Is Belief in Improbable Theories Ever Warranted? A Fortune Teller’s Own Death Card
For years, I have been fascinated by the irrationality of science denial. When people typically engage in science denial, the problem is not simply that they deny well-tested empirical theories for which there is ample evidence but that they also usually subscribe to an alternative belief for which there is little to no evidence. Of course in science one cannot prove a theory is true no matter how good its evidence; unlike Euclidian geometry or deductive logic, science is about probability, not certainty. This sometimes provides a tiny crack of hope to a denier who will somehow jump to the conclusion that due to the absence of certainty, their own theory might be just as good as a scientific one. They think it could still be true,1 which means that they feel justified in their denial. This of course violates several norms of good empirical reasoning, which I have explored at greater length in my book The Scientific Attitude. The scientific attitude, I argue, is the founding ethos of science, whereby scientists as a community …