Magical Warfare Technologies and the Persistence of False Beliefs [pdf]
This paper leaves me feeling uncomfortable. There are so many problems with it on so many levels and, yet, I think it is fascinating in the sense that it is applying a well known concept to a novel context.<p>Personally, I have a hard time seeing how this &quot;bulletproofing&quot; technique could possibly be true. However, I find it incredibly disrespectful and lacking in basic scientific integrity to go into a paper with the assumption that it is a false belief and then making no attempt to justify why it is a false belief other than &quot;duh...because they are superstitious barbarians&quot;. Whether the belief is false or not seems to be totally irrelevant in trying to show that the authors&#x27; conclusions are valid. Clearly, the members of the village believed that it was true. Because of their belief in the effectiveness of the &quot;treatment&quot; the results were x, y, and z.<p>As an aside, it seems weird to start with the premise that the belief is inherently false when the village was able to protect and free itself. You could very well make a claim that the &quot;treatment&quot; was effective from a scientific perspective; it would require replication in order to be validated. Why should I automatically assume it is invalid? That strikes me as the opposite of scientific enquiry.<p>The cultural hubris contained in this paper overshadows the conclusion. This sounds more like a piece of literature from an &quot;enlightened&quot; European priest visiting a wayward tribe of &quot;barbarians&quot; during the 19th century colonization of Africa than a modern, scientifically-rigorous scholarly article.