16 Evolution and the Fossil Record
- Anecdotes Do Not Make Science
As storytelling animals, humans are prone to believe accounts told as stories by “witnesses.”
The telemarketers know that if they get a handful of celebrities or sincere-sounding custom-
ers (or actors) to praise their products, we will believe these people and go out and buy their
merchandise, even if there have been no careful scientific studies or FDA approvals to back
up their claims. One or two anecdotes may sound convincing, and the experience of your
back-fence neighbor may be interesting, but to truly evaluate claims made in science (and
elsewhere), you need a detailed study with dozens or hundreds of cases. In addition, there
must be a “control” group that does not receive the treatment but a placebo instead, yet think
that they did get the real medicine (so the power of suggestion is not responsible for the
alleged benefit). Anything approved by the FDA has met this standard; most stuff sold in the
“new age” or “health food” stores has not been so carefully studied. When it has been ana-
lyzed, there usually turn out to be either marginal benefits or none at all. (The con artists and
snake oil salesmen will take your money all the same.) If you listen closely to the language
of the ads for some of these “medicines,” it carefully avoids the terminology of medicine
and pharmacology, and instead uses phrases likes “supports thyroid health” or “promotes
healthy bladder function.” These phrases are not true medicinal claims, and so they are not
subject to FDA regulations. Nonetheless, the great majority of these products that have been
scientifically analyzed turn out to be worthless and a waste of money, and every once in a
while, they turn out to be harmful or even deadly.
Similarly, the evidence for UFOs or alien abductions or Sasquatch sightings is largely
anecdotal. One person, usually alone, is a witness to these extraordinary events and is con-
vinced they are real. However, studies have shown again and again how easily people can
hallucinate or be deceived by common natural phenomena into “seeing” something that
really isn’t there. A handful of “eyewitnesses” means nothing in science when the claims are
unusual; much more concrete evidence is needed. - Arguments from Authority and Credential Mongering
Many people try to win arguments by quoting some “authority” on the subject in an attempt
to intimidate and silence their opponents. Sometimes they are accurately quoting people
who really are experts in a subject, but more often than not the quotation is out of context
and does not support their point at all, or the authority is really not that authoritative. As we
shall see in the chapters that follow, this is the usual problem with creationist “quote min-
ing”: when you go back and look at the source, the quote is out of context, and means just
the opposite of what they claim, or the source itself is outdated or not very credible. As Carl
Sagan puts it, there are no true authorities; there are people with expertise in certain areas,
but nobody is an authority in more than a narrow range of human knowledge.
One of the principal symbols of authority in scholarship and science is the Ph.D. But you
don’t need a Ph.D. to do good science, and not all people who have Ph.D.s are good scientists
either. As those of us who have gone through the ordeal know, a Ph.D. only proves that you
can survive a grueling test of endurance in doing research and writing a dissertation on a
very narrow topic. It doesn’t prove that you are smarter than anyone else or more qualified
to render an opinion than anyone else. Because earning a Ph.D. requires enormous focus on a
specific area, many people with that degree have actually lost a lot of their scholarly breadth
and knowledge of other fields in the process of focusing on their theses.