Speaker refutes pseudo-sciences during lecture at T2F

According to neurosurgeon Dr Athar Enam, many educated people also believe in pseudo-sciences

KARACHI: Science is not a dogma as it is continuously evolving. The best thing about science is that it has no arrogance.

Dr Athar Enam, neurosurgeon who chairs surgery at Aga Khan University hospital, said this on Friday evening during a lecture under the series 'Science Ka Adda' at T2F.

Dr Enam was of the view that those who were practicing pseudo-sciences were fooling others. According to him, the human brain evolved over billions of years and, hence, people believed in stories rather than statistics. Nothing blinds intellect more than anecdotes, he said.

The speaker argued that anecdotes, biases, randomness and perception were the main causes that led to fallacies in reasoning due to which people started believing in pseudo-sciences. According to him, our fallacies stemmed from our biases.

The neurosurgeon also touched upon random elements in life and universe, which according to him, played a significant role in making people a believer of pseudo-sciences. People can be easily fooled by randomness, he said.



According to Dr Enam, perceptions were also a major factor which hindered people from believing in scientific facts. Would anyone believe that earth is round if he was born in the 9th century, he asked. The speaker asserted that often it were perceptions, not the reality, that defined our beliefs.

The most educated of the people believe in pseudo-sciences like cards reading, palmistry and astrology, the speaker maintained. "Statistical data proved wrong even the educated people," he said, urging everyone to start thinking rationally. "We need to keep reading," he said, adding that people must not, however, believe in whatever they read.

Anything which is not based on tested hypotheses is a pseudo-science, the speaker said.

Shedding light on placebo effect, the phenomenon in which a patient is cured by an object which is not a scientifically proven cure of the disease, the speaker said one third of ailments are cured by the body itself due to its natural defence mechanism against diseases. People often attribute the cure to objects that have nothing to do with curing the disease, he added.