Bernard C. Beins
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Unfortunately for students’ knowledge (but fortunately for lemmings), these rodents do
not commit suicide, either individually or in groups.
The myth of lemming suicide seems to have gained permanence in our culture on the
basis of the 1958 Disney movie, White Wilderness, in which the movie makers ostensibly
caught lemmings leaping to their deaths (Snopes, 2007; Woodford, 2003). So strong was
the belief that lemmings committed suicide that, because the film makers could not induce
a single lemming to commit suicide, they herded the rodents and threw a number into the
water to depict what the animals would not do. The makers of the movie held the belief
of lemming suicide, contrary to all evidence.
As Peirce (1877) noted, “a man may go through life, systematically keeping out of view
all that might cause a change in his opinions” (¶ 23). Peirce recognized the limitations to
this method of fixing beliefs, including the fact that, eventually, one’s beliefs would be at
variance with reality. He noted that some people, but not all, recognize the weaknesses of
tenacity and manage to overcome the tendency to fix ideas this way.
Authority
A second way of fixing beliefs is by virtue of someone’s status as an authority. Peirce (1877)
discussed authority in terms of an imposition of beliefs to control behavior, but the reliance
on authority need not be associated with societal control. Contemporary discussions of
authority easily relate to scientific pronouncements of the ubiquitous “experts.”
The problem with relying on authority for knowledge is that the authorities may make
pronouncements that do not represent reality. For instance, some people believe in
creationism or its cousin, intelligent design, because of statements of religious authorities.
The scientific evidence favors the theory of evolution (APA Online, 2007).
One persistent myth that relies on authority involves the arguments made in opposition
to Christopher Columbus’s proposal to sail west from Europe to reach India. According to
lore, the dogmatists in the court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella argued that the earth
was flat, so such a trip would be impossible; Columbus, in his wisdom, argued otherwise.
This scenario has appeared in countless textbooks. It has the disadvantage of being
untrue, however (Gould, 1994). According to Gould, one of the founders of Cornell
University concocted the myth as part of a plan to drive a wedge between religious and
scientific communities: Religious dogmatists spouted the party line, but the ostensibly
scien tific and empirical Columbus knew the truth. In reality, Gould reported, educated
people had known since the time of the ancient Greeks that the world is round. In reality,
those who opposed Columbus’s expedition correctly argued that the world was too big
and that Columbus and his crews would perish before reaching India. The explorers were
lucky to have bumped into an unknown continent, which saved them.
A more recent, and more damaging, reliance on authority concerned the so-called
“refrigerator mothers” of autistic children. The term originated with the psychiatrist Leo
Kanner in the 1940s and was promoted by Bruno Bettelheim (Laidler, 2004). According
to Kanner’s hypothesis, a mother’s emotional coldness and withdrawal from a child was
responsible for autism. This hypothesis caused notable guilt in mothers. There seems never
to have been any empirical support for the hypothesis; those who fell prey to it did so