[Why] Smart People Believe Weird Things

LeBain writes "This Sep. 2002 Scientific American article on 'confirmation bias' and why people believe in the paranormal reminds us, 'we need to teach that science is not a database of unconnected factoids but a set of methods designed to describe and interpret phenomena.'"

Comments

Random Phenomena

[dmorin]

There are some people that believe when you have a question or a problem, you open randomly to a page in the Bible, and the answer will be on that page. This, of course, just demonstrates the power of the human mind to interpret phenomena as they feel fit.

True story - last last week, just before lunch, a coworker and I were discussing a Java design problem and how I hated our reliance on needing a database guy to write up some stored procedures for us. We discussed the possibility of going to JDO, and whether an XML database would do anything for us. I sat back down at my desk, reloaded slashdot, and got this. Coincidence my ass. Slashdot is the center of the universe.