Dissonance and Reasoning

I enjoyed reading David Robert Grimes’s article concerning motivated reasoning (“Schrödinger’s Bin Laden: The Irrational World of Motivated Reasoning,” January/February 2022). The background discussion of Dr. Festinger’s origin of the cognitive dissonance (CD) theory, along with the admission toward the end of the article that CD is sometimes selective, affirms my long-held position that CD doesn’t exist. I say that because I’ve never seen dissonance. People are not bothered in the least by maintaining two different compartments of thought. These conflicting thoughts are not the cause of discomfort, because people don’t examine the two thoughts against each other.

Frequently, I must explain to folks that their thoughts are in conflict. I see them think for a moment and often say, “I never thought about that.” People are not the rational, thoughtful creatures that Festinger assumed. People pretend. Just like children playing a game that they know is fantasy, adults do the same thing. Why assume that hitting the ripe age of adulthood makes people rational? Adults are just opinionated children.

People tell themselves stories about who they are. Their personal identities depend on believing these stories. To change one would be like committing suicide. This alone can explain why people believe false stories. If people were the rational machines Festinger assumed, then not only would they abandon the fantastic stories of their religions, but these religions would never have gained any traction.

Tom Shoemaker
Eustis, Florida

It seems to me that Grimes is wandering past the point when he uses the phrase “motivated reasoning.” His article comes close to congratulating those of us who are rational in our thinking. The fact is most people are pretty good reasoners. They know how to get from a premise to a conclusion. It’s the premises that they work with that are the problem (or not if we happen to agree with them).

All reasoning is motivated. We use reason to achieve some goal. It could be the solution to a practical problem (how to bridge a creek) or to solve a puzzle (why do frogs croak?) or to achieve some sense of meaning or purpose (what should I do with my life?) or to help us choose (is it time to replace my aging car?).

And of course, we use reason to feel comfortable with a choice or belief. It seems to me that this is Grimes’s actual subject. What he calls “motivated reasoning” is what my logic course taught me to call “rationalization.”

The thing is reasoning cannot lead us beyond the premises that we reason with. It’s a “garbage in, garbage out” process.

Wolf Kirchmeir
Blind River, Ontario, Canada

Not Just the Facts

I thoroughly enjoyed Melanie Trecek-King’s article “Teach Skills, Not Facts” (January/February 2021). I concur with her that all college students, both science and non-science majors, would benefit from a course teaching critical thinking and opinions based on evidence. Such a subject could also include such matters as illustrations of logical fallacies and the importance of properly interpreting statistics. I doubt, however, that many colleges would approve of mandating such a course because it would tend to controvert the underlying essentials of all major religions, based as they are on hearsay, myths, and unproven supernaturalism.

Henry R. Whitlock
Glen Rock, New Jersey

Melanie Trecek-King urges us to “teach skills, not facts” in non-major science courses, because “science is just good thinking.” She describes her own redesign of a general biology course to focus on developing thinking skills.

Trecek-King is certainly correct that there is much bad thinking going around. Good courses on skill development are welcome but should be renamed. Science is not just good thinking; it also has essential content. Trecek-King recognizes this herself, because she begins by referring to the subject of the course she has now renounced as comprising “concepts in biology: molecules, cells, genetics, organisms, and evolution.” These concepts are pillars of biology, and they provide a rational framework for myriad facts. Students also need to study concepts.

Unfortunately, Trecek-King explodes her own case by evidencing success with a sidebar of student testimonials. Four glowing comments are given. Such a limited sample, chosen by a teacher determined to promote her methods, is evidence Trecek-King should have taught students to view with deep suspicion. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that students will remember what they’ve learned more in the new course than the old. Finally, one suspects that any success is a result more of Trecek-King’s transition from a dispirited to an energized teacher than anything else.

Alfred Holtzer
St. Louis, Missouri

See also Melanie Trecek-King’s subsequent SI cover article, “A Life Preserver for Staying Afloat in a Sea of Misinformation” (March/April 2022). —Editor.

 

The SLAP Test

Thank you to Jeannie Banks Thomas for sharing her “SLAP test” as a way of evaluating rumors (January/February 2022). I would like to share a test I developed some years ago when I was working as a journalist. To evaluate the truth of a report or fact, I ask myself: “Who says so, and how do they know?” I have kept the habit lifelong. To me it is the basic question to ask about things you read or hear.

“Who says so?” refers to the original source of the information, not the reporter who wrote about it or the person who told me about it. Where did they get their information? Who told them? This does not necessarily mean knowing the source’s name, but it does mean that the source is identified, at least in some descriptive way. If a fact is merely asserted with no source cited, I don’t give it much credence. It might be opinion or rumor.

“How do they know?” is crucial; it’s about the source’s situation regarding the material they are being quoted on. Are they in an insider position in that subject or area, someone who is likely to know? If so, I generally accept the information as reliable. Is the source a well-known or respected person but not especially familiar with the area they are quoted about? I look for another source. Is the source a “friend of a friend” (FOAF), as folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand used to say? I do my own research. Odds are the claim will be quickly debunked.

Melanie Nickel
San Diego, California

The Eachy ‘Monster’

Charles Paxton’s article “Creating a Monster: The Case of Eachy” (January/February 2022) caused me some distress and dismay. Skeptical Inquirer is about promoting truth, honest research, and the use of facts. By publishing an article in which the author intentionally invents nonsense and sets out to deceive the gullible, SI has damaged an excellent reputation. You have endorsed fabrication of information and distortion of the truth. The author may have felt he was doing something clever and cute, but there are so many examples of disinformation around us that he surely did not need to create another one—with your support.

John Guy
Augusta, Michigan

Charles Paxton replies:

It is a reasonable criticism, I think. In my view, obviously the ends justified the means, but I can see that people’s opinions may differ. Psychologists frequently deceive participants of their experimental role, albeit that is not on the public stage and the subjects do consent to participate. 

I always intended to come clean about it. I just did not think it would last thirteen years! I can also assure you I am not involved in any other hoaxes or misinformation.

 

Coincidences Abound

Thanks to Mick West for a lucid explanation of how ideas of reference are easily explained by basic math (“Jeopardy! and Ideas of Reference,” January/February 2022).

He hits the nail on the head by noting that the chances of seemingly amazing coincidences should be based not on just that one particular thing happening to one particular person at one particular time but rather something like that happening to some person at some time. And, given that understanding, the odds go from very low to very high.

More people increase the odds of success; indeed, “million-to-one coincidences happen eight times a day in New York City.”

My own favorite example involves the card game bridge. Odds are 635,013,559,600 to 1 that a particular combination of thirteen cards out of a fifty-two-card deck can appear in a bridge hand dealt to a single player. In combination with the same odds for the other three players, odds are 53,644,737,765,488,792,839,237,440,000 to 1 that each of their four hands could turn out in a particular way. Yet deal after deal, game after game, time after time, day after day, year after year, such “miracles” occur relentlessly.

The reason so much eyebrow-raising and wonderment occurs at normal coincidences is that most people don’t have a very good understanding of statistics and probability.

We could use a good term to describe the condition that leads to their looking for ethereal explanations for ordinary phenomena. Innumeracy (lacking basic knowledge of mathematics and arithmetic) doesn’t capture it, because it afflicts even people who are perfectly capable of computing mileage and balancing checkbooks. I suggest astatisticia.

Richard S. Russell
Madison, Wisconsin

Mr. West stated that Jeopardy! has 120 clues per game. However, the board is a six by five grid that equals thirty clues. So, thirty clues in Jeopardy!, thirty clues in Double Jeopardy!, plus one clue in Final Jeopardy! equals sixty-one total clues per game.

But 120 or 61, I watch every night but average only about 50 percent correct answers, so I guess Wheel of Fortune is more my speed.

Paul Giglia
Berea, Ohio

Mick West replies:

My mistake. I meant 120 clues plus answers. Clues and answers are essentially different “things,” and then there are sometimes multiple things within a clue. 

Gender Identity

I very much appreciated Peter Huston’s book review of Debra Soh’s, The End of Gender (January/February 2022). As a psychologist, I had read a few publications addressing whether gender is “binary” and related topics. I was starting to wonder whether science was leading current trends in thinking or whether current trends in thinking were leading science. I had been waiting to find an author whose work on these matters I could consider reasonably objective.

As I read Soh’s book, I felt I was getting a relatively unbiased view, and I learned about relevant research as well as the social and political lay of the land in this area of scholarship. I noted, as did Huston, that Soh discusses her social affiliation with various groups, and she also wrote about her own personality, as well as harassment that legitimate researchers can face. Does she spend too much time on these issues? At first, I thought she did; I ultimately concluded that the book is not just an exposition of current scientific evidence but is also a story about maintaining independent mindedness in the face of social pressures, sticking with the scientific evidence, and limiting bias by entertaining alternative hypotheses and seeing what fits the evidence. It is an account of science and skepticism in action. Both the book review and the book were excellent.

Andrew D. Reisner, PsyD
Psychologist
Cambridge, Ohio

The skeptics community prides itself as a bulwark against pseudoscience and social panics, and so it is disturbing to see in it a trend toward embracing anti-transgender rhetoric that encompasses both. A case in point is Peter Huston’s positive review of Debra Soh’s The End of Gender. Soh is known for promoting debunked and discredited “science” on gender, such as AGP and ROGD, and supports the practice of conversion therapy, which is opposed by psychiatric organizations as ineffective and by human rights advocates as harmful. Soh also encourages social panic, portraying transgender identity as a threat to women and children, a tactic that has long been used to dehumanize and persecute minority and LGBTQ populations.

When called out on their transphobia, writers such as Soh will complain that they are being “de-platformed” and “canceled” by “woke” ideologues, all while being promoted by authoritarian pundits and credulous media outlets who take as given their anti-transgender appeals to scientific rigor. Before writing on the subject of gender identity, I believe it is especially incumbent upon authors in this publication and others like it to do the appropriate research and consultation with medical experts regarding standards of care and outcomes for transgender youth and adults, the countervailing peer-reviewed science, and transgender and allied authors and journalists with direct knowledge of the affected communities.

Kassandra Sharp
Palo Alto, California