Dec 03 2009
Chopra Attacks Skeptics
Deepak Chopra, writing for (of course) the Huffington Post, laments about his critics that, “Most of my stinging darts come from skeptics.” So he has decided to attack skeptics and skepticism – a preemptive strike against his critics. Predictably he mangles scientific skepticism, and is content to attack a straw man and then declare victory.
He begins:
Over the years I’ve found that ill-tempered guardians of scientific truth can’t abide speculative thinking. And as the renowned Richard Dawkins has proved, they are also very annoyed by a nuisance named God.
Right of he starts by accusing skeptics of being “ill-tempered” as if we are all cynical curmudgeons. This is an unimaginative ad hominem (Chopra really wracks up the logical fallacies in this post). Many of the skeptics I know are actually quite mild-mannered, even overly nice. Chopra confuses, perhaps, sharp scientific criticism with emotion. This is a common mistake among those who are not adequately familiar with the scientific process – it is a relentless meatgrinder of criticism and does not abide illogic or sloppiness – and that’s a good thing. Beware of those who confuse scientific analysis and criticism with being mean.
In the very same sentence Chopra then accuses skeptics of not abiding speculative thinking. And later he writes:
It never occurs to skeptics that a sense of wonder is paramount, even for scientists. Especially for scientists. Einstein insisted, in fact, that no great discovery can be made without a sense of awe before the mysteries of the universe.
This is transparently wrong, but in my experience a common refrain from those at the receiving end of skeptical analysis. Speculative thinking is critical to scientific advancement, and anyone who has bothered to actually read skeptical blogs or listen to skeptical podcasts would see numerous examples of our cheering on those scientists who were able to expand human knowledge by coming up with new ideas, and seeing beyond the current limitations in scientific thinking.
Einstein is deservedly the poster boy for this – his brilliant speculations led to relativity theory and revolutionized modern physics. But as another luminary, Thomas Edison, said genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. While we applaud the inspiration (speculative thinking) skeptics also recognize that most speculations turn out to be wrong, and we use the 99% perspiration (the hard work of science) to decide what is likely to be true and what should be discarded as bunk.
But Chopra and his anti-skeptical cohorts ignore that part about the hard work of science. They want to stop after the 1% of inspiration, and just gloss over all that actual perspiration, and then get defensive when they are called on it.
Regarding awe, Phil Plait had a good response to this. But I will add that Carl Sagan, a leading light of skepticism, is honored as such precisely because of his eloquence in expressing the awe and wonder that real science can inspire.
Chopra is then quick to claim God is on his side. He conflates skepticism with atheism- – which is just sloppy and gratuitous. He also equates all atheists with the particular style of Dawkins, whom I admire but does not represent in style all skeptics. Chopra knows his audience, he is saying that you can dismiss these pesky skeptics because they don’t believe in God like “we” do. This is a combo argument from authority and ad hominem, with a hasty generalization thrown in to complete the logical fallacy trifecta. Nicely done. He continues in this theme:
Statistically, cynical mistrust is correlated with premature sudden death from cardio vascular disease. Since the skeptics who write venomous blogs trust in nothing, I imagine that God will outlive them.
Let me paraphrase – Don’t worry about those skeptics – they are cynics and will die young, unlike those of us who have God on our side. He also confuses skepticism with nihilism – trusting in nothing. The reality is when it comes to determining how the natural world works, we trust in the scientific process, in logic and evidence. We don’t believe without evidence, however. Belief is not a virtue in science.
It gets worse:
No skeptic, to my knowledge, ever made a major scientific discovery or advanced the welfare of others. Typically they sit by the side of the road with a sign that reads “You’re Wrong” so that every passerby, whether an Einstein, Gandhi, Newton, or Darwin, can gain the benefit of their illuminated skepticism. For make no mistake, the skeptics of the past were as eager to shoot down new theories as they are to worship the old ones once science has validated them.
What Chopra is saying is that no scientist who has ever contributed to human knowledge was a skeptic. But some of the very examples he gives – Einstein and Darwin – were very skeptical. Chopra also assumes (or maybe he is just making a statement about his own ignorance) that no members of the skeptical community are contributing scientists. Again – transparently false.
But if we are trying to be generous (something Chopra is not) we can interpret that statement to mean that skepticism itself does not contribute to knowledge. This grossly misunderstand that scientific process. Science is like evolution in that new ideas are generated, and then logic and evidence is used to select against them, so that only useful theories survive, prosper, and replicate. Creationists argue that natural selection is only a negative process, and therefore cannot create anything. Chopra argues that skepticism is only a negative process, and therefore does not lead to knowledge. Both are wrong for the same reasons. They ignore the generation of diversity and new ideas upon which natural selection and skepticism acts. Weeding out the unfit is critical to both – natural selection allows evolution to proceed, and skepticism allows science to advance.
Of course, when one’s ideas get weeded out by the process of science, it’s tempting to attack the process itself as cynical and ungodly – if you are a pseudoscientist, that is, and not truly dedicated to the process of science.
Chopra then goes for the “equivalence” gambit – saying that skeptics “worship” scientific theories. He wants science to be the same as religious belief – that is the arena in which he wants to compete, because he cannot compete in the arena of science.
Next Chopra unleashes an army of straw men:
Skeptics know in advance — or think they know — what right thought is. Right thought is materialistic, statistical, data-driven, and always, always, conformist. Wrong thought is imaginative, provisional, often fantastic, and no respecter of fixed beliefs.
Not that Chopra was ever taken seriously by any self-respecting scientist or intellectual, but really – you have to try to get it this wrong. Chopra is not even trying to understand or fairly represent skeptics, and his statements are the opposite of the philosophy we openly advocate. Scientific skepticism is against “knowing in advance” and conformism. We celebrate imagination and a provisional approach to knowledge.
He was close with “materialist” in that science is based upon methodological naturalism, but I don’t think that’s what he meant. And he is actually using “data-driven” as a pejorative – how telling.
Then he finishes with the woo he so desperately is trying to protect from scientific skepticism:
Thirty years ago no right-thinking physician accepted the mind-body connection as a valid, powerful mode of treatment. Today, no right-thinking physician (or very few) would trace physical illness to sickness of the soul, or accept that the body is a creation of consciousness, or tell a patient to change the expression of his genes. But soon these forms of wrong thinking will lose their stigma, despite the best efforts of those professional stigmatizers, the skeptics.
Ah – the argument from future authority – I will be proven right in the future, a convenient unfalsifiable claim.
What this article demonstrates is that Chopra is unequivocally anti-science. That is the reason he attacks skeptics and skepticism. He wants his woo to get a free pass. He wants to be able to speculate wildly, without ever having to justify his claims with logic and evidence. Chopra laments being called “the emperor of woo-woo” – probably because he knows that this emperor has no clothes.
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29 Responses to “Chopra Attacks Skeptics”
He cast a wide net this time. By attacking skeptics, he is attacking all of us. What a jerk.
Psst… the inspiration/perspiration quote was Edison, not Einstein. The sentiment still applies, though, whoever said it. Nice write-up.
Also, is it an ad hom if i just state my opinion of someone as a jerk but don’t use that as a basis for an argument?
I have not met a single skeptic out of thousands who fit this description of Chopra’s. And the skeptics he did list, do not fit his description either. Skeptics enjoy all parts of thinking, including the creative. They have high standards regarding the quality of thinking unlike Chopra who indulges in sloppy thinking I guess because it is an easy, easy, easy way to feel good. Skeptics feel at least as good as Chopra without having to give up critical thinking.
superdave Chopra has been thoroughly discredited as a mere purveyor of woo. Jerk is used as short hand to get that point across. However, outside skeptic circles, it is much better not to name call, but to stay focused on the vapidity of Chopra’s views, thusly revealing they are just hot air. I would go further and describe Chopra as a woo addict. And the latest from him is a temper tantrum stemming from the fact that it is getting harder and harder for jerks like him to fix up without getting called out on it. By betraying his own short temper by casting clear thinkers as cranky nihilists, he is showing that embracing woo does not give its practitioners a potent handle on anything worthwhile if wearing woo blinders can get it so wrong as to consider Dawkins as a cranky nihilist.
Besides advances in medical science, physics and chemistry what have the skeptics done for us?
Aaron – Thanks, I made the correction.
But Chopra and his anti-skeptical cohorts ignore that part about the hard work of science. They want to stop after the 1% of inspiration, and just gloss over all that actual perspiration, and then get defensive when they are called on it.
This is a great way to put it. Unfortunately I know some scientists who are the same way: they get attached to an idea before the hard work is done to justify it. That’s why peer review and replication are so cool. A PI might be able to fool his entire lab, but for every overeager theorist there is an eager experimentalist hungry to show him wrong.
Chopra also conveniently ignores the fact that most good scientists tend to be equal-opportunity skeptics.
He implies that skeptics are only suspicious of new, cool but unorthodox ideas, but the folks he claims weren’t skeptics–Einstein, Darwin–were, as you point out, skeptics: they were skeptical of existing ideas that didn’t provide adequate evidence/information. (And it’s the second part of that equation–evidence–that invokers of the Galileo Gambit seem to forget all the time.)
His definition of skeptic seems to be: meanie who won’t just take my word for it that all will eventually be explained when the magical forces I invoke suddenly hawk up undeniable proof of their existence.
I loved the comparison between skeptics and natural selection. Chopra obviously has no idea what science is or what it means to be a skeptic.
Ironically, some of Chopra’s own views fit the definition of cynicism.
@FB and Steve
Funny how my ex-advisor Dr. Carlos Jimenez, who introduced me to skepticism in the first place, has contributed greatly to the field of cocaine addiction research.
Funny how my professor, Dr. Daniel Altschuler, has been a driving force in Latin American skepticism, publishing several very accessible books to the public, and at the same time, the director of the Arecibo radiotelescope, which I hope you have at least a slight idea of how important that has been to astronomy.
Finally, funny that my current advisor, Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, is also a full time skeptic, and at the same time has driven the field of neuroprosthetics beyond your wildest dreams.
I personally think your objections are uninformed.
In support of Steve’s comment on “ill-tempered scientists”, these three people are among the nicest people I’ve met in life. Now, we can discuss semantics all night, but I believe even a single example will nullify the postulate of “All in set A(skeptics) are B(ill-tempered)”.
Too bad, I think, that pretty words go further than examination. People will swallow his comments whole just because they sound nice, are in line with their own beliefs, and it gives them something to blame, an opposing force to combat.
Unfortunately, the reality is so much different, we, all of you, skeptics, struggle with misinformation, ignorance, and belief to give people a better sense of reality, to keep them from being swindled by, as Brian Dunning puts it “vulture scumbags”, from being given false hope, from believing fantasies when the truth is so much more beautiful.
Thanks Steve, for your enlightening post. Chopra’s words do much more harm than good; a good evaluation of his words, put eloquently and simply as you have, will reduce such harm.
My plagiarized, single-sentence refutation:
“Skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found.” [Miguel de Unamuno, "Essays and Soliloquies," 1924]
So Chopra thinks that Einstein, Darwin, Pauling, Feynman, etc. contributed nothing to science. For that matter, how about his example Richard Dawkins, who is a highly-respected contributor to evolutionary theory, or his friendly rival Stephen Jay Gould?
To all us USAians, how about scientist/politicians Jefferson and Franklin?
Bateson? Crick? Dirac? Must we go on?
What Chopra also ignores is the way scientists are initially skeptical of EACH OTHER’S ideas. For instance, Pauling was the best-respected chemist in the world, but his ideas about ascorbic acid were not accepted uncritically. He had to prove them, and when he didn’t they were dismissed. Darwin’s model of evolution didn’t gain wide acceptance for two generations.
Does Chopra know as much about science as a bright high school student who reads old Asimov essay collections? Doesn’t seem so.
That was a great writeup, but you put a lot of work into it. In some cultures, a community simply gathers around an offender and laughs at the idiot. I hear it’s very effective.
Thanks Steve for this fantastic piece. I loved the quote “the scientific process – it is a relentless meatgrinder of criticism and does not abide illogic or sloppiness – and that’s a good thing. Beware of those who confuse scientific analysis and criticism with being mean.”
Worth using in the podcast as QOTD!
I think Chopra’s best defense to Steven’s excellent post comes from a careful reading of this line:
“Over the years I’ve found that ill-tempered guardians of scientific truth can’t abide speculative thinking.”
Chopra’s doesn’t say ”all” guardians of scientific truth can’t abide, only the ill-tempered ones. From there, he then goes on to use (misuse, really) the word ’skeptic’ to refer to these ‘ill-tempered guardians’ throughout his piece.
So basically, Chopra can defend himself by saying his use of the term ’skeptic’ is only meant to apply to those ‘ill-tempered’ folks he spoke of.
Of course, a semantic argument like this is one skeptics are facing in every battle on the woo front. And arguing that when you say ’skeptic’ you aren’t referring to the massive group of people who have chosen to label themselves as ’skeptics’ is a cop-out and a cheap-shot to boot.
Chopra is heavily invested in his anti-science position, both financially and socially as a representative of the new age and self-help movements. It’s no surprise he would take such a strong and irrational stance against science and skepticism. A skeptical approach that is done with integrity must necessarily call into question many of the things that he benefits from and given that his position is intellectually bankrupt, he’s forced to attack reason itself. And if you’re gonna illogical, do it with a bang. At least it’ll inspire confidence (by emulation at the least) in the poor ignorant folk that can’t tell the difference between a personal attack and a reasoned analysis.
Chopra’s just another snake-oil salesman. He’s the frontman for Ayurveda, a “healing technique” (and set of very expensive products and services) founded by none other than Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the guy who came up with “Transcendental Meditation” after being made famous by the LSD-driven Beatles. Chopra’s just his frontman, chosen because he’s an endocrinologist with “credentials” (although I strongly suspect the yogi paid for Chopra’s education). Funny thing, but Chopra up close looks his age (60-some-odd)… guess the whole “mind-body-reverse-aging” thing ain’t working out so well for him.
Great article Steve, the way you consistently hit it out of the park never ceases to amaze me.
Since I’ve never heard this guy before, I’ll have to assume that he knows as little about the other subjects on which he writes as he does about skepticism. Just doing a quick Google search I see that he’s quite a woo-wonk…pitching woo wherever he goes.
Here are some of the menu headers at his website:
* Perfect Health
* Free to Love, Free to Heal
* Seduction of Spirit
* Journey into Healing
* SynchroDestiny
* A Weekend Within
And look at the cost for the 5 day workshop!!!
Journey Into Healing Pricing
$1,475 6-month advanced enrollment
$1,575 90-day advanced enrollment
$1,675 60-day super early bird
$1,875 30-day early bird
$2,175 Standard enrollment
to see this:
http://www.chopra.com/journey
as opposed to the TAM registration [for 4 days]
Full TAM JREF Members:
$320 Student
$420 Non-Student
Full TAM Non-JREF Members:
$395 Student
$495 Non-Student
I’m not sure what that indicates…but he must be in high demand to be able to fleece his flock so fully.
Oh come on, no one else was reminded of this?
There is something yapping at our ankles…
I have a sense of wonder, it awes me how stupid humans can become. Its like watching a multi-train wreck in slow motion…and Deepak is one of the drivers.
I think Steve, that you take him much more seriously than he takes himself. Certainly more than he deserves.
Ad Hominem: your argument sucks because you are a jerk.
Not an Ad Hominem:
Your argument sucks *and* you are a jerk.
When you attack the person in an attempt to undermine the argument, this is an Ad Homenim.
When you name call, simply because your opponent is, in fact, a poopy-head, you are only name-calling.
Excellent write-up Steve. Some of my woo-loving friends treat him like some minor god. I always found him vaguely “new age”, so I ignored him, and I’m glad I did.
BTW, I’ve always hated being described as a skeptic. A skeptic is someone who questions or doubts the accepted opinion or consensus. The science denialist are the true skeptics by questioning everything from evolution to germ theory to global warming.
I guess I’m swimming against the current on this point.
Attacking skeptics appears to be perennial pleasure (or is it a business necessity?) for Chopra.
This post by Steve reminded me of something I read more than two years ago that Chopra wrote on his Huffington Post blog: “Skeptics are people who demand that you believe them when they do not believe in anything.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/the-mind-outside-the-body_1_b_51387.html) This coarse description of a skeptic is memorable not only because it is a straw-man but because on brief examination it is an utterly nonsensical straw-man. As becomes apparent from his articles, however, Chopra does not eschew the meaningless or the nutty, but promotes such as modes of creativity and nonconformism.
For someone who preaches a solipsistic, albeit feel-good, philosophy that, it seems to me, flirts seriously with the conflicting assertions that a) one’s mind, by vague quantum properties, has an absurd degree of control over one’s health and prosperity, and b) one should negate one’s ego, suspend all value-judgments, and repeat insensately, “In my world, nothing ever goes wrong,” Chopra displays a hypocritical amount of hurt-feelings in his articles about the criticism he receives from skeptics. And, may I say, without sounding too petty, he looks, in video appearances (e.g. Dawkins’ “The Enemies of Reason”), far less healthy and far more sleep-deprived than the average cynical and mistrustful hominid.
A cursory search through his archives on the Huffington Post reveals that Chopra attacks skeptics regularly with only small variations on the arguments that Steve has refuted above. For instance, here, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/the-woo-woo-factor_b_53658.html, is an article from more than two year ago in which Chopra writes that “skeptics are self-appointed vigilantes for the suppression of curiosity,” and then goes on to remark frivolously that, “what I like most about the ‘woo woo’ camp. . .is its desire to remain human,” which is to imply that skeptics are inhuman.
This charge of skeptics suppressing curiosity is the one that most rankles. Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman and Richard Dawkins are heroes to many in the skeptical community for the very fact that they could (and can) imbue others with a sense of enthusiasm and wonder for the natural world, as demonstrated in this video of Feynman talking about why physics excites him (starting ~40s): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnzB_IHGyjg
@ Skepdave
please see andyo’s comment above
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1327#comment-16142
Michael Simpson-”BTW, I’ve always hated being described as a skeptic. A skeptic is someone who questions or doubts the accepted opinion or consensus. The science denialist are the true skeptics by questioning everything from evolution to germ theory to global warming.”
Thats a problem that critical thinkers that use the ’skeptic’ label have been wrestling with for a good while now. But since we have been using it for better than 30 years , to describe the movement, I think that its high time that mainstream dictionaries take notice, and give ,as a legitimate usage, an additional entry that truly reflects what we are all about.
As a matter of fact, maybe we should all band together and lobby the O.E.D. or Merriam Webster to get the ball rolling. After all, dictionaries are supposed to reflect how words are widely used in society, and currently, the “official” definition of skeptic doesn’t really fit the skeptic movement.
My bank manager wishes I would take Deepak (formerly known as Dr) Chopra a bit more seriously. He’s a proven money-maker.
If only people were fined for using blatant logical fallacies publicly……
Excellent post, Steve.
When I read
“Science is like evolution in that new ideas are generated, and then logic and evidence is used to select against them, so that only useful theories survive, prosper, and replicate.”
I couldn’t help but think:
Scientific advancement by skeptical selection.