The Many Ways Scientists Can "Sweep Under the Rug" Observations They Don't Want

Scientists sometimes portray themselves as people who do not hesitate to follow the evidence wherever it points. But in reality many a modern expert shows a strong tendency to evade and stifle evidence that conflicts with his cherished dogmas, his entrenched ideas about the way reality works. There are quite a few ways in which an expert may evade or stifle some observational result that he doesn't want to accept. Let's look at some of these ways that scientists and other experts "sweep under the rug" observations they wish to ignore. 

Way #1: Just “File-Drawer” the Unwanted Result

The term “file drawer effect" refers to the existence of unpublished scientific studies. After running a study getting an undesired result, a scientist may decide to not even write up the study as a scientific paper. It is believed that the file drawers of scientists contain data on many studies that were never written up as papers, and never published in scientific journals.

If a scientist gets a negative result failing to show an effect he was looking for, the scientist may never write up the experiment as a paper, and he may justify this by saying that it would be hard to get the paper published, because scientific journals don't like to publish negative results. Or, if the results seem to conflict with existing dogmas, the scientist may think to himself that it would be hard to get a paper with such a result published, given existing prejudices. A study making surveys of scientists found that 63% of US psychologists surveyed and 63% of evolution researchers surveyed confessed to "not reporting studies or variables that failed to reach statistical significance (e.g. p ≤0.05) or some other desired statistical threshold." This is quite the intellectual sin, because it is just as important to report negative results as it is to report positive results. 

Way #2: Prune the Data to Remove the Unwanted Result

When a scientist gets an unwanted result in an experiment or a meta-analysis of previously published papers, the scientist might try to get a better result by removing some of the data items collected, or removing some of the scientific papers included in the meta-analysis. If the scientist collected the data himself, he may arbitrarily remove any extreme data item, on the grounds that it was an “outlier.” Or he may apply some filter criteria that gets rid of certain data items. For example, if a study with 1000 subjects is analyzing the safety of a drug, and 100 of them died not long after taking the drug, some of those hundred troubling data points might be removed by introducing some inclusion criteria which excludes most of those who died.

Or if a scientist is doing a meta-analysis of 100 studies of the effectiveness of some medical technique not popular with scientists (for example, acupuncture or homeopathy), and the result ends up showing an effectiveness for the technique, this undesired result can be modified by modifying the inclusion criteria used to decide which studies will be included in the meta-analysis. Similarly, data items may be yanked out of a scientific paper, to help the paper achieve something that may be reported as "statistically significant." A study making surveys of scientists found that 38% of US psychologists surveyed and 23.9% of evolution researchers surveyed confessed to "deciding to exclude data points after first checking the impact on statistical significance."

Way #3: Keep on Collecting More Data Until You Get a Result Less Unwanted

If a scientist collects a certain amount of observational data, and he is left with an unwanted result, another technique he can use to get a more desirable result is to continue collecting more data until a more desirable result is achieved. For example, lets us imagine a scientist tries to do a study showing that lots of television watching increases your chance of sudden cardiac death. Suppose the scientist gets data on 10,000 years of living of 1000 subjects, but does not find the effect he is looking for. The scientists can just keep collecting more data, such as trying to get data on 20,000 years of living of 2000 subjects. As soon as the desired result appears, the scientist can then stop collecting data, and write up his paper for publication. It is easy to see how such a technique can distort reality. A study making surveys of scientists found that 55.9% of US psychologists surveyed and 50.7% of evolution researchers surveyed confessed to "collecting more data after inspecting whether the results are statistically significant."  

Way #4: Just Switch the Hypothesis If the Original Hypothesis Is Not Supported by the Experiment

A very common technique is what is called HARKing, which stands for Hypothesizing After Results are Known. A scientific experiment is supposed to state a hypothesis, gather data, and then analyze whether the data supports the hypothesis. But imagine you are some scientist gathering data that does not support the original hypothesis. Rather than writing this up as a result against the original hypothesis, you can come up with some other hypothesis after the data has been collected, and then write up the scientific experiment describing it as a study that confirms the new hypothesis. You might avoid even mentioning that the experiment had failed to confirm the original hypothesis. One problem with this is that it has the effect of stifling or covering up a negative result which should have been the main news item coming from the scientific paper. The bad effects of Hypothesizing After Results Are Known are described here.

There is a general technique that can be used to prevent or discourage the four effects just describe. The technique is for institutions to arrange for pre-registered studies with guaranteed publication. Under such a method, a scientist has to publish in writing (before collecting data) the hypothesis that he is testing, and specify in detail the exact experimental method that will be used, including data inclusion criteria. Then regardless of the result achieved, the result must be written up and published in a journal, in a way true to the original experimental design specification. It is widely recognized that such pre-registration and guaranteed publication would result in more reliable and robust scientific papers, with a reduction in misleading publication bias and file-drawer effects. But the scientific community has made almost no effort to use such a methodology. 

A study making surveys of scientists found that 27% of US psychologists surveyed and 54% of evolution researchers surveyed confessed to "reporting an unexpected finding as having been predicted from the start."  Should this cause us to suspect that evolution researchers are more prone to lie than psychology researchers? 

Way #5: Mask the Undesired Result with a Paper Title Not Mentioning It

Scientists write the titles of their own papers, and such titles can often mask or hide undesired results. An example was a scientific paper describing an attempt to look for long-lived proteins in the synapses of the brain, proteins that might help to explain human memories that can last for 50 years. As discussed here, the paper found no real evidence for any such thing.

The paper found the following:

• Studying thousands of brain proteins, the study found that virtually all proteins in brains are very short-lived, with half-lives of less than a week.
  
• Table 2 of the paper gives specific half-life estimates for the most long-lasting brain proteins, and in this table only 10 out of thousands of brain proteins had half-lives of 10 days or longer.
  
• Of the proteins whose half-life is estimated in Table 2, only one of them has a half-life of longer than 30 days, that protein having a half-life of only 32 days.
  
• A graph in the paper indicates that none of the synapse proteins had a half-life of more than 35 days.

So what was the title of this paper finding the undesired result of no evidence for synapse proteins with a lifetime of years? It was this: 'Identification of long-lived synaptic proteins by proteomic analysis of synaptosome protein turnover.” The paper thereby masked and stifled the actual observational result, that no truly long-lived synaptic proteins were found.

Way #6: Get Your Study's Press Release to Mask the Undesired Result with a Headline Not Mentioning It

How a scientific paper is reported is determined not just by the title used for the paper but the headline used in the press release announcing the paper. Such press releases often mask or hide undesired observational results. A good example is the press release for the scientific paper just discussed, which had the very misleading title, “In Mice, Long-Lasting Brain Proteins Offer Clues to How Memories Last a Lifetime.” This title masked and stifled the actual observational result, that no evidence of any synaptic proteins lasting years was found.

A scientist may claim that he has nothing to do with the headline used by the university press office when it issues a press release describing the scientist's study. But I suspect the typical situation is that such a press release is sent to the scientist before it is released, with the scientist having the opportunity to object if anything in the press release is inaccurate or misleading.

Way #7: Bury the Undesired Result Outside of the Abstract, Placing It Within a Sea of Details

If a scientist gets an undesired result, one way to kind of stifle it is to not state the result in the abstract of the paper, but to place it somewhere deep inside the paper, surrounded by paragraphs and paragraphs of fine details. Only the most diligent readers of the paper will notice the result. Since most scientific papers are hidden behind paywalls, with only the paper abstract being easily discovered through a web search, the result will be that very few people will ever read about the undesired result.

Way #8: State the Undesired Result Using Jargon That Almost No One Can Understand

Yet another way for a scientist to stifle an undesired result is to state the result using some fancy jargon or mathematical expression that almost no one will be able to understand. Such a thing is easy to do, just by using “science speak” that is like some foreign language to the average reader. For example, if the paper has found that some popular pill increases the chance of people dying, such a result can be announced by saying that the pill "produces a statistically significant prognostic detriment," a phrase a reader will be unlikely to understand. 

Way #9: Attack Someone's Methodology Producing an Undesired Result

The previous ways involved how a scientist may stifle or evade a result that came up in his own activity. But there are also ways to stifle or evade results produced by other people. Let's look at some of those.

One way is to attack the methodology of an study that produced a result you don't want to accept. For example, if an ESP experimenter got a result indicating ESP exists, you can complain about a lack of screens between the test subject and the observer. If such screens are used, you can complain that the observer and the experimenter were not in separate rooms. If they were in separate rooms, you can complain that a bit of noise might have traveled between the rooms. If the rooms were far-separated, you can complain that maybe the test subject could have peeked through a keyhole or a transom, or left a secret video camera somewhere.

Although there is nothing wrong per se in attacking the methodology of an experiment, given that many scientific studies have a very poor methodology, it should be noted that methodological criticisms often involve hypocrisy. Scientist X will often complain about a lack of some thing in Scientist Y's work, when Scientist X does not include that thing in his own experiments.

Way #10: Try to Undermine Confidence in Those Reporting the Unwanted Observations

An expert may use several different techniques to undermine confidence in an observer who has reported an unwanted observation. One commonly used technique is what is called gaslighting. It involves making one or more insinuations that the observer is suffering from some psychological problem, credibility problem or observational problem. 

Way #11: Speak As If the Observations Were Not Made

One of the most common techniques an expert may use to stifle an unwanted observational result is the technique of simply speaking as if some type of observational result was never made, without trying to discredit or even mention the undesired observations. For example, it is not uncommon for neuroscientists to say that there is no evidence that consciousness can continue after signs of brain activity have ceased, despite very strong evidence that exactly such a thing happens during many near-death experience.  To give another example, scientists often simply claim there is no evidence for paranormal phenomena, despite the very strong laboratory evidence for ESP that has been collected over many years. 

Way #12: "Speculate Away" the Undesired Observations

Faced with an undesired result, a scientist will often resort to elaborate speculations designed to explain away the result.  Here are some examples: 

(1) Faced with nothing but negative results from decades of searches for extraterrestrial radio signals,  scientists have resorted to speculations (such as the zoo hypothesis) designed to allow them to continue to believe that our galaxy is filled with intelligent life. 
(2) Faced with observational results suggesting that scientists don't well understand the composition of the universe or the dynamics of stellar movements, scientists invented the speculations of dark energy and dark matter,  rather than confess their ignorance about the composition of the universe  and the dynamics of stellar movements. 
(3) Faced with evidence that the proteins in synapses are too short-lived for synapses to be a storage place for memories, scientists created very elaborate chemical speculations designed to explain away this result.
(4) Faced with undesired evidence from near-death experiences that human consciousness can keep operating after brains have shut down, scientists created various elaborate speculations designed to explain away such evidence, including speculations of secret caches of hallucinogens in the brain that have not yet been discovered. 

Way #13: Stigmatize or "Quarantine" the Undesired Observation, by Claiming That "It Isn't Science"

The word "science" has multiple definitions. An "operational" definition of science is the effort to establish truth by the systematic study of observations and experiments. According to such a definition, any good methodology observation of something spooky qualifies as science. But there's a much more stringent definition of science, the definition of "facts established by observations and experiments." Using that more stringent definition, very many observations can be thrown away, on the basis that a fact was not established. Such an exclusion is improper, because the factuality of some Phenomenon X is established after a certain number of observations are made of that phenomenon; and if you always throw each new observation of that phenomenon, you are improperly preventing any possibility of establishing the factuality of the phenomenon. 

Way #14: Claim Impossibility

Trying to sweep under the rug unwanted observations by claiming impossibility is one of the "oldest tricks in the book." It works like this: you just claim that whatever offending observation was reported cannot possibly have occurred, because such a thing is impossible. 

An example of this way being used was when Thomas Jefferson rejected a report of a meteorite fall, using what seemed to him the unassailable logic that stones cannot fall from the sky. He thought that Newton had revealed the clockwork orderliness of the cosmos, and that the idea of stones falling from the sky was therefore impossible. 

Almost always what is going in such impossibility claims is just someone reasoning along the lines of, "I believe for certain that X is true, but observation Y conflicts with my belief, so Y is impossible."  Instead of using such reasoning, what he should be doing is recognizing the offending observation as an anomaly, and a possible sign that the cherished contradicted belief may be wrong. 

Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science had a good grasp of the importance of anomalies. Seemingly impossible anomalies may be the seeds of scientific revolutions, new outlooks on reality in which the once-regarded-as-impossible anomaly is recognized as both possible and observed. 

Way #15: Claim Irrationality

Another trick involves mounting the "high horse" of claimed rationality. It's a pretty easy trick to use. You just claim that any offending observations are examples of "irrationality" that must be discarded by "rational" people like yourself. Almost always the claim of irrationality is unfounded. 

For example, someone may discard all reports of apparitions, on the grounds that apparitions are irrational. But under the theory that humans have souls, an apparition sighting of a deceased person is not at all irrational. Similarly, an observation of little green men emerging from a flying saucer is not at all irrational, under the not-obviously-irrational idea that there is life on many other planets. 

Way #16: Just Avoid Mentioning the Undesired Observations, and Make No Mention of Them in Textbooks or Authoritative Subject Reviews

The final way is the simplest way for experts to stifle unwanted observations. They can simply avoid mentioning the observational results in places where they should be discussed, places like textbooks and review articles written by scientists.  This way is used so massively that certain science information sources (such as the journal Nature and typical textbooks) effectively act like "filter bubbles," preventing their readers from learning about many important facts that may conflict with their worldviews. 

Trying to Show Current Human Evolution, All They Have Is "Small Potatoes"

 There is some unintentional hilarity in the latest example of the "humans are still evolving" story that periodically appears (in slightly different forms) on science news sites.  The second photo in the article shows some hands holding small potatoes. The article is trying to claim that people living near the Andes mountains have evolved a better ability to digest small potatoes. The writer probably forgot that in English the phrase "small potatoes" is a figure of speech or expression meaning "something insignificant, of little importance." So the small potatoes visual symbolizes the examples discussed in the article, all of which are examples of unimpressive "small potatoes" microevolution. 

The first example given of current human evolution is the "small potatoes" example of lactose tolerance. Humans have been breeding cows for their dairy products for something like 10,000 years. It is claimed that about 10,000 years ago, only children could drink cows' milk, and that adults were unable to digest cows' milk. Supposedly there was a genetic variant allowing adults to digest cows' milk, and that such a variation became more common during over the past 10,000 years, allowing more and more adults to digest cows' milk. The evidence for this claim is rather weak, and even if it is true, the claimed example of evolution is only a not-very-impressive example of microevolution. 

The second example given of current human evolution is another "small potatoes" example of a small change in digestion: the claim that "Quechua people of highland Indigenous Andean ancestry" are better at digesting small potatoes. The third example is the  "small potatoes" example that some people living at high altitudes in Tibet have red blood cells with "unusually high oxygen saturation." This is a very minor bodily difference. 

We then have an example of how evolutionary narratives are adapted to fit any facts, in a "heads I win, tails you lose" manner. First the article suggests that darker skin evolved in Africa to protect from sun damage. Then the article suggests that lighter skin was favored in Europe, so that people could get more vitamin D from sunlight. There is no very strong evidence behind these claims, which in any case involve something only superficial (skin color). 

The final example of current human evolution cited by the article is a laughable one: an increase in nearsightedness. 

We read this:

"Myopia, or nearsightedness, has surged in the past few decades. In 2021, researchers found evidence in the UK Biobank that the condition is associated with mutant alleles.

These alleles have increased in frequency over the past 25 years, possibly because of natural selection. While nearsightedness might be a disadvantage for survival, some of the gene variants linked to this trait may have other advantages for reproduction."

Notice the "heads I win, tails you lose" type of affair going on. If nearsightedness is decreasing, and vision in a population is getting better, that will be cited as evidence of the amazing power of evolution to produce benefits in organisms. But if instead nearsightedness is increasing, and vision in a population is getting worse, that is also cited as evidence for the amazing power of evolution, with a "may have" and a "possibly" thrown in. 

Microevolution refers to minor examples of evolution. The word macroevolution refers to very big and very major examples of evolution, such as an evolution from microscopic organisms to large visible organisms, or an evolution from sea-dwelling organisms to land-dwelling organisms, or an evolution from non-flying organisms to flying organisms, or an evolution from ape-like creatures to humans. 

We know of a few minor examples of microevolution occurring in humans, such as the ability of more humans to digest lactose, and the ability of some humans to breathe better at high altitudes.  But no one has ever observed macroevolution in the human population or any other population of organisms. Macroevolution is the alleged appearance of major complex visible biological innovations in organisms due to natural evolutionary processes.  For example, if a species that did not have wings once evolved into a species that did have wings, that would be an example of macroevolution. And if a species that did not have eyes ever evolved into a species that did have eyes, that would be an example of macroevolution. 

Recorded history provides no example of macroevolution occurring in the human population or any other population of organisms. We have Egyptian statues and bas-reliefs of humans dating from 5000 years ago, and the humans depicted look just like the humans of today.  We have priceless ancient literary works such as those of Plato, proving that humans were capable of brilliant thought and writing thousands of years ago. If humans from five thousand years ago were transported to the current age and dressed in modern clothes, they could pass for modern humans. 

Evolutionary biologists claim there was in the past some huge amount of macroevolution that caused ape-like ancestors to transform into humans capable of speech, writing and city building. But a study of the growth of human population will cast doubt on such claims. 

The number of humans that have lived has been estimated at 100 billion. But a web site discussing this issue tells us that 99% of these people have lived in the past 10,000 years. Since 8000 BC some 100 billion humans have lived, but in the period between about 400,000 BC and 8000 BC, the total number of humans or pre-humans who lived was quite probably no greater than about a billion, and very probably less than 3 billion (the average population size being only about 20,000 or smaller for most of this time).  A web site discussing the issue states at 8000 B.C. the total number of humans who had ever lived was only about a billion. 

But we know there has been no macroevolution of humans since 8000 BC -- only a little microevolution like better lactose digestion and better high-altitude breathing in some people.  A statue from about 9000 BC shows a human with the modern human form, as do skulls and skeletons from around such a time.  We also know from archeological records that humans were building towns around such a time, in places such as Jericho. We also know from cave paintings that something like modern humans existed around 30,000 B.C.  

So if you believe the conventional account, you must believe that a totality of no more than 3 billion humans or pre-humans living before 8000 B.C. underwent enormous macroevolution (resulting in humans that had language, abstract thinking and symbolic abilities), but that in 100 billion humans living since 8000 BC there has been no such  macroevolution. Such an idea is not credible.  Why would there be such dramatic macroevolution during less than 3 billion lives, and no macroevolution during the subsequent period in which there were 100 billion human lives?  We would think the opposite would be more likely. 

A science site says, "An effective population size of 10,000 has been estimated for the most recent common ancestor of modern humans and of Neandertals (Ptak et al., cited in Premo and Hublin, 2009)." Conversely, our planet has had billions of humans for about 70 years. According to the account of our evolutionary biologists, from a population of only about 10,000 or a few tens of thousands of organisms before 50,000 B.C. there came some dramatic burst of macroevolution transforming ape-men into humans, but no such macroevolution has come from any of a population of billions of humans living in modern times. 

When discussing the unlikelihood of getting dramatic macroevolution from a small population, and the relation of population size to the likelihood of there appearing large complex evolutionary innovations, our biologists try their best to cloud the waters by distracting us with side points. But the matter will be more clear to anyone who considers a hypothetical example.  Requiring almost infinitely improbable protein molecule innovations and so much more, the appearance of a macroevolution innovation largely by random mutations can be compared to some typing monkey accidentally producing a brilliant essay or a clever computer program.  Now imagine if some huge group of scientists tested for years billions of monkeys trained to sit at keyboards and type, and saw no such worthy outputs ever appearing from their efforts.  It would then be very dubious for such scientists to claim that such worthy outputs came in the past from a group of only about 15,000 such typing monkeys.  It is just as dubious to claim that some tiny population of perhaps 15,000 pre-humans yielded some gigantic marvel of macroevolution resulting in speaking and writing humans, when no macroevolution at all has come from population sizes 300,000 times larger. 

The diagram below illustrates the difficulty. Each brick in the diagram represents very roughly a million human or pre-human lives, taking place after 200,000 B.C. According to the Darwinian account, there was some huge evolution leap at the very top of this pyramid,  in the time before 10,000 B.C.,  when there was only a total of a few million human lives or pre-human lives -- some giant leap transforming pre-humans into humans capable of building cities, talking, and writing books. But we know that there has been no major evolution in humans since 8000 B.C.  What sense does it make to think that Darwinian evolution would yield so great a leap in human abilities at the tiny top of such a pyramid, when there has been no such leap in the part of the pyramid constituting 99% of its weight?

Two Professors Mischaracterize Religious Belief

 At the site Aeon we have an article called "Believing and Thinking" by two professors who attempt to disparage religious belief by engaging in some scheme of categorization that does not make any sense and does not fit the facts. Their first mistake is to speak as if there are two types of beliefs: "matter-of-fact beliefs" that are based on evidence, and "religious beliefs" that are not based on evidence.  The authors claim "religious credence doesn’t depend on evidence in the way factual belief does."

Their claim that religious beliefs are not based on evidence is an incorrect example of what is called a sweeping generalization.  Some religious beliefs are not based on evidence, but are adopted as a "leap of faith" without reference to evidence. Other religious beliefs are very much based on evidence. 

For example, a person may belief in the existence of a divine creator or transcendent mind driving certain types of natural events. That belief may be very much based on evidence, including the following:

1. The evidence that our universe had a sudden fine-tuned beginning, in some event utterly beyond the power of natural science to explain, with the universe suddenly beginning in an enormously fine-tuned state needed for it eventually become a habitable universe where galaxies and stars like our sun to exist. 
2. The abundant evidence (widely discussed by physicists) that the laws and fundamental constants of our universe are very precisely fine-tuned to allow the existence of long-lived stars like our sun and carbon-based creatures such as ourselves, with their fine-tuning such as we would not expect to exist in even 1 out of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 random universes. 
3. The failure of scientists to ever credibly explain the origin of life, with all experiments trying to produce life from non-life being a dismal failure. 
4. The failure of scientists to ever credibly explain the origination of the type of cells in human bodies (eukaryotic cells), with the prevailing current "explanation" being a non-Darwinian "fairy tale" type of account that is no credible explanation. 
5. The failure of scientists to ever credibly explain the appearance of multicellular macroscopic organisms, with the appearance of such organisms not being explicable under any gradualist Darwinian account. 
6. The failure of scientists to ever credibly explain the appearance of millions of genes and protein molecules in the biosphere, because of the high functional thresholds of such fine-tuned components, under which there must be a very special arrangement of hundreds of parts before any function is obtained. 
7.  The failure of scientists to ever credibly explain human minds and human memory, which are not credibly explained by brains, for a host of reasons discussed at my site here. 
8. The failure of scientists to ever credibly explain the origin of an adult human body, there being no mechanistic explanation of how there could occur a progression from a speck-sized zygote to the vast hierarchical organization of the human body (such a progression not being explained by DNA and its genes, which do not specify the structure of any human body or any of the cells that make up such a body). 

I could make a list equally long and substantive for the evidence reasons for believing in life after death. They would include a reference to evidence such as the fact that during cardiac arrest humans often report themselves moving out of their bodies and seeing their bodies from positions six feet away or more, just as if they had souls that can exist separate from the body. 

One of the main religious beliefs is the belief in a human soul. I have written more than 700 posts discussing the evidence supporting that belief, most of which are to be found at my site here, and in the series of posts here. And the evidence basis supporting such a belief is many times greater than my own writings on this topic. So when I hear people like the authors of this Aeon article try to claim or insinuate that religious beliefs are held by people having no interest in evidence, I regard that as being like someone claiming that there is no evidence basis for believing in global warming.  

So what can be said about the Aeon article professors who have tried to claim that religious belief is not based on evidence? Merely that they are guilty of sweeping generalizations that are not correct either in all cases or in all important cases.  From the fact that some religious beliefs are not based on evidence, our flubbing professors have tried to make the generalization that religious beliefs are in general not based on evidence. That is not true at all.  A correct generalization is that some religious beliefs are based on evidence and other religious beliefs are not based on evidence.  

We should laugh at the professors' clumsy attempts to try to establish their faulty sweeping generalization that religious belief does not rely on evidence. First they quote a Bible verse, which is rather ridiculous in an essay of this type. Then the professors cite a study, claiming that it showed that believers "report lower levels of confidence in the invisible religious entities they profess, like God and angels, than in invisible scientific entities, like germs and oxygen."  No, the study instead reported that "adults reporting low levels of religiosity expressed greater belief in the existence of scientific than religious entities but adults reporting high levels of religiosity expressed equivalent levels of belief in the existence of each domain." 

The professors then make this incorrect generalization: 

"Difference number 2: factual belief is highly vulnerable to evidence, while religious credence is not vulnerable to evidence." This is another pejorative sweeping generalization that is not uniformly true. I can give eight examples that discredit this generalization claiming that evidence cannot change a religious belief. 

Example #1. Christians originally believed that the Earth is only about 6000 years old, based on genealogies in the Bible that seemed to suggest only about 4000 years between the birth of Adam and the time of Jesus. However, faced with evidence that Earth is very much older than 6000 years, a large fraction of all Christians have dropped the belief that Earth is only about 6000 years old.  This is very much a modification of a religious belief based on evidence

Example #2.  In many cases a person may have believed that he is under the protection of God or some guardian angel, who will make sure he enjoys a happy life. After suffering some terrible misfortune (such as the death of a child or a terrible car accident or financial ruin), the person may revise such a religious belief, and may then start to believe that his life is largely a hard challenge or "trail of tears," a test of his soul to be endured with fortitude. When this happens, it is very much a revision of a religious belief, based on evidence. 

Example #3.  Around 1950, many Christians had the religious belief that homosexuality was a sin against God, based on a few Old Testament passages. It may have been easy to hold such a belief at that time, when gay people were "in the closet," with only a handful publicly declaring their homosexuality. But now there are millions or very many thousands of people who have declared themselves to be gay, and people have got evidence that homosexuals in general act like ordinary people and are in general people of good character. Faced with such evidence, very many Christians have discarded their previous belief that homosexuals are wicked sinners. That's a revision of a religious belief, based on evidence. 

Example #4.  Before the Protestant Revolution, the people who became Protestants in that revolution had various religious beliefs involving the Pope and the clergy, flattering beliefs that the clergy were called by God and that the Pope was the mouthpiece of God. But then there occurred events that shook such beliefs, such as the scandal of very many priests having concubines, the scandal of the sale of indulgences, the misdeeds of various popes, and so forth. Responding to such evidence, very many dramatically changed some of their religious beliefs, and started adhering to a new form of Christianity (Protestantism), with very different beliefs about the clergy and popes.  This was a major change in religious beliefs caused by evidence. 

Example #5: Christians have traditionally taught the religious belief that an afterlife will occur for someone only when the dead are physically resurrected by divine agency in some Last Days event that may be years in the future, an idea still held by very many millions.   However, the evidence for near-death experiences has caused many Christians to revise that belief, and to switch to a belief that humans have souls that survive death, with life after death occurring immediately after death. This was a major change in religious belief caused by evidence. 

Example #6: Many millions once believed in a religious doctrine called "the divine right of kings," the idea that kings get their authority from God, from a kind of "mandate of heaven." But such a doctrine was discarded by millions who got evidence of one or more kings behaving in an immoral way. This was a major change in religious belief caused by evidence. 

Example #7: In the United States, it has long been a matter of religious belief within certain Christian denominations that unconditional support must be given to the State of Israel (the reasons why are complicated, and have something to do with the fulfillment of biblical prophecies).  But in the light of evidence that the current or recent leaders of Israel have been guilty of horrendous brutality in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East, such a belief has substantially weakened, as shown by polls and the recent US election results. Once again, we have a substantial change in religious belief caused by evidence.  

Example #8: In the 17th century very many had the religious belief that Earth had been specially created at the center of the universe. Very many of the same people discarded that belief by the end of that century, as the evidence for heliocentrism became overwhelming.

With examples such as these being so easy to think of, I may ask: how could these two professors writing at Aeon have claimed that  "religious credence is not vulnerable to evidence"? Maybe they got such an idea through an ivory tower process of armchair reasoning, rather than a deep study of the history of religions and religious thought. 

The two professors refer to "the broad background of faithful who don’t usually pretend to treat their religious credence in an evidence-based way." To the contrary, religious people like to appeal to evidence almost as much as materialists do. My devoutly Catholic mother was always citing this or that fact or claimed observation to back up her religious beliefs.  And evangelical Christians frequently cite some personal "born again" experience as evidence backing up their belief system, while also frequently claiming that this or that event is evidence that scriptural prophecies have been fulfilled. Largely based on accounts of miracles, appeals to evidence have long been a very big part of the literature of Christianity, and a search on archive.org for "apologetics" will find very many volumes in such a literature. In England, Spiritualism is a religion; and it has always been very much an evidence-centered affair, having a very large literature of observational reports preserved at sites such as the iapsop.com site, which preserves two million periodical pages. 

The Aeon article authors try to insinuate that religious believers don't really believe very strongly, and some of their attempts to establish this claim are laughable flubs, such as their appeal to the claim that people in the Bible Belt watch pornography as much as people in less religious areas of the United States. The Bible does not mention pornography, nor does it condemn looking at naked bodies. The professors absurdly cite irrelevant studies, such as when they claim, "The experimental economist Erik Duhaime found that, in an economic game, 100 per cent of Moroccan shopkeepers in the Medina of Marrakesh chose the most charitable option while the call to prayer was audible, dropping to 50 per cent in the 20 minutes following it."

The next silly-sounding generalization of the two professors is this: "Difference number 3: religious credence is compartmentalised, while factual belief is uncompartmentalised." This is a vacuous-sounding statement, as the words "compartmentalised" and "uncompartmentalised" have no clear meaning. The use of imprecise smear words is a hallmark of lazy-thinking hate speech or language of derision. The professors err very badly when they state, "Factual belief is the evidence-responsive default cognitive map that guides action across settings, and religious credence is a chosen, compartmentalised cognitive map that becomes active in sacralised ritual settings." No, religious belief is not something that only "becomes active in sacralised ritual settings," but is something that exists equally in such settings and outside of such settings. 

At this point in the essay, you should shake your head, and ask: have these guys actually interviewed many religious people, or spent much  time talking to them? That's because it is very hard to imagine how anyone who had done that would ever claim or insinuate that religious belief is something that only switches on when someone goes to a church or a mosque. 

There are plenty of mistakes to be found in the doctrines of organized religion, so we may wonder why these two professors are pursuing this stereotype-heavy sweeping generalization style of criticism that is easy to defend against, rather than pursuing lines of criticism that are harder to defend against. 

One of the professor authors of the Aeon article is the author of a book with the title "Religion as Make Believe." Upon hearing that title which sounds so contemptuous, I assumed I was in the right ballpark by suspecting that his analysis was weaponized analysis intended to disparage. The title is an indication of the author getting things wrong.  In English "make believe" is an expression meaning an act of imagination in which someone pretends something which he thinks is not true. For example, an impoverished man might say to his wife, "Let us make believe that we are millionaires eating in a fancy restaurant." Adhering to a religion or some religious beliefs is not make believe.  Believers in religious doctrines believe such doctrines are correct. 

The song "Make Believe" from Showboat

Revisiting the Blogs Discussed in My Post "Blogs About the Future, Pessimistic and Optimistic"

My 2013 post " Blogs About the Future, Pessimistic and Optimistic" was one of my best-read posts of that year. Let's take at the current state of most of the blog sites I discussed in that post. 

Next Big Future. The site www.NextBigFuture.com is still running, and seems to be mainly a site giving you the latest press releases from AI companies or other high-tech companies.  The site is now very cluttered up with ads. 

Singularity Hub (www.SingularityHub.com). The site is still running, and also is mainly an echo chamber of the latest press releases from AI companies or other high-tech companies. 

Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence (http://www.kurzweilai.net) The link now takes you to a page that mainly just promotes books by Ray Kuzweil. We have a site with nothing but headlines or titles, and no paragraphs to be read. There's not even any much of any "teaser text" below the headlines or link titles -- maybe a sentence at most. Clicking on the links will mostly take you to skimpy articles in a small hard-to-read font. I may note the irony between Kurzweil's "progress is super-accelerating" claims and the poor design of this site, which seems more like a sign of the Internet getting worse than a sign of the Internet getting better. 

The Automatic Earth (www.theautomaticearth.com).  This link once took you to a fascinating pessimistic blog. The link now just takes you to a site with daily posts entitled "Debt Rattle."  Each post just has about ten links to other articles. I can no longer recommend this site. 

ApocaDocs (www.apocadocs.com). This site was a fine source of pessimistic information when I mentioned it in 2013. The site ran until 2016, but shut down then. 

Our Finite World (https://ourfiniteworld.com/). In 2013 this was a readable blog written by an actuary (Gail Tverberg) who wrote interesting, thoughtful articles about upcoming problems that may be caused by mankind overshooting its supply of resources such as oil. I see that the site is still running, with no change in its format; and the site is still getting frequent long posts by its author.  By now the site (which has been updated since 2007) has got 17 million page views. Although I have a doubt or two about the author's prophetic prowess, I can applaud her for maintaining a deep analysis ad-free blog for all of this long period. 

Collapse of Industrial Civilization (www.collapseofindustrialcivilization.com) In 2013 this was a graphically slick blog taking a pessimistic view of the future. The blog seems to be still running full blast, continuing to post long posts several times a month. A major plus is that you can read 10+ long posts without doing any additional clicking once you reach the site.  And except for some ads in the left margin of the blog, the site is not cluttered up by any ads.  I have not read many of the posts, but I can at least applaud the physical design of a blog like this, which allows a reader to read a huge amount of text while staying on the same page, without the text being interrupted by ads.  This blog site has an excellent blogroll on its left margin, which allows you to discover many other blog sites.