• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Skepticism: How successful is it?

Verklagekasper

Muse
Verklagekasper
Joined
Dec 29, 2009
Messages
766
Assuming that a common goal of dedicated skeptics is to promote understanding of science and critical thinking and to protect from fraud and deception, are there means to measure the success of those efforts? Well, maybe the sales progression of books promoting science vs. books promoting pseudo-scientific bunk could be examined for that. But is that even a valid measure? If so, are there statistics? Anyway, is skepticism on the rise or on the decline?
 
One of the biggest problems I have with organised skepticism is that there is no metric by which we can measure our level of success. We've had some victories - PowerBalance is one that comes to mind - but at other times we seem to be stuck in a Red Queen kind of situation.

Let's just say that I don't think we're going backward.
 
One more measurement is church attendance. That figure is on the way down in most countries.

You can also have a look at religious and woo forums. Compare their size over time with JREF forum and other forums. My method of looking at the size of a forum is to see how many threads there are that are > 20 posts in a time period like a week. As forums get bigger they tend to have more posts in large threads. The number of threads does not always actually go up much. Some people just like creating threads. In a small forum these threads would not get many posts. However in a large forum some would.
 
rjh01 said:
One more measurement is church attendance. That figure is on the way down in most countries.
Click to expand...

Actually most skeptical organizations officially adopt accommodationism, so they don't really care.

But in any case, is declining church attendance due to skeptical organizations? Paint me skeptical...
 
Skepticism worked for me, saved me from the truther cult.
 
Humes fork said:
Actually most skeptical organizations officially adopt accommodationism, so they don't really care.

But in any case, is declining church attendance due to skeptical organizations? Paint me skeptical...
Click to expand...

Sceptical organisations will make people more sceptical. These people then look at their religion and find it does not have any evidence to back it up. So they go to church less often.

I might have got this the wrong way round. People who have found that religion is empty associate themselves with sceptical organisations, making them bigger. In either case I suggest a decline in church membership indicates a growth in critical thinking skills and sceptical thinking.
 
Verklagekasper said:
Assuming that a common goal of dedicated skeptics is to promote understanding of science and critical thinking and to protect from fraud and deception, are there means to measure the success of those efforts? Well, maybe the sales progression of books promoting science vs. books promoting pseudo-scientific bunk could be examined for that. But is that even a valid measure? If so, are there statistics? Anyway, is skepticism on the rise or on the decline?
Click to expand...
How old are you?

If you can remember the 70's, and compare then to now, the long-term trend looks pretty good.
 
I'm new to the forums and I've pursued some fairly dodgy fads in my youth, UFO's, TM, dowsing and so on, the thing is the rush is short lived and I started reading quantum physics and other science popularisations, and then I was attracted to the evolution and creationism debates and it was always the rational arguments that appealed. I think that I'm quite a common sort of mammal and a growing number of people have followed a similar path. This doesn't mean huge numbers of people are challenging dubious assertions everyday, but I think there's a growing level of reality in some quarters. Unfortunately I think this is mirrored by a growth in fundimentalism and denial, it appears to be a symbiotic thing. So yeah, reason is a growing skill but so it seems is unquestioning observance and greed based woo.
 
It seems very difficult to rigorously identify any increase in skepticism (what does that actually mean?) and then to explain that increase as resulting from the activities of skeptics.

If we can't know these things with much certainty, we can still do everything we can in the hope that we make a difference. Also, if we do nothing, we can be fairly sure our (lack of) effort will be useless. If we do something, we have a chance/hope.
 
A good way to figure this out, at least in theory, would be to look at the statistics of belief in various forms of woo. A quick Google search turned up the following statistics. (I can't post URLs yet, so you'll need to replace the (dot)'s with periods.) Unfortunately, I couldn't find any long-term statistics. I'm not sure if the sort of long-term data exists to figure out if skepticism has significantly increased in the last few decades.

eauk(dot)org/resources/info/statistics/orthodox-and-unorthodox-belief.cfm
religioustolerance(dot)org/chr_poll3.htm
nsf(dot)gov/statistics/seind00/c8/c8s5.htm
nsf(dot)gov/statistics/seind02/c7/fig07-22.htm
 
Skepticism is definitely on the march. These websites and forums are fairly new in the scheme of things. Before the web we had usenet and fidonet etc. and we did have good discussions but the percentage of people hooked in was miniscule compared to now. These days even your grandma is on facebook and I think that the availability of differing opinions and the amount of information available is a giant boost to skepticism.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom