Identifying pseudoscience

Question 1

Hostility towards scientific criticism

Answer 1

claiming that criticism of their theories is a personal attack

Question 2

Trying to move the ‘burden of proof’ away form themselves

Answer 2

• Those who make claims have to bear the burden of proof for those claims
• Pseudoscientists shift burden of proof, hasn’t been proven wrong, so accept it till I can definitely prove it wrong
• We don’t know that I’m wrong, therefore I’m right
  E.g. proving ghosts

Question 3

Claims easy solutions for complex problems

Answer 3

• Pseudoscience: often some of the appeal of pseudoscience is that it has easy answers for hard questions. Complicated phenomena are often presented as having one simple cause.
• Good science: presents the cause and effect relationships as accurately as possible, which is often quite complex (but not always)
• E.g. Eating organic and all your health problems will go away. Unlikely to be true.

Question 4

Fundamental principles are often based on a single case

Answer 4

• Pseudoscience: some entire belief systems that masquerade as science, base all their fundamental principles of an uncontrolled observation or anecdote
• Good science: will sometimes use an interesting anecdote as the spark for a theory, but will rigorously test whether this anecdote is representative of the world at large

Question 5

Making a virtue of ignorance

Answer 5

• Pseudoscience: often pseudoscientists lack formal training, and present this as a virtue (capitalise on message of “oh I haven’t been indoctrinated so my theories are right”
• Good science: usually from scientists who are specialised and have technical training to affirm the validity/reliability of there claims (hard for non-scientists to make contributions)
• Pseudoscientists often take the approach of elitist, that you have been indoctrinated if you believe common science

Question 6

Working backward from conclusions

Answer 6

• Good science: is a genuine search for what is true. Scientists will often have preferred theories, but they design experiments to test these and accept even contradicting outcomes
• Pseudoscience: beings with a desired conclusion and the only attempts to prove this cherished conclusion

Question 7

Cherry picking data

Answer 7

• Good science: experiments designed to look at a complete set of data
• Pseudoscience: relies heavily on anecdote. Also manipulate data to ‘discover’ effect where in fact there is none.

Question 8

Failure to engage with scientific community

Answer 8

• Good science: publishes data in large peer reviewed journals and lets people pick it apart
• Pseudoscience: opposite (echo-chambers)
  E.g. chiropractors regulate themselves, not the medical board

Question 9

Utilising scientific sounding but ultimately meaningless language

Answer 9

• Good science: use technical jargon that means what it means
• Pseudoscience: uses pseudo-jargon (fancy sounding phrases poorly used/don’t mean anything)

Question 10

Claiming to be many years ahead/decades ahead of the current research community

Answer 10

• Good science: usually slow

- Pseudoscience: too quick, claims to have made huge leaps forward

Question 11

Pseudoscience predominantly relies on…,

Answer 11

Anecdotal evidence

Question 12

Demarcation problem

Answer 12

How to distinguish between science and non-science