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Title: Assignment #1
By: Hailey Jones

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Confirmation bias is the tendency to remember events that coincide with beliefs and ignore those that do not.

Connection:
In this video, it is explained how confirmation bias works. You consider switching cable companies, and you ask your friend about a specific cable company. He tells you how horrible the company is and to look them up on the internet. You go home, and search the company's name and complaints, you spend half an hour reading about them and decide not to switch because they are horrible. This is confirmation because you set out to seek information to confirm your opinion.

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The confirmation bias applies to how we seek, interpret, and remember information. When we want to believe something, we tend to only seek evidence that confirms our desired belief and ignore the rest. When we do come across disconfirming evidence, we are more likely to dismiss the evidence and not critically evaluate it (Nickerson, 1998).

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Conspiracy that important people are hiding important information.
Connection:
This article is about how the Government and Medical Authorities have been hiding the cure for cancer for 35 years.

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Cancer Cure Known For 35 Years Suppressed By Government and Medical Authorities

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Burzynski, the Movie is the story of a medical doctor and Ph.D biochemist named Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski who won the largest, and possibly the most convoluted and intriguing legal battle against the Food & Drug Administration in American history.

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All Natural is the idea that all things natural are good.

Connection:
This website warns people that when something is called 'Natural Medicine' it is often Pseudoscience in hiding.

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"Natural" is such a pretty word. It conjures up all sorts of nice mental pictures: waterfalls, butterflies, the slow return to spring after a long winter. When someone makes reference to nature and all things natural, odds are that's the kind of thing you're meant to think of in response. Presumably they're not expecting you to think of amoebic dysentery.

The trouble is that there are horrible things that are also entirely natural. Nobody really celebrates freezing to death in January or being pursued by predators, as natural as they may be. But for skeptics of evidence-based medicine, "natural" is a handy go-to word to make the target audience share their skepticism. Modern medicine isn't easily found in nature, the thinking goes, and so it is something of which to be wary at best.

This kind of rationale clearly undergirds the practice of a recently-profiled pediatrician who doesn't vaccinate her patients routinely. "I think we're just messing with nature," says Dr. Stacia Kenet Lansman of vaccinating children on the standard schedule (or, in the case of several preventable illnesses, at all). We are then meant to imagine immunizations plowing, bulldozer-like, through the primroses of a child's pristine immune system. (Never mind that the immune system is quite capable of handling all those vaccines and more.) Nature is not to be messed with!

What she doesn't want you picturing is measles spreading like wildfire through her unvaccinated patients. Which, of course, would be a perfectly natural outcome.

There are plenty of wonderful ways of maintaining health that come from nature. I am on essentially the same page as Michael Pollan when it comes to what constitutes a healthy diet-basically foods as close to their natural forms as possible. I tell patients that good sleep habits and regular exercise will probably do more under most circumstances to make them feel good than anything I can prescribe. There is at least some evidence that letting your kids play in dirt is probably better for them than raising them in an ultra-clean germ-free zone.

"Natural" and "healthy" often go hand-in-hand. But they're not synonymous, and the former doesn't always lead to the latter.

It is the natural course of type-1 diabetes for the patient to waste slowly to death, but nobody questions the benefits of exogenous insulin. Albuterol inhalers come mass-produced from a factory, and yet asthmatics still prefer them to wheezing uncontrollably. Presumably if any of Dr. Kenet Lansman's patients get stricken by the rotavirus she declines to protect them against, they will avail themselves of the wholly unnatural IV fluids that will keep them from dying of dehydration after days of non-stop vomiting and diarrhea.

If you flush your waste away to be processed in a treatment facility, you are messing with nature. (Those of you taking a break from digging your own latrines to read this essay, please carry on.) If you are plugged into the electrical grid in order to power your home, nature has been messed with to a great extent by the time you flip the switches. If you'd rather pop a couple of Advil than hunker down with a strip of willow bark the next time you get a headache, then you understand that sometimes an unnatural route to feeling better is still the right one.

Do these manipulations of nature sometimes cause ill effects that must be managed or mitigated? Of course. But good sanitation, electrical power, and telecommunications are manifest benefits to humanity that we all recognize as worth the deviation from a purely primeval life.

So, too, with modern medicine. Some interventions, like chemotherapy for leukemia, have serious side effects that must be closely monitored but are still obviously worth it in pursuit of curing the patient. Others, like vaccines, carry such an overwhelming benefit at minimal risk that any decision to refuse them requires a justification other than logic. Hence, vague words with unclear meanings like "natural."

Doctors are charged with keeping our patients healthy. Often there is a natural route to that, but sometimes there is a human-made one instead. That doesn't make it wrong, and leaving children vulnerable to preventable diseases makes no more sense than swearing off flush toilets.

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Warning: "Natural Medicine" Is Often Code for "Pseudoscience"

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"Natural" is such a pretty word. It conjures up all sorts of nice mental pictures: waterfalls, butterflies, the slow return to spring after a long winter. When someone makes reference to nature and all things natural, odds are that's the kind of thing you're meant to think of in response.

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Red herring is a distraction to mislead and change the conversation or question.

This video shows an example from Family Guy of red herring. The politicians are avoiding answering questions directly.

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Ancient wisdom is little useful or true information in the past.

This website explains what ancient wisdom is, why people use this red flag and some examples.

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If a remedy for your problem has been around for a long time, will it work, or is that a red flag?

How to recognise this tactic

People who use this tactic try to persuade you that a certain explanation, treatment or model must be correct because it's been around for a long time.

I don't go in for ancient wisdom
I don't believe just 'cos ideas are tenacious it means they are worthy

Tim Minchin, Australian-British comedian/musician, 2009

Why do people use this tactic?

People turn to this tactic when they lack scientific evidence to support their models. They want tor persuade you that because the traditional view has persisted for a long time, it outweighs the scientific evidence. But unfortunately, these models usually persist for reasons that have little to do with their success in explaining the real world.

What's wrong with this tactic

Believe it or not, there is no reason why an idea that's been around for a long time should be correct. Many ancient models have been kept alive by anecdotal evidence, appeals to authority, wishful thinking, superstitions and other dubious strategies. They are not supported by the sort of real-world evidence that comes from controlled experiments or randomized controlled trials. The four humor theory, discussed in the Example below, illustrates how an erroneous ancient model succumbed to scientific investigation.

What to do when confronted by this tactic

Don't be tempted to believe that the longevity of a model justifies its acceptance. It might help to keep in mind that blood-letting (based on the four humors model) was an accepted practice for centuries before modern medicine showed how harmful it is. Always ask for evidence that's been gathered from real-world tests. If there's none, the model is worthless. You can also check whether there are any systematic reviews of the model - try the Cochrane Collaboration for medical issues.

It's a good idea to ask about a mechanism for the model. If there is none, or if the mechanism proposed refers to concepts and processes that are at odds with accepted science, the model is almost certainly worthless.

Variations and related tactics

This tactic is also known as the appeal to antiquity. It is sometimes regarded as a type of appeal to authority. I prefer to think of it as more an appeal to anecdotal evidence - people think that centuries of anecdotes pile up to provide evidence. But, as the old maxim says: the plural of anecdote is not data.

Examples

The 2nd century 'four humor' model of human temperaments promoted by Galen led to the practices of blood-letting and trepanation as treatments for disease. These practices were continued until the 19th century when the rise of scientific models in medicine showed that, far from being beneficial, they were actually harmful. Discoveries in anatomy and physiology had shown the the mechanism behind the four humor theory had no basis.

Traditional Chinese Medicine is based largely on the appeal to ancient wisdom. Here's an excellent post from Steven Novella at Science-Based Medicine describing its pitfalls and showing how its purported mechanisms are completely divorced from reality.

Climate deniers use a form of this tactic when they point out that the earth's climate has changed in the past and then claim that the present episode of change is nothing unusual. Ian Plimer implies this argument in the first two of the "101 questions" he proposed in his 2011 book How to get expelled from school: a guide to climate change for pupils, parents and punters. The evidence shows clearly that his argument is wrong, and that recent global warming and climate change definitely is unusual and furthermore it is caused by emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. The mechanism is well understood. The Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency has issued a detailed reply to all of Plimer's questions.

The New Age notion that Mayan calendars predict the end of the world on 12 December 2012 depends on an appeal to ancient wisdom. People who fall for this idea assume that the Mayans had knowledge we don't and were able to predict the future. In fact, no such prediction was made, and if one had been, it would deserve no credibility. Various mechanisms have been suggested as causes of the apocalypse, but they too lack credibility.

Add to the list of examples by leaving a comment.

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Appeals to ancient wisdom - trusting traditional trickery

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If a remedy for your problem has been around for a long time, will it work, or is that a red flag? How to recognise this tactic People who use this tactic try to persuade you that a certain explana...

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Perception observation is our observations getting confused with our beliefs.

The video below is a famous experiment, where you focus on watching the basket ball players, that you do not notice the gorilla walk by.

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Emotions can play with people minds, making them obscure rational thoughts.

The following link is an interview from somebody who worked for a psychic.

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When the economy tanks, psychics say their business soars.

The psychic industry is a $2 billion a year business, with millions of people still dialing "900" numbers, even after two decades of lawsuits, bad press and bankruptcies. But when someone calls a psychic hot line, does the person on the other end have more insight than anyone else?

Former psychic hot line worker and author of "Psychic Blues," Mark Edward, says he's blowing the whistle on his former industry.

"The psychic business is built on lies. There is no supernatural power. You can't see the future," Edward says. "We're in the golden age of the con. There are people coming out of the woodwork that would love to separate you from your money. But people just want someone to talk to. That's the bottom line."

Edward says he was taught techniques to keep his conversations vague, flattering and drawn out. The goal was to make the callers feel good about themselves, and keep them talking. Edward once gave a two-and-a-half-hour reading. At $3.99 a minute, the caller paid more than $600.

In a statement to ABC News, Edward's former employer said: "All of our psychics are independent contractors, and as such, they worked for multiple psychic lines at the same time. So either he is lying or confusing us with a disreputable psychic line."

In a 2007 study, conducted by the University of Auckland in New Zealand, Dr. Robin-Marie Shepherd found most users called for advice on "personal relationships." Nearly all users describe their behavior as "addictive."

And, at an average of $100 per reading, many went in to debt because of it.

Ringing for a Reading: Mark Edward Calls Out Psychic Hot Lines

ABC News had an extensive interview with self-avowed non-psychic Mark Edward.

ABC News: Are psychics real?

Mark Edward: No, they're not real. It's just a matter of intuition. If you're good with people, you learn how to read people. Do you want to be a real estate agent ... or clairvoyant? ... They're all a similar skill set. It's a skill you can learn. It's real, but it's nothing supernatural.

ABC News: Are you against anyone claiming to be a psychic?

Mark Edward: In general I'm against it. I think people are better served by going to a therapist.

ABC News: How did you begin your career as a hotline psychic?

Edward: I was working as a mentalist full time. Doing séances. I wanted to know how the hot line mediums did it. My friends were making money sitting at their homes. I wanted to sit at the top of the mountain and see what it looks like. I learned the tricks of the trade. Did it for nine years. I had a friend who did it, and they gave me a number. I did a few auditions. They liked me. ... There was no test, you just needed the gift of gab.

ABC News: What did they encourage you to do?

Edward: You have to keep people on as long as possible. Then you ask for their birthday, name and address. Then they start spamming people. They'd send callers letters telling them they're in danger, and they need to call your psychic friend immediately. The average call is 15 to 20 minutes. But they wanted one hour. The final straw was when I did an infomercial for them. They handed me a pile of info and told me who was asking the questions. It was a total fake. Five to seven psychics might be nice people, but everyone else are crooks.

ABC News: How much did you get paid?

Edward: Not much. We got paid a percentage of what they made depending on what. But it's many people's primary source of income. I'd do it for nine to 10 hours each day.

Nothing Psychic About Predictions Given on the Phone

ABC News: What tricks of the trade would you use?

Edward: You have to gauge the tone of a person's voice. If they are aggressive or laid back, in a hurry or skeptical. The first four or five words are important. Then I ask for their name and birthday, and if they had a specific question. At $3.99 a minute, they want an answer quick. And then I answer as if I'm answering the question about myself. All these things about yourself are relatable. Nine out of 10 times you will hit a nerve with them. Then I'd pause and let them jump in. People love talking about themselves and here what you say about them. They like to imagine I'm in some far off convent but really I'm ironing at home. And I'd try to be compassionate and sound as new age as you can.

ABC News: Would you have pre-planned things to say?

Edward: Yes, I would have note cards by my phone for specific answers. Pink for love. Yellow for travel. Green for money. Then I'd talk about a childhood memory of mine. Less is more. Eventually you will find something relatable. Just one or two firm connections, and you'll run with the ball. Once you make that hit, it pours out. And then you mirror. Let the person talk and then you listen and say, "I hear what you're saying is this," "I feel what you're saying." I fed them hope.

ABC News: When and why did you leave?

Edward: I got sick of it and how much they were making off of innocent people. I left on my own though, they didn't kick me out.

ABC News: Did you feel bad about what you were doing?

Edward: I never took any legal or medical questions. ... I gave them 800 numbers instead. I helped a lot of people, but there was nothing psychic about it. Common sense is the same as intuition. In our society we've lost touch with that. Also, I was a skeptic the whole time, so I felt like I was doing a [public] service by infiltrating [The Psychic Network].

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Psychic Hot Line Secrets: Clairvoyance or Hoax?

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When the economy tanks, psychics say their business soars. The psychic industry is a $2 billion a year business, with millions of people still dialing "900" numbers, even after two decades of lawsuits, bad press and bankruptcies. But when someone calls a psychic hot line, does the person on the other end have more insight than anyone else?

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assignment 1 Critical Thinking Step-by-Step Process

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Simplicity is when people find answers where they are not.

This picture below is an internet card, which connects to simplicity because the person who wrote the card, is telling whoever is reading the card to live life simple, because its easy and the best way to live life.