We’ve talked about this before–see section 26.3 of this article–the pluralist’s dilemma, that we want to be open-minded but that doesn’t mean we should believe in things with no evidence.
I thought about this after reading this post by Paul Campos, who distinguishes the vaccine skeptic (“someone who brings the appropriate skepticism that is a hallmark of the scientific method to the approval process”) from the vaccine cynic such as Robert Kennedy Jr. (“failing to accept studies that refute his beliefs,” indeed to the extent of promulgating false statements about the polio vaccine). As Campos puts it, “Rejecting germ theory [as Kennedy does] is no different than rejecting the theory that the Earth is not flat.”
Campos writes, “People who hold such beliefs should be nowhere near political authority because they are delusional,” and I’m like, sure, ideally that would be the case, but . . . 30% of Americans believe in ghosts! You can’t get much more delusional than that. Given how percentages work, I’m pretty sure that many people now and previously holding political office have believed in ghosts. The problem is when the delusional beliefs affect your job. I’d guess that a secretary of commerce believing in ghosts is no big deal, but a public health official disbelieving in germ theory or a secretary of energy not believing in global warming or a secretary of education believing in the implicit association test, that would be more of a concern. The delusional beliefs on their own are not enough to disqualify, for the same reason that various unpleasant personal characteristics would not be enough to disqualify: there are then just too many possible reasons to strike people from the list, and eventually there are so many possible disqualifications that the rule becomes entirely arbitrary–you reach the meta-level of deciding which possible disqualifications should be overlooked.
Disqualifying a public official strikes me as somewhat different than disqualifying an academic researcher (a matter of scale rather than a binary distinction, I think). But both raise what I think is the more important question: who decides? For public officials (e.g. the Secretary of HHS) there is a political process. Imperfect though it is, at least there is a process with potential checks and balances. For an expert witness there is also a process (imperfect as well). For academics there are processes but I think they are more imperfect – for example, an instructor who assigns zero points for an essay that states a strong, and potentially irrelevant (subject to debate), opinion. In such cases, there are various administrative reviews and potential consequences. As with many of the examples raised on this blog, some academic research might deserve to be addressed through personnel actions, peer review, editorial judgements by journals, etc. All of the processes are imperfect, some highly so. Yet I find it difficult to envision how to improve these processes. At the very least, potential improvements call for considerable discussion.
I would rank the need for disqualification standards for public officials, expert witnesses, academic researchers, and instructors in that order (highest to lowest). But I see the importance for each of these.
Well, be a little careful here. How much difference is there between believing in ghosts, and believing in God? Remember the book “The God Delusion”. Yet to disqualify people from positions of political authority for believing in God would be rather extreme.
I think rather than “secretary of education believing in the implicit association test” that should have been “secretary of education believing in Creationism not evolution”. There’s just orders of magnitude difference between those two.
Seth:
I see two differences between religious belief and ghosts. First is that in our society there’s an expectation that we show respect or deference to religious beliefs, but there’s no such expectation for non-religious supernatural beliefs. Second is that mainstream religious beliefs are more open-ended than non-religious supernatural beliefs. Believing in God or believing in creationism is vague enough that it can cover all sorts of things; believing in ghosts is more specific. I guess that believing in the implicit association test is somewhere in between.
This post will come to haunt you.
~boo~
Wins thread.
Instead, we should have separation of science and state, also healthcare and state. There should be no officials deciding whats correct, the concept is fundamentally anti-science. Like everything else, the endgame is taking something cheap and valuable, then making it insanely expensive and worthless by printing money to invest in scams.
This is a pretty wild comment, even for you. What are you proposing if we separate everything from “state?” Are you asking for government to disappear or for policy decisions to be made without reference to science, evidence, or expertise? Your last sentence suggests you have some other issue in mind, but you didn’t explain it. Some of us prefer a bit more clarity in what you want to say, rather than requiring me to guess.
I also have no earthly idea what this person was trying to say. Not the first time.
The same as separation of church and state. There is no secretary of religion.
Also, look at how the costs of everything the government gets involved in skyrockets (easiest examples are education and healthcare). Its quite obvious.
There used to be neighborhood doctors who made house calls for the cost of eating out a few times, and students were able to pay for college by delivering pizzas over the summer.
Agreed. Clearly we need a strict separation between fact and policy. No policy should be influenced by facts, the very idea is offensive.
@Phil
The idea of “facts” itself is more legal than something in science (although admittedly its often used as shorthand). Its better to think of observations, data, and evidence rather than facts, truth, or proof.
There’s something weird going on with “Anoneuoid.” Someone using that handle has made a series of unintelligible comments over the least few days.
I suspect it’s an imposter, or maybe Anoneuoid went over the edge. As much as I might disagree with many of his comments, the comments under that handle recently are not similar in nature to “Anoneuoid’s typical comments.
Apparently this blog interface allows imposters to post comments under someone else’s name (it has happened to me).
Nope, I’ve been saying the same thing for at least 10 years. Im sure I’ve mentioned it on here before as well.
The problem is not on my end.
Anoneuoid –
Interesting. So then maybe you could go back to explain what this comment meant. It was only the most recent of the unintelligible comments I was referring to.
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/01/22/a-decision-theorist-walks-into-a-seminar/#comment-2409267
Someone claimed thermostats have more understanding of the world than llms. I don’t see any thermostats being owed money and devising practical plans to address the issue.
That entire thread is posts by people who are completely unfamiliar with the current state of affairs. Its like reading discussions about being high between people who never drank or did any drugs.
Vaccines are rather new in the game. Plato, however, goes back a long way but he is apparently too hot to handle at Texas A&M
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2026/01/08/texas-am-forbids-a-plato-reading-in-an-intro-philosophy-course/
I live a long way from Texas, so this stuff is merely amusing on this typically frigid January day in Minnesota where we have other concerns at the moment.
The word “belief” is a very floppy one. A person can believe in fate, and still look both ways before crossing the street in broad daylight. Our conduct for navigating the world can be inconsistent with our stated beliefs. This is Trolley Problem 101.
But there’s a big difference between believing in ghosts (or a god), and not believing in germs. We can prove the existence of “germs”, we can literally see them, manipulate them, observe their effects; you can’t prove that ghosts don’t exist. To not believe in germ theory you have to disbelieve the evidence in front of your own eyes, or willfully keep them closed. You must, in short, be a blithering idiot.
You can get a lot more delusional than believing in ghosts.
This. Religious or spiritual beliefs are not supported by evidence but are also not disproven by direct evidence. Most people, it seems, profess to believe in some such thing. Pluralists cannot and should not dismiss all these believers as irrational.
The real test is how somebody deals with evidence.
Well, given that such beliefs are usually mutually contradictory, AT MOST one of such a set can be correct.
That is, the old joke is everyone’s almost an Atheist, as believers say all the other gods don’t exist too.
“30% of Americans believe in ghosts! You can’t get much more delusional than that.”
You can get a lot more delusional than that, given that our natural conceptual schemes incline towards Dualism and philosophers/scientists have thought for centuries how ghosts might be conceived of in materialist terms.
Certainly a belief in ghosts is no more delusional than believing in FTL travel, which currently involves getting hold of a chunk of “negative matter” the size of Neptune, EM drives, artificial gravity or any other of the devices scifi uses on a daily basis. I mean people are still allowed to study this stuff and nobody bothers them.
Michael:
Ghosts and warp drives are fine as storytelling devices. My problem is that 30% of Americans believe that ghosts are already here!
The folks hawking Emdrives do not see them as a narrative device, nor the folks studying the Alcubierre drive. I see nothing more irrational about believing in ghosts than believing we will ever have either of these things. In all these cases if the beliefs don’t pan out it is really just a matter of the possible physics not being the actual physics.