Karla McLaren

[ciphergoth]

Rarely have I hung on every word of an essay like I did with these two. A former prominent New Age speaker and author, Karla McLaren became a skeptic in 2004, and she has some very harsh words for the culture and communication of skeptics:

Bridging the Chasm between Two Cultures, the article she wrote for Skeptical Enquirer in 2004.

I have a selfish reason for asking these questions, because one of my first ideas was to make my own Web site a culturally sensitive portal to the skeptical sites - yet I cannot find a way to do so. I've got a Web page mock-up brewing in my files - a page that I've rewritten maybe fifty times or more-that tries to introduce the concept of skepticism in an open and nonthreatening way. I'd like to include links to the brilliant urban legends site (snopes.com), to Bob Carroll's online Skeptic's Dictionary (skepdic.com), to CSICOP and the Skeptical Inquirer (csicop.org), and to The Skeptic (skeptic.com). I also really wanted to include Quackwatch (quackwatch.org) and James Randi's site (randi.org) - but I just can't find the words. Sure, I can use my site to prepare people for the journey, but I know from experience that they would be in for quite a shock once they clicked on the links. I mean, it's one thing to find out that much of my culture and belief system was based on gossamer and hearsay, but it's another thing altogether to see people like myself being denigrated and pitied.

Her 2007 update

I wish she had a blog!

Comments

[mskala.livejournal.com]

I think to some extent she may be overly charitable to both cultures - some New Agers really are idiots, and some "skeptics" really are assholes - but I'm certainly a big fan of identifying the cultural differences between groups that seem unable to comprehend each other. I feel fortunate that for the most part I'm able to have both sides of that particular one treat me as an insider. I'm not sure exactly how that works, but if I can figure out how to share it, I hope to.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

She now seems to feel very much that she doesn't belong in either - she believes the New Age culture is deeply mistaken to the core in a damaging way, while she finds the atmosphere of the skeptical culture intolerably poisonous. You don't feel either of these things?

[mskala.livejournal.com]

Depends on how broadly you define the cultures, especially on the "skeptic" side. There are very few people who call themselves that who I respect. I'd probably agree that among the people who actually use that word, the culture is very close to intolerably poisonous. But I work every day doing research among people whose job titles include the word "scientist" (my own doesn't, but some of the jobs I'm currently paid for do have "Research" in their titles), and I think the people who call themselves "skeptics" believe themselves to be part of the same culture as the people I work with.

It's harder to define New Age because members of the culture I think she's talking about don't necessarily have a single term for the entire culture - many who I'd include as part of the same general category would distance themselves from the particular term "New Age" - but it includes both fluffbunnies and others.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

It sounds like you feel that the skeptics are mistaken to the core too.

[mskala.livejournal.com]

Well, I think most of the "skeptics" are. I wouldn't go as far as everyone who is skeptical being wrong, but these days, being a "skeptic" seems to mean something other than being skeptical.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

What is it that it means besides being skeptical? Could you give an example of something a skeptic has said that illustrates the kind of mistake you're talking about?

[mskala.livejournal.com]

One example would be the precession canard frequently used by people who try to "debunk" astrology. It goes something like this:

"Astrologers don't know about the precession of the equinoxes, nor that there are actually thirteen constellations in the Zodiac instead twelve. So when they say the Sun is in Aries, it's actually in Pisces, and they ignore Ophiucus completely. Ha, ha!"

That's comparable to saying "Chemists don't know that there are actually four elements, they think there are over a hundred, ha ha!" except that the people who propagate the precession canard actually expect to be taken seriously on it.

Some people who say it are just repeating what they've heard from other "skeptics" and haven't looked into the facts behind it. Some people who say it honestly believe that after thousands of years of making precise observations of the skies, astrologers really haven't noticed that the equinox moves and really don't know where the constellations are. And I think some, hoping to make astrology look bad, are deliberately lying about the whole thing while being aware that astrologers use a coordinate system in which 30-degree intervals of longitude measured from the equinox wherever it happens to be at the time are named after but not identical to constellations that were roughly in those longitude intervals at the time the names were chosen.

None of those three explanations reflects well on the person making the claim. Blind faith in authority, failure to check or even think about surprising factual claims, and deliberate political lies are all among the things "skeptics" claim to be against.

[mskala.livejournal.com]

Further to previous, some examples of people calling themselves skeptics and propagating the precession canard: 1 (http://www.skeptics.org.uk/article.php?dir=articles&article=astrology_and_precession.php), 2 (http://www.skepticfriends.org/forum/showquestion.asp?faq=6&fldAuto=42), 3 (http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/zodiac.html).

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Yes, even Dawkins gets this wrong on "Enemies of Reason" - it always makes me wince now.

In general I think looking for internal inconsistencies like this is always the wrong path for skeptics (or atheists for that matter) to take - it can be entertaining, but unless you know the subject very well you expose yourself to having points like this scored off you. I would always advise instead highlighting the disconnect from evidence.

I don't think this is a matter of extremism - it's not that they are too skeptical of astrology at all - it's just poor rhetorical technique. It's also of course poor rhetorical technique in exactly the way the above articles highlight - it may entertain your fellow skeptics but it's not going to convince any astrology believers; it will rather drive them away in fact.

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

It's also poor rhetoric in the same way as saying "drugs kill", "half a glass of wine in pregnancy will deform your baby" or "Catholics are cannibals", in that people who know something about the subject know that you're wrong, so they won't listen to any good arguments you may have.