Chapter 15 Chapter 12 The Art of Spotting Lies

(1620) My parents died many years ago.I was very close to them and I still miss them dearly.I know I will miss them forever.I fervently believe that their spirits, their personalities, all these things that I love so much still exist - unquestionably, truly - somewhere.I don't ask for a lot of time—ten or eight minutes a year is enough—to tell them about their grandchildren, to tell them the latest news, to let them know that I love them.I want to know how they are doing -- no matter how childish it sounds -- it's part of my life. "Is everything okay?" I wanted to ask them.I found that the last words I said to my father as he was dying were "take care".

Sometimes I dream of talking to my parents.Suddenly—while I was still asleep—I felt strongly that they hadn't really died, that it was all just a terrible misunderstanding.Look, aren't they here, alive and well?My father was telling funny jokes and my mother kindly asked me to wrap my scarf on because it was cold.When I woke up, I quickly recalled the whole process of attending their funeral.Frankly, I'm starting to believe a little bit in the afterlife, and I'm not interested in whether there's any serious evidence for it. So I would never make fun of a woman who might visit her husband's grave on his death day, and chat with him now and then.This is not difficult to understand.It doesn't matter if I don't understand the identity of the entity she's talking to.That's not the point of the matter.The key to this is that people have to be humane.At least one-third of American adults believe they have had contact with the dead in some way; from 1977 to 1988, that number rose 15 percentage points; one-quarter of Americans believe in an afterlife.

However, this does not mean that I will believe in the vaunted skills of "psychics".They claim to be able to connect with the souls of loved ones who live far away.I know that this type of activity is rife with fraud.I know how much I want to believe that my parents just cast off their physical bodies, like insects or snakes shed their skin, and go to another world.I know that it is those very personal feelings that could make me an easy prey for an unintelligent deception, for ordinary people unfamiliar with their own unconscious Victims of people suffering from insanity.I have thought about these questions for a long time, and they have given me some skeptical thinking.

Why, I asked myself, did the psychics never give us anything but useless information that could be verified?Why did Alexander the Great never tell us the exact location of his tomb?Why does Fermat never tell us about his last theorem?Why Did John Wilkes Booth Never Tell Us About the Plot to Murder Lincoln?Why didn't Hermann Göring tell us about the arson attack on the German parliament?Why did Suphocles, Democritus, and Aristarchus never dictate to us their long-lost works?Don't they want posterity to find their way to their great works? If someone comes up with some valuable evidence of life after death, I can't wait to examine it.But those evidences must be real scientific facts, not just anecdotes.For things like patterns on Mars and alien abductions, I think more convincing facts are better than fanciful legends.

The basic premise of "psychology," spiritualism, and other forms of witchcraft is that when we die we don't die.This is not exact.It is some of our thoughts, feelings and memories that remain.We are told that whatever it is, these things—spirits or souls, neither matter nor energy, but something else—can later re-enter human bodies and the bodies of other living things.So death feels less painful.Plus, we have an opportunity—if the claims of spiritualists and psychics are true—to connect with loved ones who have died. J. Z. Knight of Washington State claims to have contacted a 35,000-year-old man named "Ramtha."The man spoke English fairly well, using Knight's tongue, lips, and vocal cords to produce what sounded to me like an Indian Raj accent.Since most people know how to speak, and many people—from small children to professional actors—have the skill to control their voices, the easiest assumption is that Ramtha's talk was all faked by Ms. Knight herself, who Never had contact with any non-physical entity from the Pleistocene Ice Age.If there is any evidence to the contrary, I would like to hear it.Had Ramtha been able to speak for himself instead of Ms. Knight, it would certainly have made a stronger impression on us.How else can we test what Ms Knight claims? (Actress Shirley McLeaner confirmed that Ramtha was one of her brothers in Atlantis, but that's another story.)

Assuming Ramtha can answer our questions here, can we be sure that he is who he claims to be?How does he know he lived 35,000 years ago, even approximately?What kind of calendar does he use?Who will keep track of what has happened over the millennia? Did more or less happen in 35,000 years than we know? What was the world like 35,000 years ago?Either Ramtha was really from 35,000 years ago, and we'll learn something about that period; or he's a liar, and he—or rather, she—will give away. Where does Ramsa live? (I know he speaks English with an Indian accent, however, did they speak this language 35,000 years ago?) What was the climate like back then?What does Ramsa eat? (Archaeologists have some idea of ​​what people ate at that time.) What were the local languages ​​and social structures at that time?Who else did Ramtha live with—wife, wives, children, grandchildren?What was the life cycle like then, what was the infant mortality rate, what was the average life expectancy?Do they have family planning?What kind of clothes do they wear?How are those clothes made?What was the scariest beast at that time?What are the tools and methods of hunting and fishing?What kind of weapons do they use?Is there gender discrimination locally?Is there xenophobia or ethnocentrism?In addition, if Ramsa came from the "highly civilized" Atlantis, what about the details of the language, technology, history, etc. there?What do their texts look like?please tell us.However, they don't tell us all this.Everything they tell us is platitudes.

Here, I give another example.Here are some messages, not from an ancient man who is no longer alive, but from a non-human entity unknown to us who made circles in the wheat fields.Journalist Jim Schnabel wrote the following: We are deeply anxious about this criminal nation who spread lies about us.We didn't come here by any vehicle, we didn't land on your Earth in any machine. ...we come here like the wind.We are life force.The life force from the earth...comes here...we are just feet away...footsteps away...not a million miles away...the life force is stronger than the energy inside you yet we To meet at a higher level of life... we don't need names.Our world is parallel to your world, we are beside you... The barriers have been broken.Two people will be resurrected from the past, from Ursa Major? ...the world will be filled with peace.

The reason people pay attention to these childish miracles is mainly because they promise something like the old religion, especially life after death, even immortality. The versatile British scientist J.B.S. Haldane not only made important contributions in many other fields, but also was one of the founders of population genetics.Haldane had a very different idea about issues like eternal life.Haldane imagined that in the distant future, all stars have been dimmed, and the universe is filled with a cold and thin gas.However, if we wait long enough, the density of this gas will fluctuate statistically.Over a long period of time, this fluctuation will be large enough to reconstitute a universe similar to our own.Haldane pointed out that if the universe were infinitely old, there would be an infinite number of such cosmic rearrangements.

Thus, in an infinitely old universe with an infinite variety of galaxies, stars, planets and life, there will be an identical Earth recreated upon which you and all your loved ones will be able to reunite.I'll be seeing my parents again and can introduce them to grandkids they've never met.Moreover, all this will happen not just once, but infinitely many times. Somehow, however, this does not offer the kind of comfort that religion does.If none of us, the reader and I, have any memory of what happened in the era that I share, then the satisfaction of bodily rebirth is, at least to my ears, hollow.

However, in this idea, I underestimated the meaning of the word infinite.In Haldane's picture, there would be many universes—indeed, an infinite number of universes.There, our brains will hold all the memories of what happened in the previous incarnations.The satisfaction is self-evident - albeit a limited one, as we know all those other cosmic tragedies and horrors to come that far exceed what we have experienced in this current cycle Everything (I emphasize again, not once but infinitely many times). Still, "Haldane's satisfaction" depends on what kind of universe we live in, and may depend on whether there is enough matter to eventually reverse the expansion of the universe, and the properties of vacuum fluctuations. secret.Those with a deep desire for life after death seem likely to devote themselves to cosmology, quantum mechanics, elementary particle physics, and transfinite mathematics.

Clement of Alexandria, a godfather of the early Christian church, refuted the belief in polytheism in his book "Admonitions to the Greeks" (written around AD 190).His words may seem a bit ironic today: Ears are undoubtedly only for adults to hear such stories.As the saying goes, even when our children are crying like hell, we can't always cheer them up by telling fairy tales. In our time, we don't have such strict rules.For some reason that we think makes sense emotionally, we tell our kids about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the fairy who takes your teeth (if you put your new tooth under your pillow at night, the fairy will put it in your mouth). take away, and leave a coin) story.However, we correct these myths and legends before they grow up.Why take back what we said?Because children need to know the world as it really is if they want to be a normal adult.For an adult who still believes in a real Santa Claus, we have good reason to be concerned. In dogmatic religions, “men are afraid to tell the truth, even to their own hearts,” wrote the philosopher David Hume: On this question, they have doubts.They count unreserved religious belief as a virtue; they are actually impious, but they deceive themselves by the most solemn declarations and the most morbid bigotry. This impiety has profound implications for morality.As American revolutionary Thomas Paine wrote in The Age of Reason: Religious impiety belongs neither to belief nor to disbelief; it is what a man professes to believe in which he does not believe.The harm done to the morals of society by mental dishonesty, if I may express it in this way, is incalculable.When a man is so depraved that he betrays his moral integrity, and openly professes to believe what he does not believe, he is likely to do any other evil thing. T.H. Huxley's statement is: The basis of morality is ... not to pretend to believe what has no evidence, not to repeat incomprehensible opinions about things that are beyond the possibility of knowledge. Clement, Hume, Paine, and Huxley were all talking about religious belief.But most of what they write has wider implications—for example, against the backdrop of our business civilization, which is omnipresent and entangled with the world at large: there’s a classic TV commercial for aspirin in which actors play Dr. Cheng, telling people that their competing products contain only so many pain-relieving ingredients that doctors vehemently recommend—they don’t tell you what that secret ingredient is—while their products contain exciting amounts of Much above-mentioned composition (contain 1.2-2 times more in every tablet).So please buy their products.But why not take two of the competing pills?Or consider pain relievers that are more effective than competitors' "regular" products.Why not go with a more competitive "Super Powerful" product?Of course, they also don't tell us that aspirin kills more than 1,000 people a year in the U.S., and they don't tell us that acetaminophen, mainly Tylenol, kills about 5,000 a year. kidney failure.As another example, who cares which cereal has more vitamins when we can take a vitamin pill for breakfast?Likewise, if calcium is simply a nutrient and has nothing to do with gastritis, what does it matter if an antacid contains calcium or not?Business culture is rife with similar rhetoric that misleads consumers about their spending behavior.You have nothing to ask.Don't think about it, just buy it. Warranties made on products, especially by those who are real or purported experts, contain a plethora of frauds.They show contempt for the intelligence of their customers.They have led to an implicit and dangerous corruption of common people's general attitudes toward scientific objectivity.These days, there are even actual scientists in TV commercials, including some fairly famous ones, helping companies set the trap.They make it known that scientists also cheat people for money.As Thomas Paine warned, we are gradually becoming accustomed to lying, and this sets the stage for many, many other evils. As I write this book, I have in front of me the program brochure for one of the great annual exhibitions of life, The View of Life—the New Age exhibition in San Francisco.Normally, tens of thousands of people visit this exhibition.Very dubious experts boasting very dubious products.Here are some sales pitches: "How does a blocked blood protein cause pain?" "A body of water, a talisman or a stone?" Television gathers sound and light"—an ignorant misconception of how radio and television work—"so it can also amplify tuned human psychic vibrations." Here's another: "The Goddess' return ——A product display ceremony".Another one: "simultaneous induction, unparalleled sensory experience".That stuff was provided by "Brother Charles."Also, on the next page: "You, Saint-Germain, are healed by the Purple Flame".Overwhelmed with advertisements for "opportunities" of every kind - fakes, everything - that's what the Big Life Show is all about. Distraught cancer patients embark on a long pilgrimage to the Philippines.There are so-called "super-sensory witch doctors", who hide a small piece of chicken liver or sheep heart in their palms, pretending to penetrate into the patient's body to take out the diseased tissue, and then proudly reveal this piece of tissue.Leaders of Western democracies often consult astrologers and mystics before making certain decisions for their country.Under public pressure for results, police officers with an unsolved murder or disappearance call on psionic perception "experts." (These people have never guessed better than people with normal senses. Still, those with extra senses say, the police still flock to them.) It has been suggested that there is a gap between us and hostile nations when it comes to psychic remote viewing capabilities.Pushed by Congress, the CIA, using taxpayer dollars, is investigating whether submarines can be located by desperately thinking about them in the deep sea.A "sensei" - who uses a pendulum on a map and a "magic wand" on an airplane - claims to find new deposits.An Australian mining company advanced him a large sum of money, saying that if the prospecting failed, the money would not have to be repaid; if successful, he would also have a share in the developed mine.As a result, nothing was found.The statues of Jesus and the frescoes of the Virgin Mary were stained and mottled by the humidity, but thousands of good people believed they saw miracles in them. The above-mentioned deceitful nonsense have all been proven or can be inferred.Sometimes deceit occurs unintentionally, but acts to facilitate it; sometimes it is the premeditation of cynics.Often, victims of fraud are in the midst of a strong emotion—surprise, fear, greed, or sadness.Believe that bullshit, and you'll lose your money; that's what P. T. Barnu points out: "A vampire is born every minute." However, the situation can be much more dangerous than that.When governments and societies lose their sense of judgment, the results will be disastrous—no matter how much sympathy we may have for those who are credulous. In science, we can start with experimental results, data, observations, measurements, and "facts."If possible, we would arrive at a large number of possible explanations, each of which could be tested systematically with the facts.As a result, scientists are armed with a toolbox for detecting lies during their training.Whenever a new idea is brought up for consideration, the toolbox naturally comes in handy.If that new idea can pass the test of these tools, we will be ready, albeit temporarily, to embrace it with enthusiasm.If you're interested in these things, if you don't want the lies to work even when they reassure you, there are steps you can take to prevent them from happening.Here's a solid, tried-and-tested method. What's in that toolbox?In there are the tools of the skeptical way of thinking. The so-called skeptical way of thinking, in the final analysis, is a way of building and understanding a convincing argument.Most importantly, it's a way to spot fallacies and lies.The key is not whether we like the conclusions drawn after a series of reasoning, but whether these conclusions can be drawn from the premise and starting point, and whether the premise is correct. Included in this toolbox are: ■ Whenever possible, “facts” must be independently verified. ■Encourage substantive debate among well-informed proponents of a variety of perspectives on the available evidence. ■Authorities' opinions don't matter—"authorities" have made mistakes in the past, and they will still make mistakes in the future.To put it more precisely, there is no authority in science, at most there are some experts. ■Construct more than one hypothesis.If one wants to explain something, one considers as many different explanations as possible, and then develops a set of tests that can be used to systematically falsify every possible alternative explanation.The one that passes the test, that is, the one that has withstood the Darwinian test of species-selection among the various hypotheses that could be used to explain it, compared to ideas that win you over with little more than an initial thought. is much more likely to be the correct answer. ■Try to avoid getting too attached to a hypothesis just because that hypothesis was made by you.That's just one stop on our journey in search of truth.Ask yourself why you like that idea, compare it to other possibilities fairly and objectively, and see if you can find reasons to refute it.If you don't do it, others will too. ■Quantitative.If you're explaining something, whatever it is, if it has some measure, some numerical quantity, it's going to be very helpful in differentiating your hypothesis from other competing hypotheses.Vague, qualitative things often invite multiple interpretations.Of course, there is some truth to be found in the many qualitative perspectives we have to confront.Finding them, however, is a more challenging endeavor. ■ If the reasoning is a chain of links, then each of the links must be correct (including the premise), not just most of them. ■Aum's Razor.This handy rule of thumb tells us that, when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well, choose the easier one. ■Continuously ask whether the hypothesis can—at least in theory—be falsified.Untestable, unfalsifiable propositions are of little value.Consider for a moment the grand idea that our universe, and everything in it, is nothing more than an elementary particle—say, an electron—in a larger universe.But wouldn't the idea be unfalsifiable if we could never get information from outside our universe: you'd have to be able to verify the claims.You have to give ingrained skeptics a chance to figure out your reasoning, repeat your experiment and see if they get the same results. Reliance on carefully designed and controlled experiments is key, as I tried to emphasize earlier.We don't learn much just by meditating.We tend to accept the first candidate explanation we can think of.It's much better to have one than none.But what if we could come up with more than one explanation?How will we choose?We don't make decisions.We let the experiments do the work.Francis Bacon gave the classic reason: Debate cannot satisfy the needs of new discoveries, because the subtleties of nature are many times greater than the subtleties required for debate. Comparative experiments are necessary.As an example, if someone claims that a new drug is 20 percent effective against a certain disease, we must be sure that a group of people in a controlled trial who ate a sugar tablet said to be the new drug did not At the same time, 20% of the patients' symptoms were alleviated. Each influencing variable must be separable.Let's say you're seasick and you're given an acupressure bracelet and 50 mg of meclizine at the same time.You find that the discomfort goes away.What's at work -- the bracelet or the pill?You'll only figure it out if you use only one of these treatments the next time you get seasick again.Now, assuming you don't want to experience seasickness in order to dedicate your life to science, then it's impossible to separate the above variables.You will again use both treatments at the same time, because you have achieved the practical end you desired; as for the further knowledge, you will say, it is not worth the trouble to obtain it. Often, experiments must be carried out under "double-blind" conditions, so that those who expect a certain discovery are not in a situation that could potentially jeopardize the evaluation of the results.For example, when testing a new drug, you might want the doctors who judged which patients experienced relief, not to know which patients received the new drug.Because the knowledge of this information will affect their judgment, although perhaps only unconsciously.Instead, the lists of those who relieve symptoms should be similar to the lists of those on the new drug, and the two sets of lists have to be determined independently before you can tell what kind of correlation there is.As another example, when the police deal with a group of suspects or carry out photo identification, the responsible officials should not know who the suspects are, so as not to influence the witnesses intentionally or unintentionally. In addition to teaching what to do in evaluating our claims, any good lie detection toolkit should also teach us what not to do.It helps us identify the most common and dangerous fallacies, both logical and rhetorical.Good examples can be found in the fields of religion and politics, because their practitioners are always forced to judge two opposing propositions.These fallacies include: ■ adhominem – Latin for "against a person," meaning to attack a person rather than an opinion. (For example, Reverend Dr. Smith is a well-known biblical fundamentalist, so his objections to evolution are trivial); ■ authoritative arguments. (For example, the argument that President Richard Nixon should be re-elected because he had a secret plan to end the war in Southeast Asia—but because it was classified, voters could not value it; is tantamount to saying that he should be trusted , because he is the president - and this turned out to be a mistake); ■ causal inversion reasoning. (For example, God must be punishing and rewarding people, because without these, society would be lawless and dangerous—possibly even ungovernable. Or: a defendant in a murder that attracts public attention must would be found guilty, or else encourage other men to murder their wives); ■ Appeal to ignorance - claiming that what has not been proven wrong must be true.vice versa. (For example, since there is no strong evidence that UFOs have not visited Earth, UFOs exist - and thus intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe. Or: a world in which 70 civilizations may exist , yet we do not know of any of these worlds that have a higher moral level than Earth humans, so we are still the center of the universe.) This vague and impetuous thinking can be refuted in one sentence: the lack of evidence is not No evidence exists. ■ Special defenses are often used to salvage ideas that have run into great rhetorical difficulty. (Example: How could a merciful God punish future generations of people with miserable torments just because they violated His commandments by tempting a man to eat an apple? Special defense: You simply do not understand the wonderful doctrine of free will. How can there be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the same person? Special defense: You do not understand the holy secret of the Holy Trinity of God. How can God tolerate Judaism, Christianity, and The followers of Islam - ordered in their own way to follow the sacred moral code of kindness and compassion - have committed so many barbaric crimes over such a long period of time? Special defense: you still don't understand freedom Will. Either way, God’s actions are mysterious and unknowable.) ■Avoids questions or takes them for granted. (For example, we had to introduce the death penalty to curb violent crime. But did violent crime actually go down when the death penalty was introduced? The stock market fell yesterday because of a technical correction and investors taking dividends -- but did Is there independent evidence that "adjustments" and profit extraction play a role? Can we learn anything useful from this wishful thinking?) ■Selectivity of observation, also known as enumerating favorable conditions, or as the philosopher Francis Bacon described it, remembering successes and forgetting mistakes. (For example, a state will boast about how many presidents it has produced, but keep silent about the hordes of murderers.) ■Statistics on very small numbers - very similar to selectivity of observation. (For example, "They say one in five people is Chinese. How is that possible? I know hundreds of people and none of them are Chinese. Yours sincerely. . . . " Or: "I Three sevens. I can't lose tonight.") ■Misunderstanding of statistical properties. (Example: President Dwight Eisenhower expressed shock and concern at the discovery that fully half of Americans had below-average intelligence.) ■Contradictions. (For example, carefully planning for a possible military adversary as a worst-case scenario, while turning a deaf ear to scientific projects about environmental crises that have not yet been "proven". The decline in life expectancy in the Soviet Union was attributed to the failure of socialism many years ago, but the high infant mortality rate in the United States (now the highest among major industrial countries) was never attributed to the failure of capitalism. Feel that the universe will be forever in the future It is a matter of course to continue to exist, but it is absurd to think that the universe could have an infinite past.) ■non sequitur—Latin: "not necessarily inferred." (For example: Our nation will be strong because God is great. Yet almost all nations pretentiously take this as truth. The German saying is "God is with us".) Usually, those who fall into the inevitability The fallacy of inference is nothing more than a failure to recognize that there are multiple possibilities. ■post hoc, ergo propter hoc—Latin: "it happened after, so it was caused by the former". (For example, the Archbishop of Manila, Jaime Cardino Singh, said: "I knew... a 26-year-old woman who looked as old as 60 because of the (contraceptive) pills." Before women got the right to vote, the world There were no nuclear weapons.) ■ Nonsensical questions. (For example, what happens when an irresistible force acts on an immovable object? But if there is such a thing as an irresistible force, there cannot be an immovable object. And vice versa.) ■ Exclude intermediate states, or adopt a false dichotomy—on a continuum where there are many intermediate possibilities, only consider the two extremes. (For example, "Of course, listen to him; my husband is flawless; I'm always wrong." Or: "You either love your country or hate it." Or: "If you're not solving problems , then you're messing around.") ■ Opposite the short run and the long run—a subset of intermediate states is excluded, but because it is so important, I bring it up for special attention. (For example, we cannot develop programs to feed malnourished children and educate preschoolers. We are urgently faced with dealing with crime on the streets. When we are facing such a large budget deficit, why should To explore the universe or ask basic scientific questions?) ■ Continuous recursion? - related to exclusion of intermediate states. (Example: If we allow abortion in the first weeks of pregnancy, then we cannot ban the killing of a full-fledged baby. Or conversely: If the government does not allow abortion even for nine-month-old fetuses, then it cannot Will tell us in a minute what to do with our newly conceived fetus.) ■ Confusing correlation with causation. (For example, a survey showed that there were more homosexuals among college graduates than among relatively less educated people, so education made people gay. Or: The earthquake in the Andes occurred when Uranus passed its perigee, so—despite the lack of such correlations for the closer, more massive Jupiters—the latter is the cause of the former. ■Tree Targets – deface an idea and make it vulnerable. (Scientists, for example, conjecture that all living things just ran together by chance—an argument that deliberately ignores the central Darwinian idea that nature evolves by use and waste. Or --This is also a short-term/long-term fallacy --environmentalists care much more about snails, pelicans, and snails than about people.) ■Concealment of evidence, or half-truths made with deliberate deception. (For example, an impossibly accurate and widely quoted "prophecy" of President Reagan's assassination was broadcast on television; but—an important detail—was it filmed before or after the event ？这些政府的弊病必须通过革命来根除，即使是要做一个煎蛋卷，你也得打碎几个鸡蛋。是的，但这是否会变成一场比在前一制度统治下还要死多得多的人的革命呢？其他革命给我们提供了什么样的教训？是不是所有反对暴政的革命都是人民所期望的和从人民利益出发的呢？) ■模棱两可的话。(例如，美国宪法规定的权力分离制度，明确规定了美国在没有国会声明的前提下是不能介入一场战争的。另一方面，总统被赋予了外交控制权和发动战争的权力。而这是可以使他们自己得以连任的一个强有力的潜在手段。因此，任何一个政党的总统都可能会策划发动一场战争。他们挥着旗子，把战争叫做——“政治行为”、“武装进入”。“保护性反应打击”、“维持和平”、“保护美国利益”，以及各种各样的行动，如“正义行动”。有关战争的种种委婉的说法，是为了政治的目的而对语言进行再创造的一大类型。塔列郎说：“政治家们的一门重要的艺术，就是为种种行为和制度寻找新的名字，他们的老名字已被公众所深恶痛绝。”) 对于这些逻辑上和修辞上的谬误的了解，使我们的工具箱更加完善。同所有的工具一样，这个鉴别谎言的工具箱也会被误用，被用在其适用范围之外，甚至会取代思考而成了一种死教条。但如果能够明智地应用，它会使这个世界的面貌焕然一新——不仅仅是用于在我们向别人提出自己的论点之前检验一下它们。 美国烟草工业每年赢利500亿美元左右。在吸烟与癌症之间存在着统计相关性，烟草业承认这一点。但他们说，这不是一种因果关系。他们暗示，这里有一个逻辑上的谬误。这可能意味着什么？或许那些有遗传性患癌倾向的人也有遗传性的嗜好麻醉品的倾向——所以癌症和吸烟之间可能会有相关性，但癌症却不是由吸烟引起的。这类牵强附会的关系可能会被不断地发明出来，这正是科学家强调对照实验的原因之一。 假如你在许多老鼠的背上涂上烟焦油，同时观察许多几乎完全一样但却没有被涂上焦油的老鼠的健康情况。如果前者患了癌症而后者没有，你就可以确信这种相关性是有因果联系的。抽烟时将烟吸入，患癌症的几率上升；不吸入，则患癌率保持在背景水平。对于肺气肿、支气管炎和心血管病来说也是如此。 当第一个研究工作在1953年首次被发表在科学文献中，显示将香烟产生的烟中的物质涂在啮齿动物背上会引发恶性肿瘤时，六大主要烟草公司的反应，是发动一场公关运动，指责这项由斯隆·凯特林基金会资助的研究工作。这很类似于杜邦公司在1947年当第一个揭示他们的氟利昂产品破坏具有保护作用的臭氧层的工作发表时受到的同样的责备。还有很多其它例子。 你可能会想，在谴责他们所不欢迎的研究工作之前，几大主要公司应当动用了它们巨大的人力、财力资源，检验了它们计划制造的产品的安全性。但是，如果他们忽视了一些东西，如果独立工作的科学家发现了可能存在的危害，那些公司为什么要不满？难道他们宁愿害死别人也不愿损失他们的利润？如果在一个非确定性的世界中，必须要犯一个错误的话，难道不该倾向于保护消费者和公众吗？附带地，这些例子对于我们这个自由企业体系控制自己的能力说明了什么呢？难道这些多少有些政府强制性色彩的事例，不是在为公众的利益着想吗？ 布朗和威廉姆逊烟草公司1971年的一份内部报告将“批驳成百万人头脑中认为吸烟会引起肺癌和其他疾病的错误信念”列为一个总体目标；该报告称：“这种信念是建立在盲目狂热的假设、荒谬的谣言、毫无根据的声明以及哗众取宠的机会主义者们的毫无科学性的陈述和猜测之上的。”他们抱怨针对香烟的令人难以置信的、史无前例的、恶毒的攻击，构成了自由办企业历史中针对产品进行的最为严重的诽谤和造谣中伤；这种罪行，诽谤牵涉到了如此巨大的范围，以至于人们不禁要问，这样的诽谤运动怎么会得到容忍；宪法怎么能忍受如此的藐视和违法行为。 这种煽动性的言论，只不过是比烟草业没完没了地为鼓动公众消费而喋喋不休的那些话显得稍微激动一点而已。 有许多的香烟上标有低“焦油”的广告(每支香烟少于等于10毫克)。为什么这是一个优点？因为正是在难以治疗的焦油中浓缩着多环芳烃和一些别的致癌物质。这种低焦油含量的广告，不正是烟草公司对香烟确实会致癌的一种心照不宜的默认吗？ 增进健康国际是一个盈利性的组织，多年来总共从烟草业接受了数百万美元的资助。它开展有关间接吸烟的研究，为烟草公司作证。在1994年，这个组织的三名技术人员抱怨，其上级主管伪造有关空气中可吸入的香烟颗粒物的数据。每一次，那些编造的或“修正”的数据都使烟草燃烧产生的烟看起来比技术人员的测定所显示的结果要安全得多。合作研究部门或是外部研究承包者可曾发现过一种产物比烟草公司所公开声明的更加危险吗？如果有，他们还能保住自己的饭碗吗？人们会对烟草产生依赖作用。用许多标准来衡量，它比海洛因和可卡因的成瘾性还要大。正如1940年的一则广告所说的，人们情愿“走一英里只为一包骆驼牌香烟”，这不是没有原因的。因吸烟而死亡的人数比整个二战中死去的人数还要多。根据世界卫生组织的报告，世界上每年因吸烟而死亡的人数为300百万。到202年，将上升为每年死亡100万人——部分原因是由于对发展中国家的青年妇女发起了铺天盖地的广告攻势，将吸烟描绘成一种进步与时尚。烟草业之所以能够成功地为这种成瘾性毒品制造出一种品味，其部分原因是鉴别谎言的技术。怀疑的思维方式和科学的方法还远未得到普及。轻信是可以杀人的。