Pseudoscience

[CoralieKoonce]

(Darrel wants me to put some of our exchange on here. I don't want to be pushed into any either/or position. Also have no time or energy for a full-scale debate because trying to finish writing my second book.)
The lists of "pseudoscience" according to Carl Sagan and Michael Schermer (which I list in book 2)
are a hodge-podge of things, only some of which "pretend to be science" as Intelligent Design does. Some are outright scams, two are Oriental systems of medicine that go back several thousand years, some are fringe science (cryptozoology), others are isolated religious beliefs such as "ancestor
worship." I think the definition is rather slippery and needs clarification.

[CoralieKoonce]

Darrel said this: To determine if something falls in the category of pseudo science start by asking these simple questions:

1) Is there a scientific basis/theory explaining why/how it should work?
2) When tested scientifically (which includes repeatability), does it work?

(Those are good things to ask if something claims to be science, but what if it doesn't claim to be science? Also, some sciences, what Jared Diamond calls the "historical sciences" such as paleontology or astronomy, involve phenomena not repeatable in the way that the subjects of chemistry and physics are.)

[Dardedar]

I think the definition is rather slippery and needs clarification.

DAR
You like to talk about definitions. I don't see the difficultly here. We have two parts.

pseu·do
1. not actually but having the appearance of; pretended; false or spurious; sham.
2. almost, approaching, or trying to be.

sci·ence
1. a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.
2. systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.

DAR
When we put them together we get:

pseudoscience
A system of theories or assertions about the natural world that claim or appear to be scientific but that, in fact, are not. For example, astronomy is a science, but astrology is generally viewed as a pseudoscience.

or

pseu·do·sci·ence
any of various methods, theories, or systems, as astrology, psychokinesis, or clairvoyance, considered as having no scientific basis.

This is how these words are commonly used. So what needs to be clarified?

I am not so interested in whether something can or should be put in the box labeled pseudoscience. I am interested in whether, and how, things work. If it doesn't it can go in the bullshit box.

Now, there may be some difficulty, in some cases, in determining whether a product or field is pseudoscience. This because these things tend to branch like crazy so, as with religion, you have no end of sects and people peddling products in different ways. This is especially true with CAM's because a lot of claims are not being tested or have never been tested. People just make stuff up. I can think of two categories that may or may not be pseudo science depending on how they are promoted:

acupuncture
hypnosis

Both are controversial in science and with skeptics. In some instances with acupuncture (or better, acupressure) there may be something medically useful going on because, unlike with homeopathy, you are actually doing something. At least somebody is getting poked or pushed. This can cause the release of endorphins which can have a measurable effect. This is worth studying scientifically. And when it is studied it won't have anything to do with the claims of Qi energy flow which usually (but not always) is considered the pseudoscientific basis for acupuncture. There is not a drop of evidence for the existence of "Qi energy."

Also, with hypnosis, I think we have a lot to learn about consciousness, suggestibility and how the brain works. There is some promise here. That said, there is a lot of pseudo scientific nonsense and silly stage tricks going on in this field but it shouldn't be just tossed out because of this. Many skeptics think it is 100% quackery and faking. I don't think so but time will tell.

So, I am not so interested in the labels and putting things in boxes. I am interested in how and if they work. To determine how and if things work, there is no better method than testing and following scientific methods of verification. Nothing even comes close. Agreed? I hope so.

D.

[coralie.koonce]

Coralie said:
Those are good things to ask if something claims to be science, but what if it doesn't claim to be science? Also, some sciences, what Jared Diamond calls the "historical sciences" such as paleontology or astronomy, involve phenomena not repeatable in the way that the subjects of chemistry and physics are.
You answered me sarcastically but you did not answer the above question. Many of the "pseudosciences" listed by Carl Sagan, Michael Shermer, and others DO NOT CLAIM TO BE SCIENCES.
Also what about the fields above that deal with phenomena that are unique and do not lend themselves to lab experiments?

[Doug]

Many of the "pseudosciences" listed by Carl Sagan, Michael Shermer, and others DO NOT CLAIM TO BE SCIENCES.

DOUG
Homeopathy claims to work whether you call it science or not. It does not work. In that case, it is best to call it a failed science, a false science, or, since it has never been established as a science in the first place, a pseudoscience.

Homeopathy does not work. If you can't, in the first place, recognize why this is so, then you should reconsider your work on teaching critical thinking. To bea critical thinker in the 21st century, there are specific things that someone of competence in that area should know. Surely one of these things is that science has a successful method. It is, as Carl Sagan wrote, the most successful method ever devised by human beings for finding out about the world. When properly applied to homeopathic remedies, this well-known method shows that there is nothing to support the claim that homeopathic remedies have any positive medicinal or chemical effect. In addition, the homeopathic theory advanced to explain alleged success with their remedies is known to conflict with what we know of chemistry, biology, and medicine in general. Homeopathy has not a leg to stand on. Given all this, if you cannot find out that the above information is true, or you cannot figure out how we can know that it is true, or, worse, if you do the latter two and still refuse to believe that this information is true, then your abilities as a critical thinker will be called into question.

As I've stated before, if your next books have information that speaks positively of homeopathy or 9-11 conspiracy theories, your book series about crtical thinking will lose all credibility.

[tmiller51]

Also what about the fields above that deal with phenomena that are unique and do not lend themselves to lab experiments?

In these cases, scientists can still come up with hypothesis which are then tested against the available evidence. If some evidence is uncovered which conflicts with the hypothesis then apparently it was wrong and must be rejected or modified. In astronomy, quite a lot of what we know is first modeled with mathematics and then verified through observation. Black holes were defined by mathematical hypothesis long before they were discovered through observation.

Some sciences, like paleontology that you mentioned, have quite a bit of latitude to be wrong. Nobody is going to die or not seek professional medical advise because palaeontologists think T-Rex had green scales when they are later proven to have red skin.

I think these topics which are labeled pseudoscience are labeled as such because they often use the language of science to describe themselves (some popular terms: "energy", "toxins" and "quantum"). Whether these terms are used deliberately or naively, they confuse the general public into believing that they somehow have scientific backing.

If something isn't and doesn't claim to be a science, then it has no business being anywhere near the pharmacy department.

Tim