Opinion – Bruno Gualano: Critical thinking is a trap to catch crooks

At least half of the American population believes in psychic healing. About a third also believe in haunted houses, demonic possession, telepathy, and that ETs occasionally give us the air of grace. In our bands, 1 in 4 Brazilians is convinced that alien beings are not mere outsiders, but live in disguise among us; 7% also swear that the Earth is flat.

If you, dear reader, think all this is absurd, it is likely that you are part of a tiny portion of 20%/30% of the population that disbelieves in monsters, deities, ghosts and other myths.

Beliefs not supported by evidence or refuted by evidence are called epistemically unfounded. And they also serve for pseudoscience.

The huge amount of people used to pseudoscience has become a worldwide concern. Not that the belief that ETs would have collaborated with humans in building pyramids is considered threatening — albeit bizarre — or that ice walls in Antarctica would delimit a flat planet. However, the denial of science in sensitive fields such as vaccination or global warming poses a real threat to individual and planetary life.

Scientist and activist Carl Sagan (1934–1996) said that belief in pseudoscience was inversely proportional to understanding science. So, would scientific education be the elixir against nonsense?

A 2018 study carried out by a pair of researchers at California State University (United States) shed light on the matter.

About 800 university students were divided into three groups. The former received formal training in critical thinking — the ability to analyze facts in the light of evidence, rationality and skepticism, in order to inform opinion formation. The second took basic classes in the scientific method, without, however, applying it to the detection of pseudoscience. The third received no instructions and served as a control.

Before and after the interventions, which lasted a single academic semester, students filled out a questionnaire on pseudoscience beliefs related to health, the paranormal, ghosts, conspiracy theories, etc.

As expected, the untrained students held fast to their unfounded beliefs. Surprisingly, the same happened with those who had not applied scientific method classes. In contrast, students who were educated in critical thinking became less vulnerable to pseudoscience, regardless of differences in ethnicity, socioeconomic profile, school performance, or political affiliation.

Hence, it can be concluded that pseudoscience is faced with the education of the individual for rationalization, the comparison of different sources of (mis)information and, above all, the application of science in the reflection on everyday themes – from the vile chupacabras to the complex changes climate.

Well, dear reader, unfortunately, critical thinking does not come from a cradle or grow into a tree. It is an intellectual capacity that can be improved in the classroom and, therefore, perfectly capable of being boosted by public policy. But who would the initiative serve?

The development of critical thinking, let’s face it, was never exactly a state project. However, the outrageous ode to mass stupidity is something else, conceived since 2018.

Under Jair, the Education agenda (if I may be hyperbole) was guided by exotic actions (if I may be an understatement). The four ministers slumped over the portfolio devoted themselves to such noble subjects as gender ideology, creationism, militarization of education, historical revisionism, non-party school, among other patriotic and deeducative patacoadas. Would we be facing yet another example of the pure juice of Bolsonar incompetence?

As true as the hypothesis sounds, I believe, above all, in method. The deliberate bet on distraction as a means of quelling every mode of critical thinking. This is, as we have seen, a fearsome snare to catch crooks. Let’s connect the dots. It wouldn’t be the mouse spreading mousetraps around.