If this skepticism lark has taught me
anything, its that disagreeing is a beautiful thing. Disagreeing with
someone is a hard thing to do, in any context. Yet as humans, health
care professionals, and as skeptics, its one of our keenest tools.
Its only by being able to step into disagreement that we can
understand our topic, our audience, and hopefully steer hearts and
minds away from those willing to mislead.
I recently attended a panel about
daring to disagree, which mainly focused on religious debates over
Twitter and the like. I'm guilty of wiling away hours of my life
arguing with homeopaths over twitter, and I'm often asked why, as I'm
never going to change their minds. The short, and most noble answer
is that someone undecided might spectate, and I might be able to make
some impact into how they think about the subject. The more
self-serving version is that its good practice to hone my skills in
identifying fallacies and flaws, finding workarounds and ways of
wording things, and to understand an argument in advance of the next
time. In these types of arguments, the people who you are speaking to
are removed from yourself, perhaps not anonymous as such but they
tend to be used to arguing. Their position is usually on the
defensive in the first place because their chosen subject has usually
been the butt of skeptical inquiry for years.
But what of those closer to home?
Sticking out heads up above the parapet in other situations is one of
the hardest things in life to do. Most of us instinctively see
disagreement as a threat and a personal attack, and we react
accordingly. Even now, despite all I've learnt about constructing
arguments and debates, with all of this practice, I certainly still
get physical reactions when someone disagrees with me. My heart will
pound, my mouth with become dry, and I'll want to curl up in fear
because my body and brain immediately leap to the conclusion that no
one likes me, that I'm so insignificant that I must automatically be
wrong. I'm thankful to skepticism in that I'm able to take a deep
breath and overcome those initial few moments, then can try to
reassess my position. Am I actually right, but there are some good
points to take away from the other stance? Or actually, is my
reasoning flawed? In which case, why? Where could I have found more
information, what is the other person bringing to it? Whichever way
it goes, I, and the other person, end up learning more. Ultimately,
we're not here to be right or wrong- we're hear to learn more, and
that's the important bit.
Problems arise though because often our
instincts take hold. I can't describe the number of times its all
gone tits up. I can spend ages agonising over whether or not to
disagree. Once I've decided to do so, I write and rewrite my argument
so that it is as objective as possible, structured clearly, evidence
based etc., only to have the response be “Eurgh why are you being
so mean?! I thought we were friends!” or similar. I've tried
all sorts of ways to word things, and I haven't quite come up with an
answer on how best to avoid this response. Its not just Facebook etc.
where this is a problem- we all hear in the news about irrevocable
breakdowns in the doctor-patient relationship (Ashya King, as an
example). We've all encountered the patient at the pharmacy counter
who believes a random person waiting in the queue over our own expert
advice. No one learns anything from these sort of exchanges, and
that's a real missed opportunity.
So the question is, how do we go about
promoting disagreement as a positive thing that we all need in our
lives? How do we turn the tables on the thousands of years of
evolution that make us shut down arguments as soon as they begin?
Well I think the answer has to initially come from example. I believe
the skeptical movement is extremely well placed to start this tidal
change in thought, but we all have to practise the heck out of it
every single day if we're ever going to get anywhere. We have to
start being known synonymously as folk who are really, really good at
disagreeing respectfully, and that has to start from within. Its
clear that the skeptical community in the UK and beyond occasionally
falls short in this regard, and that's a real shame as it appears to
be driving good people away.
We need to recognise that we might
agree with someone on one thing, but not the other. We can't see a
person as synonymous with one of their opinions, and put people in
good or bad boxes based on that. We shouldn't be labelling people as
anti-this, or anti-that, and then refusing to engage further. We
should be experts at digging deeper than that, looking behind the
headlines to search for shared humanity underneath. We need to lead
the way in disagreeing without bullying, and we should never, ever
let up on that. We put ourselves in a position that could so easily
be mashed up together with bullying by the general population when we dare
to disagree, and we need to be relentlessly exemplary in our
behaviour to prove that we aren't. We need to be the type of people
who, even if faced with a mutant hybrid of Nigel Farage and Piers
Morgan, would manage to keep their cool and be polite.
But then again, feel free to disagree ;)
Hxxx
