Cynical practice

John Wayne once mumbled, in the five spare minutes he had between starring in every Western movie ever, that “You can get more with a kind word and gun, than you can with just a kind word.” I know he said that, because I read it in a videogame once. And we read that and we think, “Eh, sounds about right.” That quote sounds nice because it’s about superiority and getting your way, and if there’s one thing we absolutely fucking love in this world, after honey-flavored cereals and Deal or No Deal, it’s feeling superior.

Maybe that’s why beating down on psychics and homeopaths and those people who try to rub things in your face in department stores is so satisfying – because we, as scientists, are so obviously better than them, and particularly as students we’re looking for a fight to prove that those really boring and overspecific lectures were actually worth something. Which is why you get Richard Dawkins, most of the Internet and comment pieces like we had last week from Jack Garnham.

The piece wasn’t really that unusual – a fairly mindless tour of psychics and mediums containing all the expected ingredient; a few jokes from Charlie Brooker, a dash of Guardian science columnists and some general pub banter. We, the reader, are presented with an example of one of these lunatic charlatans and their wicked yet hilarious methods of medicine, science or self-improvement which all amount to some kind of trickery designed to take money away from poor Joe Public. Poor little Joe, we chuckle, tousling his metaphorical hair and pinching his cheek. We’re all encouraged to give a deep belly laugh at the obvious scientific holes in what they’re peddling and then, with one final pat on the head for the average working man, we trot off to work on important things like curing cancer and beer pong.

We stopped communicating with the public the second we pointed our collective penis in their direction and began jettisoning our finest vintage piss all over their parade

You know what? Poor Joe Public doesn’t need you looking out for him if you’re going to do it with a sneer on your face. This recent spate of quack-hating came about because people like Ben Goldacre wanted to improve the public’s relation with science and scientists. Now what do we have? The second coming of Charles Darwin grunting his way through arguments with fundamentalist Christians. We stopped communicating with the public the second we pointed our collective penis in their direction and began jettisoning our finest vintage piss all over their parade.

Because that parade, it turns out, is quite important to them. It’s their parade, after all, and while it might be a bunch of lies tied together with the string of deceit and the decorative ribbon of misdirection, it’s still a belief system that they’ve become used to living within. People regularly, quite happily, believe in crazy things. It turns out that your job is not to pull the rug out from underneath them and forcefeed it to them.

I’m declaring a moratorium on this bullshit from now on. No more articles about how ker-razy the world of alternative medicine is. No more pretending you give a shit about the common man. Because there’s an unfortunate irony here – the public would rather accept shortcuts and magic solutions to their problems than tackle them head on, and similarly our scientists would rather take the easy way out and moan and whine about these liars and cheats rather than tackle the problem at its root.

The public don’t give a shit about science. Why? Because for too long it’s been full of people like you, like Jack Garnham. People who are right, who are different, who are better. People who have been in too many lectures and are too obsessed about having the right answer. So from now on, if this is you, consider this a formal invitation to leave the debate. We need more people for outreach, more people to blog constructively and be creative in their communication of the amazing world we inhabit at Imperial. Everyone else can go back to reading internet message boards and making notes on the latest QI episode. Let me know when you’ve found another misconception about Pluto to shit out.

Have you, or someone you know, been affected by someone who reads Bad Science and thinks this qualifies them as a representative of academia? I won’t care, but have a go anyway at: anangrygeek@gmail.com