[lostgame]

I absolutely don’t believe that’s what the commenter here was saying.

What I got from the comment is that it’s a problem everywhere, not isolated to this area or set of beliefs.

The commenter was simply providing another example of this, not stating this isn’t an overall bad thing. Of course it is.

[daenz]

To me, it feels kind of like the poster is agitated that the article focuses another country's problems, which elicited the kneejerk response about "Americans", "Christians" and "lazy journalism", as if to say "focus on your own problems." This response is confusing I never stated this was a problem specific to Nigeria, but instead I asked a general question about magical thinking in academia.

[galaxyLogic]

This is the problem with "cultural relativism" in general, which states that we cannot, must not, judge the beliefs and customs of other cultures because who are we to condemn them?

We should condemn magical thinking wherever it happens because truth is truth and falsehoods are falsehoods regardless of in which culture(s) they occur. And they pretty much occur in every country.

Another way of saying that is we should NOT condemn magical thinking in other cultures UNLESS we also condemn it in our own culture.

It is not like its impossible to tell what is magical thinking and what is not, we have science for doing just that.