The Nevada Sagebrush

Barry Belmont

Too often people defend their beliefs by saying that something is true because it works for them and that the practical benefit is enough of a justification to believe. We can see this as one of the most frequent reasons that people give to stick to their guns when discussing astrology, alternative medicine, their religion or anything else.

This fallacy of pragmatism usually takes the form of “I’m satisfied with it,” or “It makes me feel better,” as if one could extrapolate truth from customer satisfaction. However, it is unclear what the idea of “works” even means when it applies to such things as palm reading, Dianetics or numerology.

At the very least, it means the claimant holds the practical benefit of a belief as an argument for its factual nature.

But claims should be summarily dismissed when their effects can be attributed to a placebo effect. If I have a fever and I take a sugar pill and the next day the fever has disappeared, I might be tempted to ascribe the results to the sugar pill. But the overall scientific evidence (which must be given credence over my single anecdotal experience) suggests that sugar pills do not reduce fevers.

Hidden within my belief in a claim’s effectiveness is almost invariably a form of the “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” fallacy. All that fancy Latin basically means that since effect B came after cause A, one believes that B was caused by A.

Usually, saying A causes B because B happened after A does not lead to incorrect conclusions. For instance, if I tripped and sprained my ankle, I wouldn’t be remiss to conclude that tripping caused me to sprain my ankle. We must be careful though, because while this little bit of logical shorthand derived in the brains of our evolutionary ancestors may yield correct answers, it is not the fact that B follows A that makes A cause B.

The only way to establish causation is to apply the scientific method: Have a theory, make some hypotheses and predictions, set up a robust experiment with confounding variables sufficiently controlled and interpret those as objectively as you can.

And if you want to go so far as to establish a scientific fact, you need to then share your results and experimental procedures with others and have them replicate your findings using similar methods.

By sharing your findings with your peers you ensure that your results are not due to random chance. Replication ensures credibility. This is why those poor researchers in the late 1980s who declared they had discovered cold fusion were shown to be mistaken when no one was able to reproduce their results.

Cold fusion is an excellent example of the unrelatedness of the desire for something to be true and its factual nature. Any scientist worth his or her salt would love nothing more than for cold fusion to be possible. It would be an abundant source of cheap energy which could solve national crises, secure a Nobel Prize for its discoverer and be the single most fascinating scientific find of the century.

But wishing something is true does not make it so.

Barry Belmont is an avid proponent of the scientific method. He also studies biology and mechanical engineering. Reach him at perspectives@nevadasagebrush.com.

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