either avoiding personal (and quite misplaced) guilt, or alternatively, making sense of the insensible by trying to find someone, anyone, to blame for a child getting sick.

Then there are the people who are clearly just afflicted with paranoid personality disorder. The quintessential conspiracy theorist who makes up a small percentage of each of these groups (and the human population as a whole - probably around 1-3%).

What do others think? I'm curious about how people go down the path to being a crank who weren't exactly crazy to begin with. Also, quite a few people are roped in by cranks, without actually becoming cranks themselves, but usually identify with the crank ideas. Also what do you think of the tendency of cranks to ally with other cranks even if they have conflicting ideas, for instance the young-earth creationists and the intelligent design creationists? It seems more important to recognize the common enemy that to develop a consistent factual basis for belief in their idea.

Labels: general discussion

6 Comments:

The Factician said...

I think conspiracy theorists make up the bulk of folks who are denialists. For example, you can't logically hold the position that anthropogenic global warming isn't happening without also holding the position that the vast majority of climatologists are either idiots or in on a big conspiracy. I think you'll find most people who hold untenable positions will use conspiracy theories to explain away why it is that no reputable scientist/historian holds that position.

April 9, 2007 10:59 AM,

Mark said...

I agree, conspiratorial thinking and cranks go hand in hand. But how do people end up believing in conspiracies. I've never heard one in my life that sounded like anything but rubbish. And the evidence is, pretty much every time anyone tries to conspire to do anything they eventually get caught because as I think Ben Franklin said, "three can keep a secret if two are dead".

Anyway, conspiracy is a critical element of denialist thought, it becomes the logical outcome of most beliefs that are contradicted by all the available evidence. Obviously, the evidence or proof must be a lie, for that lie to exist, people must be faking data, spreading "materialistic atheism" etc.

So from your anti-conspiracy point of view, why do you think people originally fall for them?

April 9, 2007 11:11 AM,

Joe Otten said...

I think it is possible to start getting sucked in to a crank position by asking yourself 'but what if this was true?'

The payoff, psychologically at least, of being right about something of immense significance, while everybody else was getting it wrong, is pretty huge. And it is easy to fantasise being hero-worshipped by the grateful masses who you have saved from themselves.

Then, once you have spent any effort on understanding the crank theory, the psychology is all against writing that effort off as wasted.

April 9, 2007 11:57 AM,

Mark said...

Joe,
I think that's a major motivator from the HIV/AIDS denialist cranks. I've seen more than once in a comment thread a dire warning that we will rue the day when they are proven right. One day, they'll be the kings for knowing the truth all along etc.

April 9, 2007 2:05 PM,

Chris Noble said...

I think a lot of Denialists start of as skeptics without a knowledge of the field. If they continue to stick to their position after learning more about the subject or having their questions answered by people who do know the subject they can move into Denialism.

Skepticism is a healthy characteristic. Denialism is a pathological version of skepticism. It is difficult to demarcate the boundary between the two.

Rather than conspiracy theories the main risk factor for Denialism is anti-authoritarianism. Anti-authoritarianism is also very healthy. You shouldn't take some authorities word for something just because he is an authority. Again this healthy characteristic can become pathological and you end up spouting Crichtonian nonsense that if something is the scientific consensus then it must be wrong.

Finally you have to look at the psychological attaction of belonging to a small select group of people that are intelligent to see the TRUTH when the vast majority of people are too STUPID to think for themselves and just BLINDLY follow the consensus.

April 9, 2007 6:47 PM,

Anonymous said...

I think that the "if/then" genesis of denialism bears more examination, as a crank on one topic may be quite mainstream on another, and the crankiness on the first topic may facilitate the crank's legitimacy on the second. Global warming denialism is a good example of this, and people like Chris Mooney and Tim Lambert have recently gone into some depth about how it now, in its mild or severe forms, appears to be an intellectual requirement for membership in the American political right. Adherence to different standards of truth come into play here - it's an old tactic of the left to denigrate scientific standards as a function of the power structure, but the right has adopted this technique whole-heartedly, to the point of being the most effective operational post-modernists around these days. Any position that the political left takes on a topic must be wrong and, not only opposed, but the means used to arrive at it denigrated and discredited. Thus it is legitimate to undermine science, or branches of science, in pursuit of political ends, as science is just another way of knowing and has no innate claim to truth. I guess that all of this has been a long-winded way of saying that, in a lot of denialists' minds, the end justifies the means - that subverting science (or other accepted means of intellectual inquiry, or data collected by these means) invokes no penalty, because it allows them to arrive at a desired goal - again in the case of AGW denialists, the proximate goal of the continuation of neocon policies and the ultimate goal of unrestricted economic growth under laissez-faire capitalism.

Cheers - Lars

April 11, 2007 7:01 PM,

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