Deepak Chopra fails to understand science... again.

[Joey McGee]

I really, really don't like Deepak Chopra. I can't read any more of his stuff, I think I'll just skip the new Shermer debate when it comes out and yes, today is the day I'm unsubscribing from his HuffPo blog, masochist, I know. So here it is, my last rebuke of Deepak. Goodbye old friend, I hardly knew ye.

Scientific Proof vs. Public Opinion: A Paradox

Yet it's not often observed that people suffer from "science shock," a numbness to the flood of data that assaults us almost as if it's in the air we breathe. We've all heard someone greet a new study by saying, "It doesn't mean a thing. These studies are always contradicting each other." The more science rules, the greater the resistance to it.

Yes Deepak, the more that people misunderstand science, and the more people communicate it to them irresponsibly, the more they resist it, I agree.

Yet that isn't really the point, because for millions of laymen, the connection between cell phones and cancer has become part of common belief. The more the link is disproved, the stronger their faith.

Yes we certainly are going to have to get rid of the bad communicators of science and educate the public about the meaning of research, it's true.

Science shock is also an expression of human nature, just as valid as reason, devoted to emotions, hope, anxiety about death and the impulse not to face our mortality.

What Deepak appears to be saying is that the cause of bad science reporting and poor science comprehension is really spirituality?

As much as science might want to eradicate irrationality, the fact is that a planet ruled by science would be hell on earth.

An incoherent statement of belief. Science is clearly not a belief system. Unless Deepak is suggesting that there is something about the true nature of reality that causes you to become evil when you discover it. Is this what they secretly fear that causes them to bloviate in woo?

The objectivity of research is a valuable enterprise, but when devoid of emotion and all forms of subjectivity

All subjectivity? There is no objective moral wrongs in science according to Deepak, we can see how insane this idea causes him to think when we see his review of The Moral Landscape, which he did without reading it btw. Again we're talking about bad people using the tools of science here, Deepak gets his information about scientists from comic books?

, what happens? We get the rise of atomic weapons,

Doing science isn't known to destroy your humanity. Evil was known to exist before the Royal Society. Making the bomb was torturous work for people like Richard Feynman who suffered from the experience. Deepak's abuse of the problem of war to attack science is an insult to all of those who have been forced to continue the evolutionary arms race of the life on this planet into the 21st century. It wasn't science that made these things necessary, it was evil people, abusing science/scientists! The level of of offense he's willing to rise to serve his woo... shameful.

mechanized death in wartime,

Do you mean robot mechwarriors replacing soldiers? Yes, I can't wait.

biological and chemical agents, chemical carcinogens and many other forms of diabolical creativity.

Gee, Deepak, so are all of the scientists that use objective science to work to prevent these things from hurting innocent people, are they all secretly evil too?

I fully realize the howls of protest that such comments incite.

Clearly, you do not.

Science wants to equate objectivity with having clean hands.

That is the most insane idea. Science in general wants to shirk all personal responsibility to themselves and the planet and they do this by pointing to how right they are? Hilarious.

In fact, the two are very different things. No doctor wants to take personal responsibility for the side effects of drugs, iatrogenic disease (illness created by medical treatments) or the rise of super germs that are increasingly ravaging hospitals.

Do you know any doctors? No doctor excuses malpractice, if they did, they aren't worth the name. Doctors I know publish on these things all the time. They are very concerned about these things and with their patients knowing and accepting the full risks. Just because a few doctors are perhaps calloused or biased, doesn't hide the fact that the vast majority are truly noble and would certainly resent this vicious slander.

Much less do they want to consider the enormous suffering that cancer patients go through during chemotherapy and radiation -- as long as the overall mortality rate drops by one-tenth of a percent, that's all that counts.

What a sick, sick man. Are you really saying Deepak, that oncologists in general don't consider the suffering of their patients? That they aren't informing them of the statistics and risks? That they don't actually believe that are doing the most they can to help? Appalling! Unless you have some evidence of a cure Deepak are you making quack claims again?

We've heard too many claims for "promising" cures while watching AIDS and cancer essentially remain a mystery.

Bad science comprehension is grounds for more understanding of science Deepak! We have people like you to blame for people getting their hopes up! Maddening disgrace to humanity in this sentece.

I am not science-bashing here.

My deepest desire is to see the two towers join together,

So you bash science in the most horrific way possible, toss in the doublethink, and now, here comes the woo

which means arriving at a science of wholeness, an expanded science that will accept that reason is compatible with imagination, hope, morality, emotions and every other subjective experience.

Science already does understand these phenomena Deepak. What are you saying?

Because ultimately people live for their experiences, not for science and its data.

Correct, they use the science and data to help them have better experiences. Oh you didn't know this?

Science serves experience, and it has no right to consider that numbers are superior to feelings.

Actually Deepak, it has a right to distinguish between truth and delusion, a likely theory and an unlikely theory, and you're science bashing because most of us hate you.

It is certainly true that human nature is prone to superstition and false hope, but it is equally true that man doesn't live by data alone. Keeping ourselves whole is all-important.

Keeping ourselves free from delusion, wishful thinking and purveyors of both is all-important Deepak, something you have tried, but failed to understand in your apologia for delusion.

Goodbye Deepak, it's been real a joke.

 

[LarianLeQuella]

In other news: Water is wet at one atmosphere between 0C and 100C! (Depending how some people define "wet"...)

 

[Joey McGee]

Slightly redundant, sure. Deepak made an effort to appease the skeptics and integrate skepticism into his act recently, but in doing so he has become far more passive-aggressive. Perhaps his new-found pseudoskepticism gives him a feeling of righteous anger that he uses to attack real skepticism. In any case, it used to be funnier, now it seems more brazen, and annoying, so I'm declaring his time officially over, we'll see.

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

Oh my! Should I change my signature?

 

[Brown]

I read the column. To my utter shock, I found myself agreeing with Chopra on many points, for a while anyway.

There were some disturbing remarks that tipped me to what was to come. "Yet that isn't really the point," Chopra says at one juncture, and "Yet that isn't really the issue," at another. When someone makes a series of statements and then apparently wipes them away as irrelevant, the BS detector starts to tinkle.

It's true that there are scientific studies that have reached inconsistent, if not directly conflicting, conclusions. It is true that lay people often do not know whom to believe or how to reconcile the conflicts. It is true that there is a disconnect between matters that are scientifically understood to a high degree of certainty, and matters that are not so well grounded in evidence, yet nevertheless are deemed "common knowledge." What ol' Deepak says on such subjects are what I would say as well, although I would make the statements more coherent (and would skip the stupid Tolkien reference).

But when I got to the part that begins, "Science shock is also an expression of human nature, just as valid as reason..." my brain said (in a mock-John Wayne accent), "Whoa, there, Pilgrim!" Perhaps ol' Deepak is applying a definition of "valid" that heretofore has escaped my notice. And when I get to the part about "the fact is that a planet ruled by science would be hell on earth," I nod and recognize that ol' Deepak is still as screwy as he has been.

A planet ruled by science? Now, THAT really isn't the point, is it, Deepak?

What follows are statements (some of them sounding like the same sort of claptrap that tries to lay fault for recent acts of genocide at the feet of secularists) that ol' Deepak says represent a "healthy skepticism about science." Again, Deepak uses a word in a sense with which I am unfamiliar, as I never thought of paranoid delusions as "healthy." And then there's the punchline: "I am not science-bashing here."

My deepest desire is to see the two towers join together, which means arriving at a science of wholeness, an expanded science that will accept that reason is compatible with imagination, hope, morality, emotions and every other subjective experience. Because ultimately people live for their experiences, not for science and its data. Science serves experience, and it has no right to consider that numbers are superior to feelings.

Stop it! You're killing me! That sounds like a SERIOUSLY contention that because the Earth LOOKS flat, flat-earthers ought to be on equal footing with people who think the Earth is substantially spherical. By the same "logic," people who "feel" creationism is an accurate model ought to be on equal footing with those who teach the evolutionary model.

Ol' Deepak is still full of fertilizer.

 

[Emet]

Some of the comments were hilarious. One of my favorites:

So I saw the headline and a picture of fruit and was sure this was going to be an article about how science or statistics influences public opinion in incorrect ways or a discussion of how science has little agreed upon information about the details of nutrition and diet.

But nope, it was DC blabbering on about whatever again. I'm probably just not smart enough to understand his 'deeper meaning.'