Seeing is not believing
Basketactortale
Shipmate
in Purgatory
I was thinking about charlatans and I read someone talking about an encounter with a fraudster.
In the encounter a journalist met someone who was making wild claims within their sphere. The journalist thought it sounded odd because they had not heard of this person and the events sounded unlikely but in that moment they put it down to ignorance. The journalist doubted themselves and reasoned that there must have been something that they did not know about the thing they had written and studied extensively.
Much later it turned out that the stories were complete fabrications and the guy was publicly exposed as a fraud.
I can think of a few occasions when I have seen things that "felt wrong". For example I recently saw something that looked quite attractive to a person like me with time on my hands. Investigating further it turned out to be something run by a cultish organisation.
I am curious to hear stories about where you have been in these sorts of situations and were or were not taken in.
In the encounter a journalist met someone who was making wild claims within their sphere. The journalist thought it sounded odd because they had not heard of this person and the events sounded unlikely but in that moment they put it down to ignorance. The journalist doubted themselves and reasoned that there must have been something that they did not know about the thing they had written and studied extensively.
Much later it turned out that the stories were complete fabrications and the guy was publicly exposed as a fraud.
I can think of a few occasions when I have seen things that "felt wrong". For example I recently saw something that looked quite attractive to a person like me with time on my hands. Investigating further it turned out to be something run by a cultish organisation.
I am curious to hear stories about where you have been in these sorts of situations and were or were not taken in.
Comments
Another scam that has been going around. You receive a text from your "pastor" saying he would like to give $50 gift cards to staff members, but he does not have the time to get the cards. He wonders if you can get them. All you have to do is send the numbers on the cards back to him. He will reimburse you later. We have had several people report seeing this scam. It comes through about once a year.
The inference is that seeing may not be believing. Of course the series are fiction but both suggest that visual evidence may be fabricated, and plausibly so.
I do believe this is now possible but I do not know enough of the technology to know whether such fabrication can be detected. At any rate, it suggests that honest use of video evidence may need some process of independent verification.
I appreciate this may not be the purpose of the OP but it strikes me as an intriguing offshoot.
It's already happening on social media. Generally fairly badly and obviously but it's advancing terrifyingly quickly. I'm rather worried about it.
I think the thing that particularly interests me is when a fraudster is able to persuade someone with actual expertise in something to doubt themselves.
But there is also another whole layer of complexity when the senses themselves are so easily fooled.
Do you think believers are more or less susceptible to fraud in your experience?
Putting my cards on the table, I think my main bedrock assumption is that a lot of believers are being exploited by fraudsters.
Some of it looks so ridiculous that it seems obvious that it is a con, but maybe there is something about being a believer that makes these things more attractive.
Unbelievers are obviously not immune to fraudsters, but maybe it is something about the language of religion that makes that kind of con attractive to believers?
In this context I’m more than a little concerned by the impact of AI on visual imagery. The misinformers know they have various audiences they can manipulate and deceive.
Deception is a very subtle temptation and I guess we’re all going to need to be increasingly aware of the means by which we can be deceived.
Fascinating and very topical topic!
Another thing to disbelieve are the text messages about undelivered parcels or impending penalties if you don't do X.
It's bred in me such suspicion that when a young chugger in the street asked my name, intending to initiate a friendly chat, I snapped back 'I don't give out personal information'.
But I can see that, crude as they are, they are probing for vulnerabilities - fear, confusion, gullibility, desire to believe.
Would you be able to explain what you mean, please? Do you mean that the "historical critical approach" makes one more (or less) susceptible to fraud?
I think it helps to combat credulity. The criticism that it may induce scepticism has its point, but my gut feel is that in an increasingly deceptive era, where the tools of deception are becoming ever more sophisticated, we need the tools of a necessary scepticism to avoid that deception. The thinking goes wider than biblical analysis.
Hope this helps. It’s a big topic.
The key factor is openness. Essentially it also opens the mind to the value of analysis in testing assertions.
When I did microscopy we were shown that you should not believe some of the things you saw as they were artifacts of microscopy.
It took the invention of telescopes to learn that the planets are different sizes, and initially there was debate over whether the size differences were artifacts produced by the telescope.
X-ray images do not convey information until the brain is trained to read them.
Magicians can fool scientists, but other magicians can see how the tricks are being performed.
I am sure that scammers would be more expert in seeing scams.
I therefore assume this is generated by AI and is unreliable.
I am happy to have a conversation about a Wikipedia page and what it says but I cannot engage with garbled nonsense.
I was once in a university lecture a long time ago when we still used Overhead Projectors. If I recall a student was explaining a graph on a slide.
A particularly picky professor asked about a data point on the screen which did not seem to be explained. Which, to be clear, is nonsense anyway as outliers are by definition, lying outside the explicable data.
The flustered student took the slide off the OHP and the mark remained. It was a fly on the projector plate.
Meanwhile I’ll try to get you something online. I didn’t want to divert the thread of course. My second post about the value of critical methodologies in an increasingly deceptive age is worth following up anyway, particularly with reference to the value of the scientific method (which is akin to historical criticism).
I’m not sure how you feel in general about Wikipedia links but this one is verifiable by reference to sources.
Personally I don’t mind using Wikipedia but I don’t treat it as gospel. I read the entries with my critical hat on!
At least I thought that’s what I was saying. Apologies if I’ve misled into believing that I was inferring the opposite.
Mind you, a careless scepticism is just another kind of gullibility!
The Parable of the Scholar's Lantern
A scholar once crafted a beautiful lantern, convinced its glow could reveal every hidden thing. Proud of his creation, he carried it everywhere, shining it on other people’s ideas and pointing out their flaws.
One night, walking home, he stumbled into a ditch. “Impossible,” he muttered. “My lantern exposes all dangers.”
A passerby offered a hand. “Your lantern is bright,” she said, “but it only shows what you point it at. It can’t show what you refuse to see.”
Only then did the scholar notice: the lantern had never once been turned toward his own feet.
….. or maybe just carelessness!
This is describing careless scepticism. The anti-vax people are an example, believing fervently that vaccines are bad not based on any reputable source but simple because it is sceptical of science and doctors. Not accepting vaccines on authority, but willingly accepting anti-vaccines without authority.
And often, there is a temptation to run with one's biases. When I hear something negative about Trump, my immediate temptation is to believe it. But I have tried to discipline myself to research whether the juicy tidbit is true first. There was a rumor not too long ago that Trump, in a Truth Social post, advised Queen Elizabeth to pardon Prince Andrew, stating that he would do it for his kids. The joke being that the Queen, of course, is dead and how stupid of Trump not to know that. But investigation shows that the whole thing is made up. In fact, it originated as satire and the original fake post actually bore watermarks declaring it satire---and yet still some people ignored that because the fake stuff conformed to their prejudices.
It may be my fault here, but the term “ questioning” is probably better than sceptical.
Next, the scammer reframes the situation so that trusting them feels like the skeptical, independent‑minded choice. They might say institutions exaggerate risks, that “most people don’t understand the real data,” or that they’re offering insider information others are too naïve to see. The victim’s skepticism is subtly redirected away from the scammer and toward safer, legitimate sources.
A scammer also exploits the limits of real scientific reasoning. Scientific skepticism requires time, verification, and comparison of evidence — but scams rely on urgency. By creating a narrow window (“this opportunity closes tonight”), the scammer forces the victim to act before their usual evaluative process can kick in. The victim mistakes rushed analysis for rational decision‑making.
Finally, scammers weaponize the language of science: statistics without context, jargon that sounds technical, or fabricated studies. Someone who believes they “think scientifically” may assume they can spot fake data, but overconfidence makes them less likely to double‑check.
In the end, the scammer doesn’t defeat scientific skepticism itself — they defeat the illusion of it. The person isn’t tricked because they’re irrational, but because their self‑image is easier to manipulate than the facts.
Something else I learned from the medical field. Doctors and other medical professionals are working from certain belief systems to practice their profession. If a problem does not fit into their structured beliefs it will either be missed or discounted. Belief plays a powerful role in how patients, clinicians, and even entire medical systems interpret what they see. Medicine is full of uncertainty, and whenever evidence is incomplete, the mind fills the gaps with prior expectations.
I suggest that greater awareness of the increased ability to manipulate evidence credibly (for the purposes of persuasion or manipulation) is very useful. It means that standards of verification now need to take into account these new challenges to verification.
Opinion needs to be informed by more than just prior beliefs.
I’ve dealt with this too. I’ve been trying to keep this quote by C. S. Lewis from Mere Christianity in mind:
I've seen an element of that in coverage of the Epstein files. The bare facts and testimony of survivors are quite bad enough, but social media has been chock full of accounts trying to extrapolate ever worse horrors from passing remarks in the files. It's like people want there to be a grand baby eating satanic conspiracy rather than the grubby and rather prosaic reality of wealthy abusers indulging their proclivities.
Yep. There seems to be a willingness in some quarters to believe every depravity extrapolated from unsubstantiated claims of dubious provenance in the files.
Cold fusion is the idea that nuclear fusion could occur at or near room temperature—a radical contrast to the millions of degrees required for “hot” fusion in stars or reactors. The concept has fascinated scientists for decades, but it has also become one of the most famous cautionary tales in modern science.
Below is the story of how it rose, fell, and—interestingly—never fully disappeared.
1. The 1989 Announcement: Fleischmann & Pons
In March 1989, electrochemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons held a dramatic press conference at the University of Utah claiming they had achieved nuclear fusion in a tabletop experiment using:
Heavy water (D₂O)
A palladium electrode
Electrolysis to force deuterium into the metal lattice
They reported:
Excess heat far beyond chemical explanations
Neutrons and tritium, both associated with fusion
Gamma rays and helium‑4 (in some early reports)
The announcement bypassed peer review and immediately drew global attention and hope for a limitless clean energy source.
It took a few months before the scientific skeptics caught up to refute the claims based on
Theoretical impossibility
Inconsistent nuclear signatures
Replication failures, and
Experimental flaws
Nevertheless, the claim raises its head every few years.
See the article on cold fusion in wikipedia
I think it shows that in the space it took for the scientific community to catch up to the claim is where skepticism breaks down. It was too good to be true but at least the world wanted it to be true.
A good example of skepticism getting in the way of science is the theory of continental drift It was hypothesized in 1912 but the reaction of the scientific community was "impossible." The continents could not move. Took nearly 50 years to prove it. Again, in that gap, things could happen.
A shrewd imposter could point to either story, just to raise an ounce of doubt, and then drive a truck through that gap.
Skepticism is healthy, but it is not the end all.
Application of the scientific method and peer review was sufficient to render the Fleischmann-Pons claims as unverified and currently there is no accepted theoretical model that describes how cold fusion could occur. The scientific method is questioning, not initially sceptical.
Continental drift was first proposed in the 19th century but it was not until the development of understanding about tectonic plates that a verifiable discovery was made of the means by which continental drift might occur. A lot of patient and painstaking research has led to the current understanding of tectonic plates.
It is not uncommon for theoretical ideas to be regarded as unproven pending verifiable evidence in support. Hypotheses are to be tested. That’s the way the community seeks to work to advance understanding.
(I appreciate this is a tangent; if there is sufficient interest, perhaps it deserves a fresh thread?)