>However, I find it incredibly disrespectful and lacking in basic scientific integrity to go into a paper with the assumption that it is a false belief and then making no attempt to justify why it is a false belief other than "duh...because they are superstitious barbarians".
I think you are reading into the motivations of the authors without evidence. It is much more likely that they conclude that bullet-proofing spells are a false belief because everything we know about physics and ballistics contradicts it.
I think you are reading into the motivations of the authors without evidence. It is much more likely that they conclude that bullet-proofing spells are a false belief because everything we know about physics and ballistics contradicts it.