“As the philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote in a 1928 essay, laypeople must evaluate expert claims by exercising their own careful logic as well. The skepticism that I advocate amounts only to this: (1) that when the experts are agreed, the… — Thomas M. Nichols Copy Share Image
“Conspiracy theorists manipulate all tangible evidence to fit their explanation, but worse, they will also point to the absence of evidence as even stronger confirmation. After all, what better sign of a really effective conspiracy is there than a complete lack of any trace that the conspiracy exists? Facts, the absence of facts, contradictory facts: everything is proof. Nothing can… — Thomas M. Nichols Copy Share
“Today, by contrast, students explode over imagined slights that are not even remotely in the same category as fighting for civil rights or being sent to war. Students now build majestic Everests from the smallest molehills, and they descend into hysteria over pranks and hoaxes. In the midst of it all, the students are learning that emotion and volume can… — Thomas M. Nichols Copy Share
“And when voters lose control of these important decisions, they risk the hijacking of their democracy by ignorant demagogues, or the more quiet and… — Thomas M. Nichols Copy Share Image
“As the economic writer Ben Casselman pointed out in 2016, most college applicants “never have to write a college entrance essay, pad a résumé… — Thomas M. Nichols Copy Share Image
“People do not come to the Internet so that their bad information can be corrected or their cherished theories disproven. Rather, they ask the… — Thomas M. Nichols Copy Share Image
“If the public has no idea about the substance of an issue, and will vote based on who they like rather than what they… — Thomas M. Nichols Copy Share Image
“The issue is not indifference to established knowledge; it’s the emergence of a positive hostility to such knowledge. This is new in American culture,… — Thomas M. Nichols Copy Share Image
“At the root of all this is an inability among laypeople to understand that experts being wrong on occasion about certain issues is not… — Thomas M. Nichols Copy Share Image
“The requirements of a degree in a STEM field (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), a demanding foreign language, or a rigorous degree in the humanities… — Thomas M. Nichols Copy Share Image
“In 2015, a Massachusetts accountant named Stephen Pasceri lost his seventy-eight-year-old mother to cardiovascular disease. Mrs. Pasceri had a long history of health trouble,… — Thomas M. Nichols Copy Share Image
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread… — Thomas M. Nichols Copy Share Image
“The modern media, with so many options tailored to particular views, is a huge exercise in confirmation bias. This means that Americans are not… — Thomas M. Nichols Copy Share Image
