[bradfordarner]

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.

Personally, I have a hard time seeing how this "bulletproofing" 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 "duh...because they are superstitious barbarians". Whether the belief is false or not seems to be totally irrelevant in trying to show that the authors' conclusions are valid. Clearly, the members of the village believed that it was true. Because of their belief in the effectiveness of the "treatment" the results were x, y, and z.

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 "treatment" 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.

The cultural hubris contained in this paper overshadows the conclusion. This sounds more like a piece of literature from an "enlightened" European priest visiting a wayward tribe of "barbarians" during the 19th century colonization of Africa than a modern, scientifically-rigorous scholarly article.

[EthanHeilman]

>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 "duh...because they are superstitious barbarians".

I think you are reading into the motivations of the authors without evidence. It is much more likely that they conclude that bullet-proofing spells are a false belief because everything we know about physics and ballistics contradicts it.

[bradfordarner]

Certainly a possibility.

I totally agree with you that is seems downright ludicrous to think that a spell will cause bullets to bounce off of someone. We have to take the author at their word that such is actually the belief of those using the spell. (My experience in Africa would tell me that may be a rather naive understanding of the villagers' expectations of the spell's effectiveness. From what I've seen in Africa, it seems more likely that the villagers believed that the bullets would miss them or go around them; it just strikes me as a little too stupid to be believable.)

All of that seems irrelevant for the conclusions that the author is trying to reach. The belief is labelled as "false" without any evidence given for such being the case until the conclusion where it is written as "(false) belief". In other words, the word "false" is an unnecessary modifier. Hence, it seems like it is being used as a rhetorical device rather than a meaningful addition to the article.

[aidenn0]

If the gri-gri actually work as advertised (i.e. the beliefs are true), then there is no paradox for why it is adaptive.

If tribe A is immune to gunfire and tribe B is not, then tribe A will win and in a region with sufficient inter-tribal warfare, we will observe only tribes that are immune to gunfire.

[hordeallergy]

My experience in Africa is that anything will be believed. Look up Dr beetroot. Or zuma, the prostitute, and the shower.

[mturmon]

In the spirit of cultural relativism, here's a parallel anecdote about (incorrect?) superstition from our own treasure box:

*

A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on.

Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: “You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.”

Knight turned the machine off and on.

The machine worked.

[Fjolsvith]

I used to be a computer technician. Sometimes I arrived at a customer's office and the perplexed person couldn't explain why his computer suddenly started working. I developed a theory I called the "Tech Threat Syndrome", which posed that computers occasionally hid their problem whenever a technician appeared, so as to embarrass their user.

[lolc]

My theory around this is rather mundane: People behave more in the way they were taught when an authority is around. That makes a lot of computer problems go away when a techie shows up because people avoid taking shortcuts when they're being watched.

In my view this is sufficient to explain the phenomenon.

[mjevans]

It may also simply be that they're slowing down and actually waiting to respond to problems instead of trying to get things to work as fast or easily as possible.

Traffic manages to flow quite smoothly at the speed limit when a police officer is just standing around somewhere... (but there's usually a major bottleneck right upstream of that observation point as everyone panics and straightens up their focus).

Similarly, it is amazing how disruptive something worthy of gawking at can be. A curve in the road, a car safely on the shoulder, flashing lights that scream "PAY ATTENTION TO ME": all of those things seem to result in gawker-block.

Self driving cars really can't save us quickly enough.

[dsfyu404ed]

Your police car example is pretty ignorant of the negative upstream affects of the police car. You may as well say traffic is no longer in a traffic jamb once you're past the point of the jamb.

[marcosdumay]

It's a widely believed theory, formulated (and verified) independently many times through history.

[bradfordarner]

Haha!! Well said, sir!

[throwawayjava]

> 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

In this context, the belief is that a spell and magical powder/paste, combined with ritual, can protect from gunfire.

Science isn't free. Also, how on earth does one go about such an experiment humanely and in a financially prudent manner? I'd love to see the reviews on the grant proposal and IRB request to shoot 10 goats in order to test the effectiveness of gri gri...

> "duh...because they are superstitious barbarians"

The authors specifically discuss monotheistic religions and miracles in the introduction.

It's possible the authors believe all religious people are "superstitious barbarians", but that seems like an awfully uncharitable assumption to make about the authors. Even if all the authors are atheists, there's still a huge gap between "person who believes in unfalsifiable religious claims" and "superstitious barbarians".

> Whether the belief is false or not seems to be totally irrelevant in trying to show that the authors' conclusions are valid. Clearly, the members of the village believed that it was true. Because of their belief in the effectiveness of the "treatment" the results were x, y, and z.

The authors come to exactly the same conclusion -- at base, gri gri is effective; its efficacy is explained by its effect on communal behavior rather than magical powers.

> Why should I automatically assume it is invalid? That strikes me as the opposite of scientific enquiry.

Tea pots in space and all that.

> The cultural hubris contained in this paper overshadows the conclusion.

You and the author seem to have come to approximately the same conclusion...

[bradfordarner]

> Science isn't free. Also, how on earth does one go about such an experiment humanely and in a financially prudent manner?

I think it is outside the scope of this paper. But that is part of the thing that struck me as being so bizarre. This isn't a paper about the efficacy of the spell on an individual level. It seems to be a paper that is discussing how a belief in X may have high potential risk to the holder of belief X and, yet, be beneficial to a group of believers in X. That is an interesting but counterintuitive idea. I could see the same model being applied to experimental cancer treatments on a purely conceptual level.

> "duh...because they are superstitious barbarians"

This is admittedly 100% rhetoric on my part and may be "too much". However, there is really the way that authors' view of these villagers came across to me. I'm sure that is partly due to spending time in Africa and the very positive impression of the people that I came away with.

As you said the authors start by mentioning: "unfalsifiable religious claims". So, they seem to start the paper by classifying this a one of those "unfalsifiable religious claims". But, they then immediately classify it as a "false belief" without any evidence for such being the case AND the "false" modifier being irrelevant within the context of the paper.

> The authors come to exactly the same conclusion

Once again, that is what I find so bizarre about the article. I guess it is just me. But, it doesn't sound like a scientist conducting a study; it sounds like one part cultural commentary and one part science. The conclusion doesn't seem to require the cultural inferences about belief systems and their falsifiability or lack thereof. Hence, it struck the wrong chord with me.

I guess I would like to believe that we (i.e. all science lovers) are really looking for a better understanding of the world and that we can do so without pre-conceived judgements of something that is foreign to us.

[lolc]

Bullets cannot be stopped by culture. They're the same everywhere.

The closest explanation I'd allow of how this bullet-proofing is supposed to work is that the smell is so bad the attackers get confused. Really, that would be my first hypothesis if it could be shown that the ingredients matter.

[clock_tower]

> As you said the authors start by mentioning: "unfalsifiable religious claims". So, they seem to start the paper by classifying this a one of those "unfalsifiable religious claims". But, they then immediately classify it as a "false belief"...

I noticed that, too. The first sentence says that many people hold unfalsifiable beliefs. The second says that many of these unfalsifiable beliefs are false. Which is it?

[Fjolsvith]

One of the great things about the practice of magic is that disbelievers never know when magic has been worked upon them.

[throwawayjava]

None-the-less, I don't want my tax money funding studies on the efficacy of gri gri...

[RangerScience]

Fuck that, I do, and it'd be pretty goddamn cheap. Likely benefits are training / practice, unlikely benefits are deeper anthropological and jungle-life (why those plants?) understanding, and the Pascal's Mugger benefit is "huh magic...?". And then there's the weird side-benefit of encouraging scientific investigation of all things.

Seriously, the biggest expense is going to be shipping the researchers.

[Gravityloss]

Would it be cheaper to send soldiers out with vests or gri-gri? Probably in the west at least, vests are more cost effective. If a soldier is worth a million, one in hundred soldiers is saved by a vest during their career and a vest costs a thousand dollars, it's a ten to one return. But somewhere else, the inputs might be quite different.

[cicero]

I don't know if the author thinks they are barbarians, but he does say their beliefs "are almost certainly incorrect." I will give him a few objectivity points for including the word "almost," but he follows the typical modern assumptions by using the word "certainly." The beliefs are also described as "non-falsifiable", which means they do not fit Popper's basic scientific principle, which only means that the beliefs cannot be verified using the scientific method (according to Popper), but that does not mean they are incorrect.

[GuB-42]

I think they used "superstitious barbarians" because that bulletproof magic is obviously false belief (people still get shot and die) and the results are very quantifiable (life and death situations).

Using our own false beliefs would distract from the main research. First, researchers would have to prove this is actually false belief, then sort out the more subtle effects.