By Lewis Loflin
Lewis Loflin here. Michael Shermer’s 1997 essay, below, cuts through the fog of science versus pseudoscience—a divide I’ve tackled in pieces like Observing New Age Environmental Religion, where I call out pantheistic nonsense, and Beware of Environmental Hysteria, skewering unscientific hype. In 2025, with mysticism still muddying reason, Shermer’s take on science’s rigor versus pseudoscience’s flimsiness holds firm. Here’s his argument, trimmed for clarity.
Excerpted from Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (W. H. Freeman, 1997)
By Michael Shermer
“If I promote any science,” John Stuart Mill wrote, “it’s the science of investigation, of method.” Science built the modern world—plastics, cars, jets, medicine doubling our lifespans, electricity, computers, lasers, and insights into life’s origins via evolution and cosmology. Yet it’s a double-edged sword: overpopulation looms, nuclear and biological threats hover, and some see these advances as assaults on tradition.
Francis Bacon, a Scientific Revolution pioneer, called knowledge power, envisioning science as “the empire of man over things.” His *New Atlantis* aimed for “knowledge of causes… enlarging the bounds of Human Empire.” Daniel Defoe’s limerick captures this: “Nature’s a virgin… She must be ravish’t… a prostitute to Industry.”
Science’s impact is staggering. Derek J. de Solla Price noted in *Little Science, Big Science* that 80-90% of all scientists ever are alive today. A young scientist retiring after a normal career will see most scientific work happen in their lifetime. Over 100,000 journals pump out six million articles yearly—unreadable in full. Fields multiply exponentially, from two journals in 1662 (Royal Society) to thousands now. Membership in groups like the American Mathematical Society mirrors this surge.
In 1965, Britain’s Junior Minister of Science observed scientists outnumbering clergy and military officers—a trend unimaginable 200 years ago. Transportation speed leapt from Napoleon’s horse to supersonic jets in a century. Clocks and tech show similar curves. Economist Kenneth Boulding said today’s world splits human history in two, as different from his birth as his was from Caesar’s.
If this is the Age of Science, why do pseudoscience and superstition thrive? A 1990 Gallup poll found 52% of Americans believe in astrology, 46% in ESP, 41% in humans coexisting with dinosaurs, 65% in Noah’s flood. Other bunk—UFOs, Atlantis, ghosts, faith healing—pervades culture, not just the fringe. Keith Thomas argued in *Religion and the Decline of Magic* that science’s rise curbed miracles and prayer’s sway, with religion aiding the shift. Yet today’s paranormal revival challenges that “decline.”
One in four holding these beliefs might seem tame compared to the Middle Ages’ near-universal acceptance. Mostly harmless? No. Believing without evidence opens doors to worse—like false abuse claims ruining lives. Socially, it’s costlier: war, poverty, and crime persist, unsolved by unscientific thinking.
B.F. Skinner urged applying science to human affairs. Mesopotamia’s Sumerians did 4,500 years ago with writing and astronomy. Social sciences, born in the Enlightenment, lag behind physical and biological fields. Why? Human behavior’s complexity defies old paradigms, and social sciences differ methodologically from experimental ones—historical, not controlled, yet still valid.
Science is mental and behavioral methods building testable knowledge, open to rejection or confirmation. History fits this, using data from the past—nonreplicable but testable. Facts are conclusions so confirmed that denying them is perverse. Stephen Jay Gould defends this: science infers, not just observes; testability, not direct sight, defines it.
Scientific paradigms—shared models like Kuhn’s “normal science”—drive progress: cumulative knowledge growth, retaining what works, ditching what doesn’t. Pseudoscience, myths, and art don’t aim for this. Artists change styles, not improve them; priests echo, not refine, doctrine. Science self-corrects via experimentation and falsification, building on past gains—like Einstein climbing a mountain, not razing a barn.
Paradigm shifts, often by young outsiders, refine understanding—e.g., Martin Bernal’s *Black Athena* rethinking Greek origins. Progress isn’t morally “good”; it’s neutral growth. Einstein called science “primitive and childlike” yet “the most precious thing we have”—its rigor trumps pseudoscience’s flimsy claims.
Acknowledgment: Thanks to Grok, an AI by xAI, for aiding this draft. Final edits are mine.
