Sunday column: Fear of a quack planet edition

Today’s column is online here, and it’s a great question: what to do when a friend or acquaintance espouses a belief in quack medicine? I wish I had better news than this to share:

People’s beliefs, correct or incorrect, aren’t discrete silos of opinion. Your entirely correct, rational approach to medicine is intimately entwined with your upbringing, your self-image, your other opinions about science and ethics, and your social network. Mr. Snakeoil’s wrongheaded approach to medicine is similarly embedded. Correcting that belief isn’t like replacing one dead bulb on a string of fairy lights, it’s more like pulling a block out of a Jenga tower. You say Mr. Snakeoil’s quackery is sponsored by his church, too–well, as they say in the movies, “Forget it, Jake. It?s Chinatown.” A couple of Snopes links posted on Facebook is not going to undo a belief that is an intimate part of a person’s religion and social support system. All you’ve done is given Mr. Snakeoil a thumbnail image of what an unenlightened heathen looks like. It’s possible you’ve strengthened his resolve.

But unfortunately, there’s too much evidence suggesting that, well, evidence isn’t all that convincing to many people much of the time.

Incidentally, I have only ever played one game of Jenga in my life, and yet I use it as a metaphor all the time.