Category talk:Pseudophysics

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Physics Portal This category is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, which collaborates on articles related to physics.

This category was nominated for deletion, renaming or merging with another category on 2006 June 12. The result of the discussion was Keep, and merge with "fringe physics".

Contents 1 Theories 2 Renaming 3 How about some similar categories? 4 Mainstream 5 Pseudophysics of mainstream science 6 Inconsistent Definitions 7 Criteria for Inclusion 8 Inappropriate Inclusions

[edit] Theories

I'm leery of even calling these things "theories", as it seems most are just strange ideas, instead of actual "theories". -- linas 2 July 2005 22:56 (UTC)

It seems to me a better term to use here is hypotheses, as they don't really become theories until they have passed some degree of testing/vetting. --Blainster 16:54, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

None are structured enough to be able to articulate something that is testable. Precisely speaking, they're not even capable of being hypothesis or of generating hypothesis. linas 01:11, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

how about ideas? Salsb 01:17, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Renaming

The name of this category is causing some problems wrt advocates. Whatdya think about renaming it to "fringe physics" "non mainstream physics" "Untested physics" or some other name. Any ideas anyone? Theresa Knott (a tenth stroke) 5 July 2005 21:40 (UTC)

I don't see how that solves any problems. linas 5 July 2005 22:41 (UTC)

We shouldn't rename this, and here is why.

I think the problem Theresa has in mind is that this is seen as a pejorative statement, potentially inciting advocates and wasteful edit warring. However, this problem has nothing to do with the word. The concept itself really is pejorative- this is not ameliorated no matter how we might rephrase it. Making this category value-neutral requires that we change what it means. For example, fringe physics ideas are often not pseudophysical, and 'non-mainstream science' implies that the contained theories are actually 'scientific'.

You might argue instead that we shouldn't even have a category like this, and that NPOV requires that we only categorize into uncontroversial categories which lack value-judgement(or at least only favorable judgement). This argument has some merit. In many cases it isn't clear whether something is a fringe science or pseudoscience. Infact, you might argue that the only difference is the subjective judgement between which ideas you like and which you don't. However, this is not correct, in my opinion. There are some clear-cut cases where an idea fails to establish some uncontroversial criteria. For example, nearly all of a theory's predictions may radically conflict with experimental evidence, or a theory may make no predictions at all (this is just unfalsifiability in better clothing). Continuing to reason with any such theories is uncontroversially unscientific. However, more exclusive criteria may also be more controversial. But there exist at least a handful of criteria which are almost universally accepted by physicists/scientists themselves. In essence, these are their functioning definitions for what scientists mean when they call a theory scientific/unscientific.

We can also deduce that criticizing the inclusion of a pseudoscience category(or any other 'unscience-but-like-science' category) is inconsistant with also supporting the inclusion of a science category. This follows because they can be used to define what belongs in one another. An idea is either science, similar to science, or possibly not related to science at all. Science is similar to itself, of course. However, pseudoscience is not actually science and only similar to science. Now consider that we have a controversial, similar-to-science(possibly actual science) idea which needs to be categorized. Obviously, we should not file it as 'unrelated-to-science'- How would readers find it? It is important to realize that this is what we would have to do if we have a science category but no 'unscience' category. Articles not in the science category would be in a 'dissimilar-to-science' category by default. You necessarily make a pejorative categorization every time you choose to not categorize something into the favorable counterpart.

It occurs to me that my 'proof' thus far slightly misses the point. While not logically different, lacking pejorative categories at least avoids offending those who have failed to realize that not qualifying for the favorable counterpart category still says the same, pejorative thing. Thus, some wasteful editwarring with the more clueless apologists might be avoided. Consider, however, the wastefulness caused by their continual attempts to favorably categorize an undeserving article. Each time an edit war might result when the article is invariably decategorized.

Of course, none of this reasoning implies that you shouldn't question the individual validity of the categorization of specific articles. Nor does it question the creation of more nuanced categorization schemes.

--Intangir 06:19, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Please post any comments to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pseudoscience instead of here. --Intangir

[edit] How about some similar categories?

Perhaps a parent 'controversial physical ideas' for protophysics, fringe physics and pseudophysics would be useful? Since the word 'physical' doesn't necessarily imply physics, this scheme may be acceptable to both detractors and advocates. Also, controversial articles on the boundaries could at least be placed directly in the parent- a compromise and a marginally useful categorization. Increasingly, the anarchical nature of the Wikipedia forces compromise from all reasonable sides in order for them to get any work done.

--Intangir 06:19, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

There already exists a category:protoscience. However, it is also politically charged, and it contains many mis-categorized entries: e.g. hydrino theory and scalar field theory which are pseudoscience, not protoscience; however, edit wars prevent proper classification. Also, string theory is not really a protoscience, its a branch of math, again, the cranks want to put string theory here, because it give string theory the same credibility as hydrino theory. This is very wrong, but difficult to fight off. Then there are some true protosciences in here: brane cosmology, astrobiology, or quantum mind, and this cat is ideal for this kind of stuff. linas 16:58, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that string theory is not quite a protoscience. And it isn't pseudoscience or fringe science either. It can't be any form of science until it purports make at least one concrete prediction. However, it isn't pseudoscience(false science) because they don't claim to make predictions. However, it isn't really fair to classify it as merely math. It seems to me that 'controversial physical idea' describes it best. I think the word for it would be Quasiscience, that is if there was such a word. --Intangir 23:41, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh wait there is, LoL. "Quasi-science" seems to be used in the right way, though it is generally applied to science fiction. Random web page says:

SF is not really about science, but quasi-science. Quasi-science is like pseudo-science in being an imitation of science, but unlike it in not purporting to be true. It treats ideas as if they were scientific. The goal of SF is not verity, but verisimilitude.

What's more is, our own Wikipedia article on Science Fiction uses the word. This might be a legitimate category option for things beyond fiction. Verisimilitude sounds like mathematical physical model to me.--Intangir 23:50, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Look at it this way: there are many hundreds of professors and grad students at hundreds of universities that understand significant portions of the theory, and are more or less in agreement that they each are understanding the same thing. Its based on large quantities of abstract but quite astounding mathematics, and so the beauty alone makes it very popular. In fact, it does make predictions; however, all the predictions so far are either untested, or have been proved false. There have been a variety of experimental searches for it: Billions of dollars have been spent building very large and expensive experiments trying to verify its predictions (e.g. the baryon decay predicted by GUT and SUSY variants, funding for all of the Category:Neutrino observatories was claimed at least in part for this search.). Things like branes do suggest that there migh be new physics at millimeter-sized scales, and things like STEP (satellite) are meant to explore such predicitions. The point is, its taken seriously but a whole lot of people. linas 01:49, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mainstream

I am including this word, which I agree is redundant strictly read, for two reasons:

• The supercat Category:Pseudoscience has it.
• It prepares for the merger of the truly redundant Category:Non-mainstream science, which has two members, into this one.

I cannot read it as a qualifier, but as emphasis. Septentrionalis 19:26, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Oh, OK. linas 06:08, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Why does it say institutional science though? Salsb 01:18, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pseudophysics of mainstream science

Pseudophysics? Many accepted mainstream theories would fall into this category. String theory cannot be tested or falsified, thus it's pseudophysics. The POV in this article (especially by the inclusion edits of Salsb) is appearant though. 165.201.42.84 20:25, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Hogwash. linas 21:26, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Inconsistent Definitions

The definition presented in this page and the definition in Pseudophysics are fundamentally different and have significantly different implications for how this label should be interpreted. This needs to be corrected in some way. There are some pages which could reasonably be included in this category if one were to use the definition here (pseudophysics = a non-rigorously-tested theory) but which do not belong if using the definition in Pseudophysics (pseudophysics = a demonstrably inconsistent or fundamentally untestable theory). I would propose, given that this is only a category page, and not the main article on the subject, that the definition here should be changed to match that on the actual Pseudophysics page. Comments? -- Foogod 18:10, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

The correct definition is that "pseudophysics = a demonstrably inconsistent or fundamentally untestable theory". Where, exactly, does it say otherwise? linas 06:37, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Umm, it says otherwise right at the top of this category page:

This category consists of those theories and research endeavours in the areas of physics and astronomy which are considered as not in accordance with facts or reality by mainstream science. They have not undergone the critical review process needed in order to be accepted by the scientific community as actual, valid theories of nature (usually referred to as the peer review process).

It should also be noted that if we're going to use the "inconsistent/untestable" definition, we need to review whether some things belong here (the one I note off hand is Hydrino theory. While I personally suspect it is probably not correct, it does appear to present criteria for falsifiability, and has not yet been (correctly) shown to be inconsistent or invalid, as far as I can tell). -- Foogod 20:00, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I guess I don't see the contradiction. Inconsistent or untestable theories will almost never go through peer review, because no one serious wants to even bother with it. Inconsistent/untestable theories are usually not mainstream, and aren't in accordance with "reality". I haven't studied Hydrino theory carefully, but it sounds like a class A-one example of pseudophysics. It claims the hydrogen atom can decay? Get real, I think someone would have noticed by now. We've been studying hydrogen as an atom for about 100 years, I think physics has a pretty good grasp on it. Proposing that this thing be used for interstellar travel is ... waayyyyyy out there. linas 05:19, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

There isn't a contradiction, what I'm saying is the two different definitions for the term potentially include different groups. One is a superset of the other (and therefore one includes many things that the other doesn't). There are many theories which have not gone through peer review (yet), even in mainstream circles (because that process takes time). Are all such theories "pseudophysics" because they haven't completed the review process, or are we only considering the ones that are demonstrably flawed to be "pseudophysics"? One page says one thing, the other says the other. Which definition are we using?

As for hydrino theory, please note that I did say I think it's probably wrong. I'm not an advocate for hydrinos, and in fact I can give you a list of all of the problems I have with the concept if you really want me to. However, the relevant question isn't whether it's right or wrong, but whether it meets the criteria to be a scientific hypothesis using the standard scientific method. There are many theories which have been proposed and then shown to be wrong, but were still perfectly valid science (being wrong is sometimes part of science too). The hydrino theory appears to meet the basic characteristics of a scientific hypothesis (it is testable, falsifiable, and is not blatantly inconsistent or illogical in its presentation, as far as I can see). The conclusions drawn might seem a bit far-fetched, and may well be false, but that does not, in itself, make it not scientific. (As for the interstellar travel bit, it's worth pointing out that nearly every energy source currently known to man (chemical, solar, fission/fusion...) has been proposed for interstellar travel at some point or other by somebody or other too. That doesn't necessarily mean anything.) -- Foogod 06:59, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. Yes, well, there's a gulf between the scientific method and pseudoscience. Of course, part of the activity of science is to advance ideas, formulate hypothesis, vet them, test them in the lab, and accept or discard or modify them. The tricky thing with pseudoscience is that, superficially, it resembles science. So there is no simple way to tell them apart, and yet, its usually obvious. How can we tell apart a tree from a wooden sculpture of a tree? They're both green, brown, branchy, and if you've ever examined the potted plants in the lobbies of office buildings, you know that there can be some excellent imposters. I don't beleive that there's any simple set of criteria by which to tell apart real science from pseudoscience; it usually boils down to a "preponderance of evidence". If you wish, you can try to edit the pseudoscience article to list all of the "typical" hallmarks of pseudoscience, there are many. Talk of spacetravel is typically one of them. linas 17:30, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

How do we tell a tree from a wooden sculpture of a tree? Well, that depends on what the definition of "tree" is, doesn't it? If we have a valid, useful definition of what "science" is, then we should be able to use that definition to tell what "science" isn't too. If we can't do that, then the term, ultimately, is rather meaningless and needs to be fixed. If nothing else, I think we need to have some sort of definitive criteria in Wikipedia for how we make this distinction, or we can't claim to maintain NPOV when deciding whether things are put in this category or not (because every decision would be subjective). As I see it we have three feasible options:

1. Everything that hasn't undergone peer review and been determined to be valid is pseudoscience/pseudophysics (this one seems way too broad to me. As mentioned, it would include quite a few potentially valid mainstream hypotheses too)
2. Everything which is considered to be nonscientific by the mainstream scientific community is pseudoscience/pseudophysics (this has the risk of being an arbitrary classification, and also brings up questions of who's "mainstream" or not, so it seems too wishy-washy to me)
3. Everything which is demonstrably flawed or to which the scientific method cannot be applied is pseudoscience/pseudophysics (personally, this is my preference, but as noted, this may mean that some things get excluded which some people believe are pseudoscience, simply because nobody has ever actually bothered to show that they are. Perhaps we need another category for "untested" stuff?)

(On the subject of hydrino theory: It should be noted that an essential part of good science is separating a theory from the people associated with it and evaluating it on its own merits. Just because a crackpot says you can use gravity for space travel doesn't make gravity suddenly into pseudoscience. Mills' CQM (of which hydrino theory is a part) is, in my opinion, actually one of the few very intriguing gray areas in this respect. The problem is that superficially it looks like pseudoscience, so everybody has assumed it's pseudoscience without ever looking at it in detail to determine whether it actually is or not, so ultimately we don't know. This is, in my opinion, unfortunate because it indicates a failing of the scientific community to uphold the principles which separate us from pseudoscientists in the first place, and it gives all the crackpots additional ammunition to claim that the "pseudoscience" label is arbitrarily applied. Anyway, all of this discussion probably belongs (if anywhere) over on Talk:Pseudophysics or Talk:Hydrino theory instead of here, so I'll stop now..) -- Foogod 21:15, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

The article on pseudoscience seems to do a god job of spelling out how to distinguish true from flase science, and we should probably use that as a guideline. The problem with hydrino theory is that it makes several predictions that are in blatent contradiction with known facts: it states that there is a ground state below the accepted ground state. That one blatent contradiction is sufficient to plant it squarely and firmly in the realm of pseudophysics. linas 00:36, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I note that the criteria you just used is not one of the criteria listed on pseudoscience. In fact, the closest criteria I can see on the pseudoscience page is actually "asserting claims which contradict experimentally established results", but I'm not aware of any experimentally established results that have shown that such a state is fundamentally impossible (I'm not even sure how you could show that experimentally), or even that it doesn't happen in the specific conditions that Mills suggests it does (if you can point me at some results which show this I'd be very interested, actually). Really, it's only the current theories which say so, not experimental results. Mills' theory does include an explanation for why this state would supposedly not be seen under most conditions, and he claims to have experimental results to back it up (although as far as I can tell they haven't really been independently verified), so in the absence of third-party investigation of Mills' experimental results I'd say the use of that criteria is dubious at best. It should also be noted that pseudoscience (correctly) states that such theories can be identified by a combination of those criteria, which implies that one alone is not necessarily enough to label something pseudoscience outright, depending on the circumstances. Once again, I'd like to emphasize that I don't think hydrino theory is correct, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's pseudoscience either. Classification of it as such on the basis of one cursory glance at one conclusion with no attempt to analyze its reasoning or experimental results seems, well, not very scientific to me. -- Foogod 02:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not the place to make critical judgements of such matters, or to render opinions as to whether a theory is pseudoscience or not. This type of activity should be conducted elsewhere: journals, laboratories, seminars, conferences, etc. WP can (and does) note that the preponderance of evidence and public debate indicates that hydrino theory is pseudoscience. linas 02:26, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criteria for Inclusion

I've given a fair amount of thought to the question of criteria for inclusion that arose out of the above discussions of Hydrino theory, and have come to the following conclusions:

• Working from WP:NOR and WP:NPOV, it is clear to me that any attempt to categorize whether a particular subject is or is not pseudophysics is not only very difficult, but fundamentally cannot be done without violating Wikipedia rules and procedures, and thus should not be attempted here.
• The purpose of Wikipedia should not be to assign any particular value to subjects, but instead to attempt to accurately reflect the current state of human understanding about such a subject. As such, what something is does not matter nearly as much as what people (as a whole) perceive it to be. For this reason, decisions for categorization should be based more on what other people (in the larger world) have stated than on anything that we here at Wikipedia might feel about a subject (this principle reflects the above policies, and also coincides with WP:V and WP:CITE in obvious ways).

Based on these principles, I have added a proposed list of criteria for inclusion in this category to the category's summary. These criteria are fairly broad, but I believe reasonably reflect the intention that these decisions should be based on apparent association with the concept rather than the fundamental nature of a subject (which we can't attempt to decide ourselves).

I believe it is important to spell out such inclusion criteria on the article page itself, otherwise there will be continuing debate about what different people think the category does or doesn't mean. I would welcome comments/refinements on the criteria I have posted so far. What do people think? -- Foogod 23:18, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, exactly, this seems to capture things pretty well. linas 02:29, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inappropriate Inclusions

I do not think that including Frank Tipler, National Institute of Discovery Science, and Jack Sarfatti here is fair, truthful or accurate. It seems that any open-mindedness about the reality of UFOs and paranormal ipso-facto make one a pseudoscientist. Both Tipler and Sarfatti do not advocate crackpot eccentric theories in their actual physics work. They both adhere to mainstream quantum theory and Einstein's general theory of relativity. To mix them in with some of the others is simply false. NIDS funded by multi-millionaire Robert Bigelow who has his own private satellite in orbit, is staffed by PhD scientists and former USG military intelligence, FBI & police detectives. Their methods are completely mainstream. Again whoever put in those entries is sloppy has not done his or her research or has some personal axe to grind and is abusing the Wiki honor system IMHO. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.181.20.153 (talk) 22:44, 7 March 2007 (UTC).

"Fine-tuned universe" is also inappropriate. That is mainstream physics. The rest of the entries are probably OK.