Re: [Marxism] Anasazis

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

>I guess that this the same Michael Shermer who co-wrote a major book
>demolishing Holocaust denial, _Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never
>Happened and Why Do They Say It?_. I thought that this book was a good piece
>of scholarship.
>
>Paul F

http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/modernism/skepticism.htm

Skeptical About Skepticism

Yesterday's NY Times had a interesting profile on the 76 year old 
professional skeptic Paul Kurtz. It leads off:

"These are some of the things that Paul Kurtz, chairman of the 
Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the 
Paranormal and publisher of the magazine Skeptical Inquirer, does not 
believe in: parapsychology, holistic cures for animal illnesses, the 
universal effectiveness of chiropractic, extraterrestrial beings, 
alternative medicine, Bigfoot and organized religion."

(http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/19/arts/television/19SKEP.html)

We learn that Kurtz's operations have an annual budget of $11 million 
and that the center has small branches in Los Angeles and Montclair, 
N.J., with about 40 employees overall. There are affiliated groups in 
Russia, France, Peru, Germany, Africa and other locations. He also 
maintains a small empire of skeptical publications, including The 
Skeptical Inquirer, Free Inquiry, The Scientific Review of 
Alternative Medicine, Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice and 
others. His publishing house, the aptly named Prometheus Books, puts 
out about 100 books a year. In addition there is a sponsored student 
organization called the Campus Freethought Alliance, plus a secular 
alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous called S.O.S. (for Save Ourselves).

While Kurtz was left-wing in his youth during the depression, he 
became an anti-Communist while on duty with the US army in Europe. It 
seems that Russian slave laborers had refused to return to the Soviet 
Union at the end of the war, thus proving that Communism was a 
hateful system. Perhaps these Russians had heard through the 
grape-vine that a jail term awaited them in the USSR. In keeping with 
the draconian defense policy of WWII, Stalin had decided that anybody 
who had even been taken prisoner was insufficiently devoted to the 
defense of the motherland. One might also suspect that Kurtz's 
indoctrination under Sidney Hook at NYU in the early 1940s might have 
had as much to do with his subsequent evolution.

We also learn that Paul Kurtz has joined people like Bernard Lewis 
and Thomas Friedman in the ideological war against Islam:

"Islam desperately needs a Protestant-like Reformation," he 
continued. The Islamic system is the product of "a nomadic, agrarian 
society, pre-modern and pre-urban, which they are trying to apply to 
the contemporary world."

When you go to Kurtz's website (http://www.csicop.org/), you discover 
that the enemies of science are not just people looking for the Yeti 
(an interesting aside--one of the lead anthropologists on the 
Kennewick Skeleton investigation has been on expeditions to find the 
Yeti, or abominable snowman). They include those of us who have an 
irrational fear of Genetically Modified food.

Matt Nisbet is a regular columnist for Kurtz publications, a 
self-described X-generation person, and a student at Cornell 
University. In an article titled "Caught in the Ag Biotech Crossfire: 
How U.S. Universities Can Engage the Public About Scientific 
Controversy", (http://www.csicop.org/genx/agbiotech/), he gives the 
kind of advice that would fit right in at the Monsanto public 
relations department:

"Universities are therefore confronted with a public communication 
dilemma. When dealing with an issue like GM agriculture that is heavy 
with political controversy and scientific uncertainty, and a 
technology that is closely tied to institutional research and 
resources, what strategies of successful public engagement and 
communication can the universities pursue?  Several courses of action 
based on past research in the social sciences can be recommended. 
They include: 1) sponsoring participatory public forums; 2) 
acknowledging uncertainty and strategically framing messages; 3) 
targeting specific publics through specific media; and 4) carefully 
monitoring public reaction and media coverage."

Oddly enough, for an outfit so devoted to science and reason, there 
is little engagement with the science of genetic modification itself. 
This is not surprising since this intellectual current seems either 
totally innocent of ecological science, or determined to sweep it 
under the rug. The moniker Prometheus that Kurtz has given to his 
publishing outlet suggests an unreconstructed vision of 19th century 
Progress. Needless to say, this dovetails neatly with the kind of 
philosophical pragmatism he embraces, which appears totally at home 
with the agenda of US imperialism.

The other big mover and shaker in the world of skepticism is Michael 
Shermer, who is much younger than Paul Kurtz and is the publisher of 
Skeptic Magazine. (http://www.skeptic.com/) While targeting all the 
usual suspects (UFO's, Bigfoot, ESP, etc.), Shermer has also 
investigated bogus history. He is the author of a book focusing on 
the libel case against David Irving, a holocaust denier.

Just as with Kurtz, Shermer casts a wide net in his crusade against 
the forces of anti-scientific darkness. Such forces include those who 
believe that there is a Gulf War Syndrome and that silicone breast 
implants might be harmful.

In a somewhat critical review of Paul Gross and Norman Levitt's 
"Leftist Science & Skeptical Rhetoric: Higher Superstition: The 
Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science", Shermer does find 
himself nodding in agreement with their hostility to Marxism:

Where the academic left (driven by outdated Marxist theories of class 
oppression) presents science as nothing more than a social 
construction designed to support the group in power (usually white 
males), Gross and Levitt rightly point out that "science is, above 
all else, a reality-driven enterprise" where, for example, "the set 
of plain truths that science (in the guise of, say, penicillin) works 
just as well for Australian aborigines (male and female) as it does 
on Englishmen (and women)." And, I would add, it works for all classes.

This view of science is consistent with the one found in Paul Kurtz. 
It is a throwback to 19th century positivism and positively innocent 
of how capitalism shapes the scientific agenda.

In a review of Shermer's "The Borderlands Of Science: Where Sense 
Meets Nonsense", that appeared in the Aug. 14, 2001 Independent, 
Ziauddin Sardar is underwhelmed with Shermer's call to reject bogus beliefs:

It's good, sensible advice. It will be of immense use to people who 
accidentally missed primary education or left their brains in their 
mothers' wombs. I suspect that most of these will be Americans, as 
the kind of non-science that Shermer exposes originates largely from 
North America.

But are people who believe in alien abduction, aura reading and past- 
regression therapy open to any kind of scepticism? And who is the 
bigger nut: the person who believes in "remote viewing" (the ability 
to travel in mind and give detailed descriptions of a person, place, 
process or object) or the person who devotes endless time to exposing 
it as fake?

There are more fundamental problems with Shermer's scepticism. It is 
firmly of the Eurocentric kind that believes science was invented in 
Europe 300 years ago. He lumps acupuncture and yoga with dowsing and 
channelling, unable to distinguish between bodies of knowledge 
thousands of years old, with their own system of rationality and 
evidence, and a recent new-age fad. Moreover, his knowledge filter 
and boundary-detection kit cannot really tell the difference between 
an ancient and sophisticated medical system such as ayurveda and the 
schemes of Deepak Chopra, designed for California buffoons who will 
believe in anything.

Worse, Shermer's scepticism is directed towards soft targets. When it 
comes to science, it turns into dogmatic belief. His understanding of 
history is less than rudimentary. When discussing the problems of 
ethics and morality in science, or the issue of cloning, his language 
becomes irrational and paranoid. Every argument is dismissed as a 
"historical common rejection of new technologies".

To top it all, Shermer's view of science is totally obscurantist. An 
old-fashioned believer in facts, he is quite unaware that ignorance 
has now become an integral part of science. We now appreciate not 
just that science seldom solves problems in neat packages, but also 
that there are always extra bits that cannot be solved. As in the 
case of nuclear waste, these messy bits of science are typically 
neglected -- by many scientists as well as professional sceptics. 
Only someone ideologically sold on the Victorian notion of science as 
absolute truth would insist that it should be the yardstick for 
measuring all reality. 


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