On CCTV Airing a Paranormal Video

4,481 characters2007.02.08

About CCTV Broadcasting Paranormal Videos

I happened to see a QQ News item, http://news.qq.com/a/20070208/000611.htm

To say whether what CCTV is promoting is “pseudoscience” is hard to say, but one thing can be certain: it is not promoting science, and even less the spirit of science.

I already mentioned the badness of CCTV’s “Exploration·Discovery” program in an earlier article, The Zodiac, Easter Island, and the Predicament of Popular Science. I have always recommended: if you want to know more about science, it is best to watch less television. Whether it is “Exploration·Discovery” or “Discovery,” the contribution to the public understanding of science is probably extremely negative.

I am less and less willing to believe that television can contribute to the spread of knowledge or wisdom. Watching TV seems to let one sit on the sofa and learn about astronomy and geography, past and present, at home and abroad—perhaps one really can learn a bit more this way, but the worst thing is that people come to think they have learned a great deal from television, and the new generation imagines itself to understand more than those old-fashioned types who remained in the print era. This mentality of ignorance is the worst part of all, enough to cancel out entirely whatever slight contribution television may have made to the popularization of knowledge. (Television is still a pretty good thing; its function in the present age is entertainment, so I still watch cartoons~)

Enough said about that. This news item also caught my attention in a few other respects:

First, the four words “expert opinion” really stand out. Nowadays the media are always invoking “expert opinion”; this is of course also an influence of scientism. Here, the so-called expert probably refers to that professor from Beijing Institute of Technology. From what I checked, he is a professor of economics. On this matter, what exactly is he an “expert” in?

As for what that Ms. He from the office of the “Exploration·Discovery” program said, that made me even more despairing about this program.

Another interesting thing is the questionnaire survey attached online:

Do you think the programs broadcast by CCTV are promoting the paranormal? Total votes: 13072

No, the purpose of broadcasting them is to promote science and oppose superstition 7209 55.15％

Neutral; such programs should have their broadcast times controlled 3649 27.91％

Yes; if the visuals are edited to be so frightening, isn’t that promotion? 2214 16.94％

First of all, the way this survey is framed is very poor. In fact, this is how the so-called surveys commonly found online are now—there are often leading statements appended after the options, and both the questions and answers are off topic. In a survey like this one, the first half of each of the three answers is actually answering “whether you support CCTV’s broadcasting”; while the reasons listed in the second half are even more unrelated to one another—for example, I might simultaneously think that the program is promoting science, but that its broadcast time should be controlled, and that the handling really was a bit too frightening—putting these three answers side by side as a single-choice question is obviously a mess. But this style of questioning seems quite popular; almost all impromptu online survey questions are of this sort. Perhaps it is worth examining how this trend came about. (By the way, that “random survey question” that Yiku is running now doesn’t even have a single one that can be answered.)

Still, even if the questioning is extremely unscientific, the survey results more or less can tell us something. A 55% approval rate is somewhat unexpected

February 8, 2007

at Fushan Road