The online Smithsonian article entitled The 10 Most Disturbing Scientific Discoveries covers scientific findings that have disturbed human beliefs in the past and present. Discoveries threaten confidence in our continued existence: microbes gaining on attempts to destroy them, cataclysms creating mass extinctions, ritual human sacrifices practiced in many cultures around the world and climate change. Other discoveries threatened faiths: earth is not the center of universe and evolution. Finally, current discoveries warn about our behavior: nuclear energy, faulty mental processes and substances that taste good but are not good for us.

    Comments from diverse perspectives made the article more interesting, and more disturbing.

    Comments corrected the article’s errors (the section on diets misinterpreted study results). Many comments replaced the inevitable ignorance because no one comprehends all 10 discoveries. One commentator said even though our sun is  the center of our solar system, earth is the center of the universe because it extends infinitely in all directions. Still another said there is no center of the universe because all matter exists on the surface of a bubble where there is no center.

    I don’t know what’s accurate. I just enjoyed sharing the mind-expanding mystery with fellow readers.

Discoveries that reflect poorly on humans were disturbing, such as ritual human sacrifice. And the part about faulty memories insisted, “Our cognitive failings are legion.” I admit to some cognitive failings, but legion?

Our behaviors, beliefs and emotions are manipulated intentionally and unintentionally. In a taste test we’ll prefer the first sample. We make incorrect generalizations from a few personal experiences. We misinterpret information to support what we already believe. We trust our indelible memories, such as 9/11, but they’re surprisingly inaccurate when compared with people’s journals at the time. But I can now claim our children are incorrectly recalling questionable behaviors by their parents.

    Commentators didn’t challenge the discovery of cognitive failings, but promptly demonstrated them. People made generalizations from a few anecdotes. A woman said she believes in evolution because formerly blind fish in Mammoth Caves have evolved to fish that see because of lighted tours in the caves: “This was proof enough for me.” Another rejected global warming because average temperatures over the last ten years have not risen. A responder dismissed the last decade as an anomaly but used one to prove his argument by saying April 2010 was the hottest month on record.   

    Intolerant comments disturbed my enjoyment. People on both sides of evolution and global warming demonstrated our proclivity for sacrificing other people’s feelings with sarcasm. I cringed because I remember being a new faculty member in a group of teachers when a senior faculty member dismissed my comment to the effect that “We’ve already been over that idea and rejected it so we don’t need to get into again.”

    I corked my humiliation as we went on to something else, but after twenty years I still wish we’d uncorked whatever my faulty memory thinks I said and pour it on the table to examine it.

People scarred by intolerance tend to avoid diverse dialogues and search for like-minded people whose opinions confirm their own. The result is people retreat into groups with isolated ignorance that threaten the delightful diversity shared by readers and commentators.

    Even though people were warned that we need each other to buttress our faulty mental processes, intolerance worked to sacrifice those who disagreed with the majority perceptions. Maybe the eleventh disturbing discovery is that we can’t help ourselves.  I am more optimistic than that.