Matthew Hicks writes on the virtues of scepticism, and on flimsy claims about Jack the Ripper’s identity.
A certain amount of scepticism is always in order. Especially when evidence is in short order, as with most claims of Jack the Ripper’s identity.
What would be left of Humanism if religion didn’t exist? It’s a question that is so often asked but is of course a misunderstanding of what a humanist is concerned about.
Humans are conduits of information. That is, with our five senses, we receive and send information we think is usual for day to day functioning i.e. interacting with others, avoiding or confronting danger and seeking fulfilment. You would think after 200,000 years of existence, we would be experts. Indeed, in many ways we are but we have a knack of trying to find the easiest way to do things and that on many fronts is our downfall. Humanism seeks to enable every person regardless of where they are on the planet to thrive individually and in their communities. The best way to do this, we often feel, is to learn how to receive and send information in a trustworthy and fulfilling way.
Essentially the humanist is concerned with one question, as I see it. That is:
‘What is it that we can be sure of?’
The answer is not nearly as important as the process involved in answering the question. The process involved in being a humanist lies in being sceptical about every piece of information that comes your way. We don’t do this because we’re grumpy but because it is a vitally important skill in order for us to get by in life. It affects every aspect of our life down to what mobile phone you choose to much more important issues such as what medical treatment do I opt for or, on a larger scale, how do we respond to crisis affecting us personally, our family or either nationally or globally.
This week a story came out which is a perfect test case for illustrating what I’m banging on about. According to many newspapers and news sources, ‘armchair detective’ Russell Edwards has solved the mystery of Jack the Ripper. I can see you all rolling your eyes. After all, Patricia Cornwell alleged to have done the same years ago alongside so many other authors.
The basic points are that Edwards claims, with the help of a molecular biologist, to have isolated DNA from prime suspect Aaron Kosminski and matched it with DNA on the shawl that belonged to one of Jacks victims. The account is quite convincing on many levels or rather it would be if it wasn’t subject to so many influencing factors. You do not need to be an expert in DNA or forensics to know that all this evidence would be all the more compelling if the methodology of the scientist and the results had been submitted for scrutiny in a peer led review within a scientific journal rather than an account in a commercially viable book. By bypassing the scientific community, the author has shown either his naivety in thinking he had enough evidence or that he knew the evidence wouldn’t be robust enough at the hands of impartial scientists.
Of course the above is irrelevant. Even if you’re unaware of scientific processes, you do not need to look hard to see that this book is making a noise more for the fact that we live in an era of discontent on many levels not dissimilar to pre war Germany. Of course, in times of economic down turns there are always scapegoats i.e. immigrants. Regardless of whether Aaron Kosminki the Polish Jew was guilty or not, he was likely a prime suspect in 1888 as much for his ethnicity as for any circumstances or evidence linking him to the murders. I would like to take a risk in suggesting that Edwards book is all the more highlighted by the media because the papers know that to put a Polish Jewish cat amongst the right wing pigeons is going to kick up a profitable storm.
We might also ask why such a story would interest us. Well, there are many reasons, but the main one is that humans in the west seemed to be obsessed with monsters. As philosopher Rene Girard once said, the most frightening of monsters are those who most closely resemble humans. Godzilla really ruffles few feathers unlike the figure of Hannibal Lecter, genius man eater who is untouchable and evil even when incarcerated. We distance these monsters though because the fear we really feel comes from realising that we are all capable of the same evils. Psychologist Dr Philip Zimbardo, famous for his 1971 Stanford prison experiment, has argued convincingly that mankind’s evils are more circumstance led than disposition led. That is a frightening thought. Good people can turn bad quite easily. In the attempt to ignore such a fact, it is very easy to point that finger away from the systems that create these monsters to easy targets that are unable to defend themselves. I am not suggesting that Edwards has a thing against Polish Jews but I am suggesting there is an underlying racism in society today that has been well stoked and will be all the more receptive to his information.
The point is that when we receive information, we can be lazy just and accept it with all the baggage of its bias and perceptions or we can ask a series of questions which will tell us whether to accept it or not. These questions are simple processes. Where has the source of the information come by it? Why is it of interest to them? How will they benefit from passing that information on? Once we have asked these questions and answered them enough to be sure that we can then dismiss or accept this information, we can then ask the following similar questions. ‘Why am I interested in this information? Will it be of true benefit to me? How will I benefit from passing on this information? What service or disservice to others will be served by passing it on?’
The process is a hard one to adopt initially but it is an important one if we are going to make claims of confronting the current threats to humanity and the world around us in order to continue living and thriving. At a time when only 11 countries out of 196 worldwide are not involved in some sort of conflict, where a third of the world’s population owns three thirds of the world’s wealth, we would do well to adopt the humanist approach. It’s not about being unable to stomach religion. It’s not about winning philosophical points about theism. You just have to watch Richard Dawkins interview with the Bishop of Oxford on YouTube to realise that it is misinformation that bothers Dawkins rather than religion itself. For me, Humanism is about casting aside irrational fears far enough to empower each and every one of us to live in personal and collective peace.
Matt Hicks is a nurse in the Royal Navy as well as being one of the RN Service Representatives for the Defence Humanists. In his spare time, Matt can be found touring Devon with a bag full of songs and his ukulele. He blogs at The Wooden Duck.
‘What is it that we can be sure of?’
Science tells us that we can never be sure of anything but if you use science that is as near to certainty as you will get .
“What service or disservice to others will be served by passing it on?”
No disservice if both parties fully appreciate science. A service only if someone knows how to use sceince properly
I thought the article above started off reasonably enough but then steadily departed from any notion of common sense thereafter.
If only the actual qualities of the evidence – the shawl – had been questioned, I would have understood that. Apparently, it was discovered by one of the police officers who arrived on the scene of one of the murders and he kept it to himself, which is bizarre – to say the least – considering it was an important piece of evidence from the scene of a murder crime.
The police officer allegedly kept it in his family and the journalist who mounted the expose eventually purchased the shawl in an auction. He then subseuqently commissioned a scientist to carry out DNA analysis of the stains on the shawl, through which process it is claimed that blood from the victim and other liquid deposits from the alleged murderer were discovered.
Arguably, the shawl is not very reliable as a source of evidence, having gone through so many hands between the time of the murder and the research.
No public prosecutor today would rely upon such a protracted and erratic sequence of events on which to build a criminal case for a finding of murder.
The alleged murderer – Aaron Kosminski – was apparently one of three main suspects at the time but he had been hospitalised in a lunatic asylum after the final victim was murdered. I believe he eventually died in Leavesden Hospital (close to the home of the Warner Studios, where “Harry Potter” films are made).
Even if the police had had this piece of evidence alongside all the other evidence they then possessed, the probability was that they would not have secured a conviction for murder at court with an obviously insane individual – even then.
Who benefits?
The journalist, who happens to run a museum in the East End of London and who probably has some sort of book deal in the offing. The scientist who carried out the analysis would have done so for money and may have done so for reputational reasons and to possibly hope to get further work involving DNA.
As for bringing in a racial-religious dimension, I consider that way off the mark.
The passage of the Aliens Act 1905 marked the introduction of UK immigration controls, principally because of mass Jewish immigration into Britain from areas under Russian control. Aaron Kosminski was a Polish Jew. If the authorities had thought him guilty, would that not have provided them with a perfect excuse to bring in such legislation even sooner?
As for linking the timing of this latest development to alleged racism – as when the author writes ‘I am not suggesting that Edwards has a thing against polish Jews but I am suggesting there is an underlying racism in society today that has been well stoked and will be all the more receptive to his information. – I just do not accept that claim.
Racism today is at a far lower level than when I was younger – I am 69 – before racial and sexual discrimination laws were passed in the 1960s and 1970s.
I am not saying there is no residual racism in our society but it is at a far lower level than ever before.
These “findings” as to the alleged identity of “Jack the Ripper” are largely unverifiable and a bit of entertainment “puff” promoted by “The Daily Mail”.
Attaching any greater significance to these alleged “findings” makes no sense.
That’s an amazing insight John! Previously I have had meet someone from the MET (Scott Land Yard) introduced to me by my best friend. They all had the same line of humanist thought pattern like yours.
I couldn’t agree more and I couldn’t have put it more eloquently. The article follows a poorly-articulated train of thought and ignores the real scientific and evidential issues.
And I take issue with the idea that the central question of humanism should be merely epistemological. Issues of knowledge, certainty and evidence are important but, for a humanist, their importance lies in how they contribute to our decisions on how to live and what to do, not simply in a formal, philosophical sense.
Like many of the other commenters, I take issue with the “attack the Polish Jew = racist society” angle.
Personally, I think it’s more like “attack-anyone-who-isn’t-exactly-like-you”. The actual social group being attacked is pretty much interchangeable, whether it’s race, religion, nationality, or “the riffraff who didn’t go to private school” who are on the receiving end. It just depends on the situation, and which group is perceived as the threat to the status quo at that time.
The key is that the speaker is marking out a difference between “us” and “them”, and assigning good qualities to “us” (i.e., clever, hard-working, not serial killers) and bad qualities to “them” (lazy, feckless, stupid, criminal).
The Stanford experiments are interesting because they illustrated people’s tendency to treat people who are not “us” badly – even when “them” and “us” was defined arbitrarily.
(Although I have heard that there was some creative reporting of the results done, to make sure that the experiment showed what it was supposed to. However, I have not seen the raw data myself, so I may be wrong).
At the moment, “racist” is an easy go-to insult that doesn’t require the speaker to actually think of anything more creative to say, or even to come up with a reasoned argument as to why the other person is wrong. It’s also an accusation that’s very hard to defend against, since any attempt to justify your views (whether racist or not) inevitably digs you in deeper.
Crying “racism” at every opportunity, whether justified or not, causes serious problems. It not only hides real racism because people get tired of the word being thrown around with no thought, and therefore stop listening, but it raises the spectre of “forbidden subjects” – that there are some social groups who cannot be criticised. This, in turn, increases real racism out of jealousy (“How come I can’t criticise his race/culture, but he can disrespect mine all he likes?”) and playing on that kind of reaction is a tactic used by right-wing hate groups.
Seeing racism (or sexism, or anything-else-ism) everywhere also, worst of all, encourages the kind of mindset that thinks of a person as a race first and a human being second.
So before shouting “racism”, take a step back and actually look at the evidence. If there is any. As Sir Terry Pratchett said (or had Samuel Vimes say, in Jingo) “Just because someone’s a member of an ethnic minority doesn’t mean they’re not a nasty, small-minded little jerk.”
Everyone deserves to be disliked or hated for his own bad qualities, rather than having his uniqueness and personhood taken away by having people’s reactions to him attributed to his membership of a particular social group rather than his personality. To me, that is humanism. Everyone should be treated with the dignity they deserve as the individual human being that they are – not as an interchangeable member of a particular social group.
Oh dear. Improper html tags strike again… 🙁
Fixed it for you
Even if the DNA evidence was perfect in matching the blood on the shawl to the victim, and the semen to the suspect it would not actually prove that the suspect was the killer.
All it shows is that he had sexual contact with her. Given she was a prostitute then it is likely she had sex with many men. If the suspect was local then it is quite possible that he had been a client. Perhaps even earlier that same night.
All it would prove is contact. It wouldn’t prove murder.
Ladies and Gents, your comments on my piece are really welcome. Those of us who take the risk of thinking aloud should also take the criticism gracefully like a gift so thank you to those who rightly found holes in what I’ve said. I wasnt actually crying “racism”. I was trying to illustrate that all of us who put words in the public domain have a responsibility to give thought to how our words or information is recieved. In the UK, our economic climate is such that the inclination towards xenophobia is common place. I wasnt suggesting that Edwards was in the least bit racist but I am suggesting that the information could be used to bolster xenophobia atleast indirectly. One only needs to look through the list if suspects at the time to see the large portion of Polish Jews included in the line up.
That said I take responsibility for perhaps not explaining my thought processes fully. Non the less I have learnt a huge out from the comments here and wish to thank you all for contributing.