Another of the casualties of the various schisms within skepticism and atheism speaks out. Hayley Stevens has long been exasperated with movement skepticism, and she explains why.
Nothing is ever going to change because Skepticism has several large problems that it will fail to ever address effectively:
- the movement often allows irrational people to be elevated to positions of power from which they’re almost untouchable when it comes to criticism
- the skeptic movement is full of creepy men who don’t know how to behave appropriately around other people and they won’t go away.
- the skeptic movement is full of the kind of people who support these bad people unquestioningly.
- the skeptic movement is full of echo-chambers in which specific versions of truth are created and from which any information that counters this is shot down and, sometimes, even censored.
That first problem is a common one in new institutions. The skill set to be a good charismatic public representative rarely involves the skill set that is required to be a good, fair manager. Most college professors, myself included, would be totally incompetent in the role of university chancellor…but academia at least has a career path through administration that leads to better training in administrative roles. If you’re a skeptic/atheist who writes a best-selling book, presto, you’re the head of a foundation. That’s often a recipe for catastrophe.
Her second point is true of everything. I can’t single out skepticism for that at all…although the habit of these movements in promoting people well above their competence means the creepy guys get power and never learn to restrain themselves.
The third point…oh, boy is that true. Take a look at the promotional materials for far too many cons and presentations: all any impresario has to do is make a poster with the name of one of the handful of popular speakers in a gigantic bold font, with the date, time, and place below, and the audience will appear. They don’t even care what he (note: they’re all “he”) will say, what the purpose of the talk is about, what issues will be discussed. It doesn’t even need a title anymore. Lesser beings within the movement still have to announce a subject for their talks, but we’ve built a movement around personalities rather than ideas lately.
As for the fourth point, Stevens expands on it herself.
That final point is why I started this article by mentioning Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia — the self-appointed information masters of Wikipedia who operate from within a private internet forum and seem to focus on two things:
- working exhaustively to edit paranormal/supernatural related articles
- working exhaustively to edit the Wikipedia profiles of Skeptic celebrities, including people who are terrible people and criminals.
It is my opinion that their brand of skepticism is not the good kind. Recently, the Centre for Inquiry (CFI) appointed the head of the ‘Guerrilla Skepticism’ group, Susan Gerbic, as a Fellow which shocked me for a number of reasons. Firstly, because I don’t think Gerbic and her team of editors are very good champions of the skeptic movement. Secondly, when Dr Karen Stollznow spoke out about her experiences of harassment at the hands of a colleague at CFI, Gerbic’s son wore a t-shirt which stated he was on the “team” of the accused, to a lecture that Stollznow was delivering at an event. Secondly, it was Gerbic who added the photo to Wikipedia of Harriett Hall wearing an anti-skepchick t-shirt at TAM.
It’s a good thing to have motivated people monitoring Wikipedia for supernatural nonsense, demanding some empirical rigor in articles. I approve of that. I’m not at all keen on the idea of a group of people who feel it is their mission in life to scrub all the blemishes off of their favorite skeptic celebrities, or worse, to slant articles to favor their preferred regressive skeptics.
For example, the “team” Gerbic’s son favored was “Team Radford” — there was quite a conflict within the movement over Radford’s contemptible behavior towards Karen Stollznow, and his lawsuit to silence her. He’s also been a denialist of the existence of the influence of stereotyping of the sexes, and a champion of the most trivial claims of evolutionary psychology.
But take a look at Radford’s wikipedia page. It’s huge. Every minor accomplishment is a triumph.
Did you know he “solved the mystery of the ‘Santa Fe Courthouse Ghost'”? He debunked the White Witch of Rose Hall! He’s also the world’s foremost expert on the Chupacabra. Yay. These feats of ‘brilliance’ are described at tedious length.
That he’s a serial harasser, that he once posted photos of himself in bed with a woman so he could leverage a lawsuit, that he pressured that woman to surrender and settle a suit in his favor by threatening to hound her through her pregnancy and labor, that he threatened to sue me unless I released evidence of a conspiracy (I did!), that he threatened to sue Rebecca Watson, that he belittles rape statistics, that thinks girls have a biological preference for pink, that he likes to bully four-year-old girls (and loses) — none of that is anywhere in his Wikipedia page. The guy is a toxic mess, but his wiki entry has been buffed to a high gloss.
That kind of willful blindness is one reason I am so over the skeptic movement.
It’s great that we have a dedicated group of watchmen keeping an eye on wikipedia to prevent supernatural crap from leaking in, but who watches the watchmen? They’ve got some strong biases, but they don’t have the discipline to prevent that from dribbling in.
Not happy. I will need to think carefully about supporting Wikipedia next time they ask for money.
It’s ironic that organised skepticism seems to be increasingly resembling a cult.
I suppose Conservapedia wins by default, right? Sp its criticism of relativity and quantum physics in defense of God’s action-at-a-distance magical powers stands unchallenged?
I support Wikipedia. It’s not perfect, but its strengths far outweigh its weaknesses.
I, uh, don’t think Susan Gerbic can be held responsible for the behavior of her son. I’ve never heard of this person, and this provides me with no information about her.
If you look at the Ben Radford talk page, you can find that Susan Gerbic was indeed arguing against any mention of Ben Radford’s lawsuit. That was in September 2015, and somebody would have to look up the timing of that. The Wikipedia article hasn’t had any significant edits since then.
I’m imagining an adult son, but maybe it would make more sense if her son were really young. Missing context.
Rat Master #4
What the fuck are you talking about?
I’ve got a question about the skeptic/atheist movement communities.
I’m an avowed atheist, skeptic, and scientist. I’ve never once been tempted to go to a meeting or convention: I’m not sure why I would want to go or what I would want to learn there.
So, who does go? What does it say about them? This is an honest question, and I think it’s a relevant one. Are they people who want to meet their favorite rabble-rousers? Are they people who want to complain about theists, but can’t because of their social circles? Or are they people who are wrestling with ideas and want to hear new viewpoints?
I admit I’m something of a lazy sod when it comes to anything outside my professional life, and I’m not a huge socializer, so maybe this is just me being a homebody or a curmudgeon who cant’ see the obvious?
@8
I think your last line kinda gets to the heart of it. The meetings can be nice places to network, make friends, hear some new ideas, and kinda just get a break from religion-dominated social life if you live in an area like that.
So yeah, primarily social stuff, I’d imagine.
nathanieltagg@8,
I went to a few conferences years ago, so I can take a stab at your question. For me, I had never really been much of a believer in either gods or supernatural stuff, but had not thought all that deeply about it. Then I sort of stumbled across the skeptic/atheist community while doing some websurfing (boy, there’s a dated term), and became fascinated at the realization of (1) just how much “woo” was out there, and (2) how little and weak the evidence supporting it was. So the idea of people taking on the not terribly glamorous work of fighting con artists and frauds seemed appealing, and online skeptics raved about how much fun these conferences were and how great the socializing was, so I decided to give it a go.
After a little while, it kind of got tired for me. Lots of the same speakers addressing the same issues. The people were overall decent enough folks, but I can’t say I made any real friendships or even attended any parties that were especially memorable or fun. And the “movement” in general started to remind me a lot of a particular student club I belonged to in college: our entire purpose was to hold meetings to justify our existence so we would be eligible for funding that we would then spend on our meetings. (Here it was sort of the opposite because of the direction the money flowed: come spend money at our conference, to support our organization, which does great things like host conferences!) So I just kind of found other ways to spend my time and money. Later, of course, the Deep Rifts came, and if I had any lingering desire to attend conferences, they were squashed.
So that’s my story. As to the broader community:
To some extent. Speakers certainly had plenty of people around them at social events hoping to shake their hand or get an autograph, but I don’t know how many people specifically went to conferences to meet a speaker. But I think that aspect of things has grown over the years as the skeptic/atheist conference circuit got bigger and there were more “stars.”
Definitely a substantial subset, though depending on the conference the emphasis might be more complaining about psychics and astrology and other woo but not necessarily theism. (One of the big debates at the early Amazing Meetings was whether and to what extent skeptics could or should comment on religion.) I certainly heard many people comment on how great it was to be in a room where you could speak openly about being an atheist, or where a joke about Bigfoot would draw laughter rather than debate. Wasn’t really an issue for me.
Almost none, in my experience. I mean, some people were relatively fresh “converts” if you will, but I don’t recall ever speaking to someone who was genuinely undecided on, say, the existence of ghosts. Other than maybe the occasional reporter in attendance, it was mostly preaching to the choir.
Wikipedia serves a high and useful purpose in its dissemination of information. It is the readers responsibility to evaluate.
Support it!
jack16
To clarify my last comment @10: I don’t mean to suggest that every presentation at skeptical conferences is “preaching to the choir” in the sense of being “Why Bigfoot Doesn’t Exist” followed by “Why Psychics Are Frauds,” with a break for lunch leading into the panel on “How Religion Is Bullshit.” There was some stuff like that, but also some “how-to” topics about best ways to communicate skepticism, some “here’s some sciency stuff that’s just plain cool,” etc. But I think it’s accurate to say that few people showed up expecting to have their worldview challenged.
There are some decent even keeled people who are quite active and vocal atheists. I recall some negative vibes surrounding Hemant Mehta before on this blog, but I think he deserves some kudos for his effort. And he hands it over to guest bloggers sometimes:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/03/02/the-christian-author-of-when-harry-became-sally-doesnt-get-trans-people/
And he has opined on Krauss (not playing ostrich):
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/02/23/lawrence-krauss-wont-appear-at-tonights-celebration-of-science-reason-event/
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/02/22/lawrence-krauss-faces-sexual-misconduct-allegations-from-multiple-women/
Mehta blogs quite frequently. What energy the young uns have. And his posts range quite widely in content, though mostly Jefferson’s wall. I would put him in the forefront of movement atheism and he isn’t cringeworthy or archaic. He’s not perfect either.
Why is PZ taking this misogynistic tack? Promoting the idea that a woman who has worked her ass off founding and maintaining a worldwide organization that has done tremendous work battling public ignorance because of . . . gasp . . . a shirt her (adult) son wore. Really. Next we’ll find out that she wore white after labor day. The horror. Guerrilla Skeptics keeps stats on all the pages they create and maintain, in many different languages, and it’s phenomenal. The organization of volunteers alone is a Herculean effort–if Susan has any spare time at all to play favorites on the skeptic sites under her purview, I’d be shocked. I’ll say it… I doubt she’d be getting dragged like this if she were a man. Women have to work so much harder to get the same accolades (and they apparently have to police what their grown offspring choose to wear and be photographed in, too, lest those accolades be rescinded).
And then we have PZ mansplaining for Hayley Stevens, who weirdly calls out the aforementioned “Team Radford” shirt but seems to have no problem with Radford himself–she wrote a glowing blurb for his new book, saying it’s a “must read …Radford offers an up-to-date overview of the field of paranormal research in a way that demonstrates what good, rational research methods are.” This book came out a month ago, that’s a recent blurb, so I’m guessing Hayley doesn’t exactly want to toss Radford out of her camp. But PZ has a hate-hard-on for Radford and cannot miss the opportunity to exploit Hayley’s words here in order to fuel his fantasies.
And, while there are real, believable predators in our movement–and indeed in every group of organized humans on the planet–you choose to hold up the one case that has been settled as false. Way to shift focus and belittle all the real threats. Plus, by ignoring the retraction, PZ is refusing to accept Stollznow is an independent, rational thinker here: she didn’t do what you wanted so you are assuming that as a weak, cringing woman she was coerced or pressured into making the legal statement they both issued.
Oh but she was pregnant. Egads. Perhaps PZ does not know that much about biology after all: it takes 9 months to gestate a human baby, and the litigation was going on for what, 18 months? Two years? Stollznow was not pregnant when Radford pursued his legal action against her. Furthermore, if she had a case, she could have EASILY obtained a stay of action, as any court of law in the country would grant such a thing to an expectant mother. However, if she realized she’d taken a stunt far too far and that the case against her was pretty solid, then it was a good time to reassess and issue the retraction, then start her family with that egregious mistake behind her. False accusations are rare, yes, but a hallmark of the false accusations that do occur is falsified correspondence, which Stollznow had indeed created. So with real, credible reports of men who have multiple accusers and evidence against them, why is PZ focusing on a case with only one (very suspect) accuser that has been resolved long ago as a retracted instance of false accusation, simply to promote some personal vendetta? That’s not helping women. That’s shifting focus and clouding the waters. We don’t need this type of bullshit slowing down the movement. We have too many in the alt-right saying all men who are accused are victims of crazy, vindictive ex-lovers who are falsely accusing them. You are giving fuel to that narrative when you cherry-pick the one instance where it really looks like that happened and give it air time.
And in case PZ wants to disagree with what I’ve said: I happen to be a 43-year-old woman whose period is late, so I may very well be pregnant–so THERE you can’t attack me! It would clearly be bullying and coercion if you were to win any battles with me, legal or otherwise!
Please.
squilled:
Appealing to the genetic fallacy? Heh.
You’ve overcooked it.
I really don’t like this framing. I often don’t “know how to behave appropriately.” It sucks. I learn. Nowadays, usually the problems are limited to a joke falling flat because apparently people don’t always read the same books at the same time as I do.
“Creepy men” usually absolutely know how to behave, and when they really have to, they show more charisma than I could learn in two lifetimes.
Thete is a lot of difficulty getting people to understand the difference between being given an opinion, being presented with possible knowledge, having to dig for knowledge and reasoning.
Here in Oz the ABC started a new show called The Fact of the Matter. It was put forward as being not about opinion but knowledge from experts. What did we get? A bumch of supposed experts ansering questions with mostly top of the head twaddle about their pet ideas on things.
The skeptic movement seems to be aflicted with it too. I suspect it is as PZ says some extreme Peter Principle effects in new organisations.