An Exercise in Critical Reading–or, Do You Question Articles You Agree With?

Courtesy of reddit, I read this article: “Birth-control pills poison everyone? Environmentalists silent on threat from water tainted with estrogen.”

Since the article takes information from the National Catholic Register, it kind of jumps out and whacks you upside the head with an intersex fish that perhaps this article has a political agenda to it.

Of course, that’s not really an insight. The article may have been intended as an editorial, and I just missed where it was identified as such. That’s not my point. I’ll get to my point later. For the moment, let’s pick apart the WND article.

First off, the article claims that environmentalists are mum about the hormonal disruption of fish. Not so. There are a bunch of non-Catholic websites out there that discuss it:

• Boulder Area Sustainability Information Network
• Our Stolen Future
• EPA
• Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research

Except that the article is correct that none of these people are specifically talking about the environmental disaster being caused by birth control pills. Because no one is sure that’s the problem.

Despite the article’s claim that “The main culprits were found to be estrogens and other steroid hormones from birth-control pills and patches that ultimately ended up in the creek after being excreted in urine into the city’s sewers,” I can’t find anything that supports that assertion.

Indeed, the article itself the says “a cocktail of hormones, antibiotics, caffeine and steroids is flowing through the nation’s waterways, threatening fish and contaminating drinking water.”

Turns out that no one is currently pointing the finger at birth control pills/patches–other than the Catholics, that is. The non-religious groups and researchers looking at the issue of sex imbalances in fish are considering a whole class of compounds referred to as “Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals.”

And, even if you focus on synthetic estrogen–the active ingredient in birth control pills–it turns out that “the pill” may not be the major source of it in pollution. It might be from cows.

So, the WND article is bogus. But, here’s the thing: If I had agreed with the basic opinions of the article, would I have done all this research?

And the answer is: probably not. This is why it is important, in my opinion, to read articles from a variety of sources. You need to listen to the dialog of people who disagree with your opinions because they can occasionally point out flaws in your reasoning that you wouldn’t have questioned otherwise.

Filtering out the opposition leaves you vulnerable to becoming a dogmatic believer of your opinions, not a reasoned one. And I think we would all be better off spending a little time considering the nature of our beliefs, instead of just the beliefs themselves.