Sharon Hill has been helping folks discern flim-flam from fact for going on two decades now, exposing “sciencey” sounding nonsense in all manner of formats. She’s a regular contributor to Skeptical Inquirer and the CSI website, she’s the impresario of Doubtful News, a one-stop shop for clarity in a very polluted media landscape, and she’s on the panel of the new Virtual Skeptics video podcast.

Inspired by her upcoming presentation at CSICon 2 in Nashville next month, CFI’s Paul Fidalgo talked to Sharon about what makes her tick, how we can process the implausible claims made in the modern news media, and how to talk about it with friends and family when they seem to be buying the hype. 

PF: Doubtful News recently turned one year old, and I know I rely on it day after day for my own work on CFI’s Morning Heresy. It’s totally invaluable. But you’ve been taking a critical eye to extraordinary claims for some time now. Your bio says you’ve been in the skeptic movement since 1992 -- So what brought you to it? Was it popular culture? Wacky alt-med claims? What spurred you to associate yourself with the world of skepticism back then?

SH: Two things. My gateway was Stephen Jay Gould. My highway was the Internet.

As a geologist, I loved the topics covered by Gould (except for the baseball stuff which I skipped over). But his essays on evolution really fed my fascination with nature and scientific inquiry. His language and imagery made me read slowly and try to understand everything he said. His explanation of creationism was something I hadn't experienced before and that topic truly drew me into other skeptical literature. 

I had forever been interested in ghosts, monsters and weird natural events. After a while I got tired of reading on these topics because they were storybooks. They were low-quality and they were unscientific. Once I recognized how poorly paranormal books were written, I looked for something more and found great satisfaction reading the skeptical literature. 

When the Internet was available I would spend day after day (I want to say "googling" but it was just a text-based browser and that term didn't exist) searching for information on dinosaurs, hauntings, urban legends, and Fortean phenomena. It was such a bounty of riches, yet a lot of crap was already in there. Even back then I was making online friends that I still know today from the skeptical circles. It was a place I felt comfortable in and where I could learn so much, just by observing the conversation. So, yeah, I've seen a lot change in the past 20 years but much remains the same.

PF: Your talk at CSICon is going to focus on the media, on the way “unbelievable” news is presented to a scientifically untrained audience. With so much news now being consumed via the Internet, it’s never been easier to get the facts about claims made about the paranormal or conspiracies or what have you. But on the other hand, it’s never been easier (or cheaper) to spread those absurd claims. Where are we in that struggle? Is the truth winning out overall, or do the forces of pseudoscience have us outnumbered?

SH: That well-worn saying by Mark Twain is true: "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." I think it's even worse than that today when people can selectively choose their news topics and sources and completely personalize their worldview. It's really clear that sensationalism wins the public attention contest. It's ALWAYS been that way since media began. Dramatic news sells copy. It's a battle that cannot be "won". It's more like a constant effort to be made to stop a disease from totally taking over. Since most people don't seek out opposing viewpoints (except for those odd few who enjoy listening to conspiracy radio), advocates for these views need to find ways to slip them in there. They don't ever have to be exposed to things they don't want to hear (until maybe it's too late, such as dealing with a health issue or falling prey to a scam or bogus product). One key way to deliver a skeptical view is through informal education opportunities like events at museums or libraries, camps for kids, meetings for local organizations. Even if it's just a little mention that questions an alt-med treatment or a commonly believed myth, it helps. You just might hit the sweet spot and give that person an "a-ha" moment.

I think the good news is that, according to indicator surveys, scientists are still well-respected as a profession. There is work to be done for the image of science and a ways to go toward improving science content delivery to the public. Science carries weight. Everyone wants science on their side – it's a big stick that works to beat back the nasties. There will always be those who think completely differently. We will never be rid of nonsense entirely. But someone must take the role of the rational voice and say, calm down, the world won't end this year, there is no miracle cure, the UFOs aren't coming to get us and those apparent paranormal things have a very normal explanation. It's a chore to consider all the evidence and then be able to communicate that rational view to others without being dismissed. But it's a worthwhile task. 

With Doubtful News, I cite the original story and provide links or allow comments that help to clarify it, reveal the problems or just frame it in context of what we already know to be true. Everyone should question media content delivered as news. Since there is so much information out there, we'd do well to practice honing our critical thinking filters. I hope some people interested in the crazy news stories will find the Doubtful News version and see the "facts" in a new way. If not, at least it’s been entertaining or informative to hear about the wacky world we're in.

PF: I know that for me trouble arises when I am skeptical of something that someone, say, in my family totally buys into. I think a big challenge for skeptics these days is learning how to persuade -- even converse -- with people we love and respect, people who are otherwise smart or educated, but who give unwarranted credence to the unprovable or the absurd. For that friend who, for example, insists they have spoken to the ghost of their dead relative, or for that family member who can’t understand my reticence to spend money on alt-med herbs and whatnot, how do I have that conversation without  getting trapped in “That’s exactly what they WANT you to believe!”

SH: Very true about people around you — I don't like confrontation. But, I've had some success with talking to people online who have a 180-degrees view from my own. It requires you treat them with respect and engage in a discussion. We all arrive at this moment as a result of different journeys. No one has experienced exactly what another person has. Experiences shape your worldview and your worldview is not something that one just wakes up and discards one day. So, I try to consider that a person's beliefs are their rock. The best way to disavow them of a dangerous or nonsensical belief may be to gently chip at the rock, crack it, or persuade them it might be time to let it go. Being harsh usually does nothing but make the other person dig in deeper. Persuasion takes a long time and the person must agree to give up one view in place of another view. I will try to ask that person questions about why they believe. How do they know? Making them feel stupid means you lose them entirely.

This year, I've talked quite a lot to kids. I have two of my own who will ask me flat out about things they don't understand that they hear about from friends or in the news. I also spoke to classes of school age kids. They WANT to know about stuff. They seem to want to know the truth. So while many kids today adopt their parents' ideas about the paranormal or lifestyle or religion, they are open to another path as they attempt to find out who they are as individuals. By just opening up that conversation, not being dismissive of ideas and exploring different angles, you may be able to help anyone see a different view. Then, just let it be. Even if you don't think you've made any difference, you never know if they will retrieve that memory some other day and it will resonate then. 

In other cases, people aren't even going to engage in a discussion. THEY “KNOW.” It's a lost cause and probably not worth your time and efforts. Best to move on. After all, there are all those things wrong on the Internet that we have to go fix. 

PF: Here’s a bonus question: If you do a Google News search for “skeptic” or “skepticism,” most of your results are going to be about folks who are “skeptical” of the reality of climate change. When non-skeptics hijack the “skeptic” moniker, how crazy, exactly, does that drive you? 

SH: I'm not a fan of some words. I don't like "spiritual" or "atheist" and I don't care for "skeptic" because the average person won't get the same meaning as what I consider it to be. But it is what it is and there is no term that will come around and usurp it anytime soon. I don't use "skeptic" if I can avoid it because of the chance that it will be misunderstood or color a person's impression of me. I've had some people use it deliberately and pejoratively against me. Two popular cryptozoology guys have done this in order to discredit my opinion. That's low and I see it as an ad hominem ploy because they have nothing better to say. 

Labels are convenient but they are always problematic in the real world. It IS frustrating to have "skeptic" used in the "denial" sense but the best thing we can do is push to make skepticism a virtue by showing its value. It can knock out the scams, shams and film-flam. It's a tool to make us better consumers and help us remain healthy and live a more fulfilling life. It's not about calling yourself a "skeptic" and being smug about not believing nonsense. Being practiced at critical thinking is a truly valuable skill. Skepticism in practice is about getting to the best answer. I don't want to turn people off (or have them turn me off) because of a label so I try to focus on actions and useful information that I can put out there that ANYONE can benefit from. Everyone is "skeptical" about something.

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You can catch Sharon Hill's presentation at this year's CSICon in Nashville, October 25-28!

His students have known him as “Master of the Noosphere,” but we know him as Anthony Pratkanis, a world-renowned expert on persuasion and influence and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Prof. Pratkanis will be among the incredible team of speakers at CSICon in Nashville this October, and CFI’s Paul Fidalgo talked to him about what led him to the main topic of his presentation at CSICon: how and why we get bamboozled by con artists.

Don’t forget to register for CSICon yourself so you don’t miss this presentation or any of the other fantastic events. (Paul previously talked with CSICon presenter Eugenie Scott about the rise of science denialism in public schools and legislatures.)

PF: The subject of your presentation at CSICon will be, broadly, fraud. Before we get into the specifics, what for these purposes constitutes "fraud"? Are we talking about guys playing a shell game on a street corner? Or are we talking about major, complex schemes like that of Bernie Madoff? Are the same forces at work when people are victimized in either case?

AP: The talk will cover the use of influence in the committing of fraud crimes and what we can do to counter this fraud. Fraud in this case means any economic fraud crime such as Ponzi schemes, lottery fraud, investment fraud, 1-in-5 prize, health fraud, plus street games and psychic fraud (although I won’t emphasize this).

The talk is based on research done with the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), where we analyzed undercover investigation tapes of con criminals in action. These tapes were collected by law enforcement as part of a case they were building against a criminal. Law enforcement let us have these tapes so we could identify how the criminals did it. The analysis reveals a set of social influence tactics used to sell a fraud. My presentation will include a video clip that will show some of these tactics in action along with an understanding of how they work.

The other part of the talk will look at what we can do about this. This involves research with AARP and FINRA on “reverse boiler rooms”—where volunteers contact potential victims and warn them about the crime. The people we contact are on “mooch lists”—lists collected and traded by criminals of people who they have scammed. We tested what approach works best in a series of experiments that gave a prevention message (or control) and then we attempted to “take” the person a few days later in a scam. Among the results: One of the best ways to keep from being taken in a fraud is to be prepared to ask questions.

PF: What led you personally to this topic? Did your previous work lead naturally into this subject, or has there been anything in your own life that's prompted this particular focus?

AP: I study influence experimentally and wherever I can find it. Willie Sutton was supposed to have answered the question, “Why do you rob banks?” with the answer, “That is where the money is.” So to paraphrase, “Why do I study fraud?” Because that is where the influence is.

My scientific efforts are motivated by one question: Why would anyone do or believe such a thing? This leads me to study things such as why someone might believe in the Devil’s Triangle [a.k.a. the “Bermuda Triangle”], join a cult, vote for the Nazi Party, among other similar issues. Influence is the weapon of choice in fraud crimes.

PF: Have you had any preconceptions about fraudsters, or people's vulnerability to being bamboozled, that were exploded as a result of your work?

AP: The work began when AARP could not find evidence for a common belief about fraud victims: that there was something wrong with them. AARP had done a number of surveys of fraud victims matched with controls, and assessed lots of variables such as gullibility, loneliness, isolation, stupidity, etc., and could not find any consistent pattern. I will present some of this work in the talk.  

If it is not the person, what is it that causes someone to fall prey to fraud? Answer: the use of social influence that any of us could fall prey to.

What criminals do (for the big crimes) is profile a victim (similar to the way a psychic profiles a mark for a big take). Then, they tailor the influence to fit the victim. People, when they see a fraud, often say, “I could never fall prey to that.” They are probably correct. But that doesn’t mean that the con criminal couldn’t tailor a crime to fit your needs and personality once he or she found out about you.

If you want to see Dr. Scott’s presentation, make sure you register now for CSICon 2012!

PF: I know that I’m kind of delighted that we’re having this conference full of skeptics in Tennessee, where there’s an alarming amount of anti-science legislation and posturing happening in the political realm in regards to education. As you know, the latest trouble came in the form of a bill that encourages public school teachers to lay out so-called “strengths and weaknesses” in widely-accepted scientific topics such as evolution and climate change, which are of course a wink and a nudge to allow the teaching of creationism, intelligent design, climate denialism, and other such things.

But it almost feels like we’ve done all this already. I know I naively allowed myself to think that this kind of battle was essentially old news after the famous case in Dover, PA -- that the intelligent design folks and creationists were, in a sense, laughed off the scene. But here we are again, but in Tennessee. How is it for you, as an activist fighting for real standards in science education, to find us still dealing with this kind of situation? 

ES: Well, if I didn't have a overdeveloped sense of optimism, I could never have worked at this job as long as I have. So maybe it's my own personal character flaw in this regard, but I'm not disheartened. Also given my experience, I am not surprised we're still dealing with attacks on evolution: It is a topic that generates a great deal of emotion, and that can prevent people from listening to the scientific evidence.

Actually, this is not your grandfather's creationism. We have been tracking these "Academic Freedom Act" types of bills since about 2004, and they do provide a somewhat different approach than what was going on in Dover, Pennsylvania.

The Tennessee bill is worrisome because it so carefully avoids religion; it never mentions creationism or intelligent design. The approach is to treat evolution (and global warming and the other laundry list of subjects) as "controversial subjects" that need to be singled out for special treatment in the curriculum. Teachers are directed to teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of the subjects, as if they were topics that were of questionable validity in science. They may be controversial to the general public, but they certainly are not controversial among scientists.

The careful avoidance of any reference to religion makes these bills more difficult to challenge on constitutional grounds. They also are difficult to challenge because they invoke cultural values like fairness and freedom of speech and academic freedom. Opposing these bills is often framed as opposing these important cultural values. So these bills are quite worrisome and more difficult to deal with than bills or policies that can be tied to creationism, which was the case with Dover.

PF: I see Dover as a kind of archetype for this kind of controversy; the battle between the teaching of biological evolution and some version of creationism. But in Tennessee, as well as other states, the backlash is also against sciences that, at least at first glance, seem less related to theology, or at least less threatening to a religious worldview, like global warming. What do you think that might say about what’s happening? That it’s perhaps not really about religion, but something else entirely? Why are these topics getting lumped together?

ES: I think these topics are being lumped together because all of them (evolution, origin of life, global warming, stem cells, human cloning) are topics of concern to the religious right. What began as anti-evolution bills  has now morphed to include these other hot button topics as well as evolution.

We suspect one reason for these topics being bundled together is because, as I mentioned, the religious right doesn't like any of them, but also because there are legal constraints against singling out evolution for special treatment in the curriculum. According to Epperson v. Arkansas, singling out evolution is ipso facto evidence for promoting religious views. So if evolution is bundled with these other hot button subjects, it's a twofer: more topics come under scrutiny, and evolution is buffered from one type of constitutional challenge.

PF: Global warming remains a sticking point in my own thinking -- it stands out to me as an issue that has less to do with religion than it does with interests that might merely be a product of cynical astroturfing by, say, oil interests. Otherwise, I don't see why the creationists would be so fixated on global warming, beyond very vague notions of Earth being "made for us" and therefore ours to do with as we please. 

ES: First, remember that there are religious conservatives, and there are political conservatives. The overlap is the religious right, but it's not a complete overlap, since not all religious conservatives are political conservatives and vice versa. (Some religious conservatives practice social gospel, for example, and some political conservatives are enthusiastic about evolution).

So with evolution, the opposition comes from religious conservatives,  and the religious right are included here because of their religious views.

With global warming/climate change, the opposition stems less from religion than from political and economic ideologies. In fact, Green Christians are big supporters of the environment, and take global warming seriously. The religious right is reliably in denial of global warming, but not because of their religious views but because of their conservative political views.

When it comes to evolution and climate change, there are different motivations, though the fact that the religious right opposes both confuses things. But remember, the religious right wears two hats, so to speak: conservative religion and conservative politics. Different motivations come into play for the two different controversies.

PF: So the religious right has gained expertise in what looks like stealth, and mastering the nuance of the language to get their way. Let's say that they're successful in all or most of their attempts in this current environment. Is there a snowball effect? Can it get worse from here?

ES: Hard to predict. The religious right joins the political conservatives to support the laundry list of things political conservatives care about, and joins religious conservatives to support the religious conservative laundry list. So you can look at the concerns of both or each of these categories and make predictions. Issues that have to do with social conservatism are a good bet, but they're already going great guns there: gay rights, marriage equality, etc. I can't see they would get into the anti-vax movement, as it doesn't play to either religious or political conservatism, and if anything, verges into the New Age-y kind of thinking, which is anathema to them.

PF: How do you feel about the state of the zeitgeist on these issues? Are these recent anti-science moves an example of a dying movement in its last, desperate throes? Or is there a scary resurgence? Who has the momentum, if any, and who is the most confident?

ES: I can't really say. But remember that polls show that science is well-respected (and scientists are well-respected) in the US, and even creationists and global warming deniers support science. They have a somewhat off-kilter understanding of science, but still.... I can't see that going away too quickly. I don't have my finger on the pulse of society -- it's too vast. I probably should watch TV more!

PF: One more thing: Is there anything in particular you're looking forward to doing or seeing in Nashville other than the conference itself?

ES: Bluegrass! 'nuf said!