tkindoll at Skeptchick analyzes an international poll were respondents were asked whether they trust homeopathic medicne [Hot Off the Press - New Data on Homeopathy Usage Around the World]. Read her comments. Here's the bottom line—citizens of India are the most ignorant of science on this issue but the French are way up there as well. This is something I observed while I was in France a few weeks ago. There are frequent favorable references to pseudoscientific medicine on French television.
8 comments :
I take it this was a poll of ordinary people, not of the royal families of the various countries?
I absolutely trust homeopathic medicine to do me no harm. As to doing me any good, well....
A friend pointed out that he suspects that the low rate among Americans is probably due to the fact that most Americans have never heard of homeopathy. I think he may have a point. Ask them if they trust "Head On" and I suspect the rates go up a lot.
I got into a mild discussion/debate with an atheist who was incensed at the suggestion that atheists might believe in some dumb things. Not all atheists, just some.
This is just what I was thinking of. I'd bet that many of the French toss off their theological beliefs yet still harbour some deeply magical altie beliefs like homeopathy.
I still believe that it's important to attack religion as it's the most pervasive and destructive form of magical thought in North America, but we should make sure that we're stressing critical thought and scepticism in general as atheism is not sufficient to slough off magic.
eamon
Some homeopathic potions have been contaminated and so have harmed people, but I know what you mean. Still, some people use homeopathy at the expense of real medicine which does do other people real harm. Especially if it's used on children.
I'm going to take comfort in Canada not being on the list because we just don't have anyone who believes such crap. And nobody ruin it for me!
France has the whole intellectual tradition of existentialism and postmodernism: guys like Sartre may have rejected religion but they rejected a lot of science with equal fervor. Then you had guys like Marcel who rejected science and Thomist (ie, Aristotelian) Catholicism but embraced their own existentialist (ie, Kierkegaardian) Christianity.
I was sucked into a lot of that crap for most of my undergraduate studies, as were a lot of my fellow liberal arts students. The idea of "no objective truth" can be strangely compelling.
I refer to the softcover edition of Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things, which adds the chapter, "Why Smart People Believe Weird Things". Here he explains why otherwise intelligent guys like Dembski, by most accounts a brilliant mathematician, buy into irrational garbage like ID. Smart people buy into irrationality for the same reasons everyone else does: culture, upbringing, emotional connection, etc. But because of their intelligence, they're much better at building a sophisticated defense (or at least one that sounds sophisticated) for their views.
Please don't knock a supposed French irrationnalism. France is the home of a very, very big maker of homeopathic... errr... pills : Laboratoires Boiron. They sell boatloads of their Oscillococcinum (aka "one duck per year" because it's made with duck liver) and have lots of commercials on TV and in the health press. Of course, if one of those popular mags about health wants to write an article about homeopathy, they're more than happy to help. And IIRC, they were a sponsor of Dr Benveniste's "memory of water" research. In my opinion, that's a very powerful force.
Otherwise, I'd say that the average frog-eater is not really more gullible than the inhabitants of neighbouring countries.
While many Indians trust homeopathy, Americans in similar numbers believe in UFOs. In England it's ghosts. In Germany it's rays coming from the ground. Every country's citizens have their own special brand of pseudoscientific belief.
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