Saturday, September 05, 2009   Orac has a post on motivated
reasoning, and draws the right conclusion from the studies that
have been done on it:  I'm just as human as any of the
participants in this study. Indeed, any skeptic who thinks he or
she is not just as prone to such errors in thinking is not a
skeptic but suffering from self-delusion. The only difference
between skeptics and non-skeptics, scientists and nonscientists,
in this regard is that skeptics try to make themselves aware of
how human thinking can go wrong and then act preemptively to try
to keep those normal human cognitive quirks from leading them
astray. Indeed, guarding against these normal human failings
when it comes to making conclusions about the natural world is
the very reason we need science and why we need to base our
medicine on science. If we do not and if we further do not at
every turn gird ourselves with science, skepticism, and critical
thinking against pseudoscience and the need to belief, it won't
be long before we are indi