[from 'The Wrong Stuff' in The New Yorker's Talk of the Town section, April 14, 1997]
[The Heaven's Gate mass suicide is] an object lesson in the hazards of living a life innocent of empirical rigor.... [It] might have been averted had just one of the observers declared, "Gee, the evidence fails to support our belief. Maybe the belief is wrong."...
Tens of millions of people have perished at the hands of leaders who were unwilling to alter their presumptions according to objective evidence....
Science ... remains a minority habit of mind... Blind belief rules the millennial universe.
