Is belief once again suffocating evidence?

Ideology vs. evidence

The tension between belief and evidence has probably been around ever since humans could sense the world and formulate thoughts. It has certainly been documented for several thousand years. In the Bible, we have the original ‘doubting Thomas’, who would not accept that Jesus had come back to life until he could put his hand on the wound in Jesus’ side. Galileo was put on trial by the powerful Church for arguing, based on scientific evidence, that the Earth circled the Sun and not the other way around.

The issue goes beyond belief. A set of beliefs tend to form an ideology, which typically concern human nature, religion, politics, or the economy.

For various reasons, people hold certain theories of how the world works, or should work.  People may be influenced by tradition, tribe (the community to which they belong) or an authority they revere (like their church, or their president).  Belief systems can have enormous consequences. At the extreme end, people have died for their beliefs – consider the early Christians refusing to renounce their faith and being fed to the lions, or young men volunteering to go to Syria and join ISIS. But even relatively anodyne beliefs about the world can have tremendous social impacts. For example, the American belief that this is the land of opportunity and if you don’t succeed you only have yourself to blame. In fact, there is a strong counter set of beliefs: that it is mostly those lucky enough to be born into the right (privileged) circumstances who actually enjoy those boundless opportunities…There are plenty of studies finding that children born into poverty have far fewer chances in life.

With respect to the current tensions between beliefs and evidence, there are at least two things worth noting.

Overwhelmed by too much information?

First, we live in an age saturated with information, which would make you think that evidence is readily accessible, and that virtually anyone can find at out information with a little web-browsing. Yet the rise of conspiracy theories, fake news, and the bifurcation into ideological communities in many countries defy this. The almost infinite wealth of information out there is also good cast doubting on evidence and supplying hermetic communities with a tailor-made set of facts that align with their beliefs. It has become easy to engage in selective perception. Information that doesn’t conform with what you think you already know can be ignored, devalued, or diluted with misinformation.

A bipartisan issue

Second, disregard for evidence or facts seems to be prevalent at both ends of the political spectrum. Both rightwing and the leftwing elements in US society (and possibly elsewhere) have embraced ideology at the expense of evidence. Facts that don’t fit are belittled or disregarded.

Many on the right, for example, scorn the science and statistics which show that the earth is more than roughly 6,000 years old, despite the geological evidence; that there is a near consensus among scientists that global warming is an actual, man-made phenomenon, or that gun ownership significantly increases risks to one’s life and those nearby. On the left, there is a rise of intolerance toward free speech on university campuses, which muzzles the expression of opinions deemed contrary to prevailing norms. There seems to be a prevailing wisdom that the college campus should be a protected ‘safe space’ (as if it were kindergarten) and that students need to be sheltered from ideas they disagree with or find uncomfortable – hence all those trigger warnings. Both right and left extremes seem to have become biased against any evidence which goes against their prevailing orthodoxy.

Living with belief and paying attention to evidence

Almost all humans believe things, or believe in things. This doesn’t mean we have to let beliefs cloud our judgment. If you believe in God, you generally still don’t take stupid risks because you believe He loves you and won’t let anything bad happen. Most people try to pay attention to their personal safety –  staying on the sidewalk, driving carefully, not handling poisonous snakes – whether they believe in guardian angels or not.

Even evaluators believe things. We’re not robots. But as professionals we’re essentially paid to put our personal preferences aside and use our brains to objectively process large amounts of information.

Try this at home

If you are an evaluator, or just someone interested in getting closer rather than farther from the truth, you need to be aware of your beliefs and not let them interfere with your professional judgment. You need to maintain a boundary.

Here are a few things that I try to do to stay ‘conceptually sober’, i.e. not under the influence of beliefs, while on the job:

• First, recognize your biases. Monitor yourself as you collect and analyze and present information. It is easy to skew findings to fit in with your hypothesis, or ignore them. Unfortunately academics do this all the time, by not publishing research findings that aren’t in line with their hypothesis, or simply interesting (publication bias)
• Consider alternative causal explanations. You may have a good story that makes intuitive sense. You may have evidence (you better have evidence if you’re doing research). But always think about and look for evidence that might offer different explanations.
• When you have findings that seemingly contradict each other, dig deeper to find an explanation. Maybe your data is inaccurate, or your sampling method was poor. But maybe different sources are revealing different things, or people you are interviewing are interpreting or defining events in different ways.
• Double check what you hear from people when you’re doing research. If you hear pretty much the same thing from a lot of different that should give you confidence. If I hear something new or unusual from someone, I’ll ask others to corroborate.
• Follow a guiding principle. It could be something like: “To present what happened as accurately and fairly as possible.”
• Be curious. Find out as much as you can about a topic. Invest yourself in finding out more. Don’t be satisfied with the most obvious answers.