Talk:Pseudoscience/Archive 2

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Examples of Pseudoscience

Is Astrology, Creation science, Intelligent design, Flood geology, Baraminology, Creation biology should consider as Pseudoscience? It still a very controversial issues. Considering it (especially creation science, intelligence design) as Pseudoscience or not might have a very strong religious standing point. So I have put a NPOV here.

Yes, those are all pseudo-sciences because they violate one or more of the principles of science (creation science and intelligent design violate falsifiablilty and you can't do experiments on them for example). gkhan 15:15, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
How about evolution/evolutionary science? We still cannot be clearly observe the evolution process and evidence are limited.
'Depends on what you watch. Fast reproducing bacteria, for example, very clearly evolve. One need only look at antibiotic resistance to see that. Evolution (as compared to, say "Creation Science") is very easily testable and has, in fact, been tested many times.
By the way, don't forget to sign your postings to talk pages with ~~~~.
Atlant 16:21, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
Ofcourse you can! There are many more examples than Atlant mentions. Darwin observed it himself i believe with some animal on the Galapagos Islands. gkhan 20:12, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
None of the examples that you give in any way test general evolution. The fact that some bacteria are able to adapt to antibiotics is does not show that all life on Earth came from a common ancestor. For example in some cases the resistance comes from a defect that simply prevents ingestion. This degree of "evolution" is actually predicted by both Creation science and Intelligent design since the creator/designer would want his creations to survive, it would make since to give them some degree of adaptability.
Actually, such arguments miss the point. The basic concepts of Creation, Intelligent design and Evolution can not be tested because they deal with past events, for example we can never observe the actual origin of life on Earth. All three are theoretical systems for interpreting data, and developing hypothesises and theories that are falsifiable. Both Creation, and Evolution have theories that have been falsified and some that have to date withstood testing.
Creation science, Intelligent design and Evolution science are all conducted by trained scientists and they all use experimentation and observation to test theories and those theories are rejected when found wanting. In needs to be understood that such testing needs to be consistent with the assumptions of the theories own theoretical system, such that a Creation science theory can not be falsified because it contradicts an interpretation of data made by an Evolution or uniformitarian theory. Like wise an Evolution or uniformitarian theory can not be falsified because it contradicts an interpretation of data made by a Creation science theory. To do so can be summed up as, "Your theory does not work under my theory so your theory is wrong."
Hence these three are real but competing sciences. As such nether Creation science, Intelligent design or Evolution science should not be classified as pseudosciences and should be excluded from such lists. Creation science, and Intelligent design are the two main sources of opposition to Evolution; so marginalizing them as pseudosciences comes across as trying to eliminate the competition.
Cpcjr 15:40, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC).
Great! Now we just have to wait for your original research to become accepted, then it can be added to Wikipedia! Until then, troll elsewhere. --brian0918™ 15:45, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Umm...if it says that theology is seperate from psuedoscience, why is creationism thrown in with psuedoscience? Seems a bit demeaning. I can understand "intelligent design" being thrown here because it attempts to be proven by scientific means though it is essentially unprovable. But intelligent design can also be taught away from a religious viewpoint (such as claiming that aliens or some higher life form created human life and such...). "Creationism" can easily be taught without relying on scientific examination. This is why I think what is referred to as "Creation science" and Creationism should be -clearly- distinguished.

Please read the current version of the article - it only refers to "creation science", not creationism. Thanks, -Willmcw 04:36, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)
Ha, you beat me to it! I got an edit conflict trying to say the same thing, you sly dog. --Fastfission 04:37, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
You've gotta be fast to pick off these easy ones. The hard ones, well, I sit back and leave those to the better editor. ;) -Willmcw 06:02, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

What constitutes pseudoscience?

The more I look at this article, the more I begin to feel that the examples section does the whole article a disservice. I would suggest moving (with an appropriate link) the contents of that section to a new list type article on subjects which some people consider to be pseudoscientific, perhaps List of pseudoscience ? topics, with the question mark in the title. The basis for including an item on the list would simply be that the issue is considered in the article for it.

It is extremely difficult to maintain encyclopedic perspective on this topic as long as we need to keep fending off claims about whether a particular study is or is not science or pseudoscience. Zealotry, self-righteousness and bullying are common on both sides, and they do us no good. If some people make a claim that SETI is pseudoscientific it's a fact that some people believe that, but that fact is distinct from the question of whether SETI really is pseudoscientific. In a similar vein there may be a significant number of us who consider Tarot readings to be pseudoscientific, but again the fact of the disbelief is distinct from whether Tarot really is pseudoscientific. How can the latter be pseudoscientific in the absence of claims that it is scientific.

This is one area where there is a desparate need to find common ground for discussion. There is also a need to keep these arguments from creeping into a lot of articles where it doesn't belong. I recognize that there is a large community that considers astrology to be a pseudoscience, just as there is another large community that supports astrology. That should not translate into the necessity of having the whole debate over and over again on every article that is a sub-topic of astrology.

In short I think that we should have the following:

  1. A single article (this one) which discusses pseudocience in a general way,
  2. A wikied list article that accepts without debate any subject that anybody considers to be pseudoscientific. The only requirement would be that the link be to the place where the pseudoscience nature of the subject is discussed.
  3. Discussions of pseudoscience should be avoided on sub-topic pages, where the reference to pseudoscience should be limited to a single link to the page where the discussion is more appropriate. Eclecticology 20:51 Jan 16, 2003 (UTC)
I agree that it is appropriate to contain debate on the pseudoscientific nature of certain activities to a limited number of articles. I wouldn't object to the creation of a seperate list of topics considered to be pseudoscientific. However, the main pseudoscience article will still need to contain the odd example, for the purposes of explaining the concept of pseudoscience.
The introduction to the list would need to be carefully worded to state that "some" people find the topics listed pseudoscientific. Some, perhaps even a majority of scientists, may disagree, and see the linked article for more discussion.
By the way, I find it interesting that you raise astrology as an example. I thought we'd had that debate before. --Robert Merkel

Thanks, it sounds like we're getting somewhere. I suggested one possible name for the list article, but wasn't wholly satisfied with it. I'd like it to be acceptable to both main tendencies in this debate, without getting too long-winded. Any ideas on this narrow point?

What should we use as examples?

I agree about a carefully chosen selection of examples that can illustrate just what you say, and the broad range of topics that tend to be thrown into the pseudoscience pot from SETI which tends to have strong support in the scientific community to squaring the circle which can be proven impossible. If we can keep focused on the goal that these examples are here to illustrate the problems without descending into a debate on the scientific truth any specific example, it should work out.

There was no particular intention to using astrology as an example, other than that I'm more familiar with it. Of the subjects that might be considered here it likely has the second largest body of available literature (after Christianity/creationism etc.). With such a large body of literature it is far more likely to spawn sub-topic articles than many other things on the list. Eclecticology 00:13 Jan 17, 2003 (UTC)

Although I've been watching this article for some time, I want to ponder a little longer before launching into discussion of the specifics. In the meantime though, I want to express general approval of the plan to seperate debate of the particular from description of the general. Tannin 03:04 Jan 17, 2003 (UTC)

I strongly oppose the creation of a separate list. This seems to be an attempt to weasel out and it leads us away from fair NPOV and to a list where everyone will just add all sorts of topics (as seems to happen with many of our lists). How about just adding all humanities since they do not rest strongly on empirical observation? No, this is not the way to resolve this problem.
If there is a claim to be made that a significant faction of people believes a certain topic to be pseudoscientific, put it in this article, preferably with a reference. But what I see here are consistent attempts to insert a pro-pseudoscientific agenda into this article by muddling generally recognized distinctions. Prove me wrong: Add references to your claims that a certain discipline is considered pseudoscientific by a large number of people (I have already referenced the support for SETI & Co. in the scientific community). Then we compare the numbers and the types of people who consider it pseudoscientific. Then we can structure the article accordingly. --Eloquence 04:06 Jan 17, 2003 (UTC)
How then is this different? There will be a list, of that we may be certain. The question seems to me to be where should that list go? Leaving it here is to risk winding up with an article so full of references to this and that, and so chopped up by the inevitable edit wars that it is unreadable. ("To risk"? What am I saying? It already is.) I'm not sure that Eclecticology's precise idea is the best way to go, but (as I read it) his main point is that there are really two seperate articles here: one on what psudoscience is (i.e., the logical distinction between science and psudoscience) and the other on what things may justly be said to be "psudoscience" as opposed to "real science" (or, for that matter, "non science".) Tannin
No, no, no. Moving stuff away because of the "risk of edit wars" is bad thinking. If there's an edit war, at least one person is acting immaturely, and possibly more than one. This can be documented and, if necessary, punished. Moving it away and letting people edit the list willy nilly would sacrifice accuracy for "edit peace". My opinion is that the current presentation is, for the most part, alright. --Eloquence 15:39 Jan 17, 2003 (UTC)

Let's try to nail down the definition

It may be useful and interesting to try to nail down some definition of the term pseudoscience that approaches objectivity. I expect it will be a long debate, with various proponents trying to fit a definition to their own pre-set categories, and then an even longer one (possibly interminable) as to what fields are "real sciences". In any case, I think it still needs to be pointed out that in actual usage the term "pseudoscience" is typically not used in an objective sense, but rather more often reflects the speaker's own biases. This should be obvious from the fact that, far from being a clinical term, the term typically carries derogatory and derisive connotations. As Eloquence seems to be pointing out, the recipients of the appellation "pseudoscience" may simply be whichever fields get the most votes in the ongoing scientific unpopularity contest. Forgive my being relatively new to the Wikipedia, but this does raise a question that has come to my mind regarding the 'pedia in general: I know that NPOV is the Holy Grail of the Wikipedia, but failing that, when writing articles, do we try to err on the side of objectivity or on the side of popular opinion? There are strong arguments for both .... Grizzly 11:04 Jan 17, 2003 (UTC)

Grizzly, NPOV ≠ objective: see Wikipedia:NPOV. Wikipedia articles should not err on one side or the other; articles should not take a position. They should state facts and state opinions so long as the opinion is pertinent and can be attributed to a particular person or persons. B

I agree with Ecleticology's suggestion for a list of pseudoscientific candidates although I think the list should be broader and categorized to include protoscientific and nonscientific suspects as well and be titled something like: Protoscientific, pseudoscientific and nonscientific candidates. This is in line with wiki policy to report pertinent, attributed opinions whether we like them or not. Then this article can point to the list for an example/model of what some think is pseudoscience. Further, if for example homeopathy were on the list, there should be at least one statement in the list from say the medical community like JAMA or the FDA about homeopathy in general or criticism of a particular homeopathic treatment like the uses of colloidal silver. B

There's absolutely no point in moving this to a separate "list" article. That only encourages sloppy categorization. Just edit the damn article if you think there's something missing. --Eloquence

Ok, perhaps I should explain *why* I think Eclecticology's proposal is a good one. To me, the most important things for the Wikipedia to contain about pseudoscience are: 1) an article accurately describing the concept, and 2) where there is a view by some, many, or a lot of people that a field is pseudoscientific, the article on that topic should discuss that in detail so the reader can make their own determination. Any list of "pseudosciences" is very much of secondary importance.

A list which divides things up into "almost universally regarded as pseudoscience", "regarded as pseudoscience by some scientists", and so on, will necessarily have to short-circuit lots of complexities (including those with the whole concept of pseudoscience) which is very hard to do in a NPOV manner, and to me represents a lot of wasted effort that would be better spent on the topic articles, which the reader will have to read anyway if they want to understand the topic and its scientific credibility.

Therefore, to me Eclecticology's proposal represents a way to concentrate effort on making this article better, and topic articles better, and avoids wasting time having debates on list categorizations that aren't in the final washup that important or useful in the context of the Wikipedia anyway.--Robert Merkel 23:32 Jan 18, 2003 (UTC)

Any encyclopedia article needs to give proper examples for its subject to be understandable. That this is "very hard" for controversial topics is not an excuse to move the examples away to separate pages, especially when Eclecticology states that the list should accept "without debate any subject that anybody considers to be pseudoscientific."
No serious encyclopedia would do that and we are, first and foremost, an encyclopedia. If I read an article about pseudoscience, I expect homeopathy, perpetual motion machines, "intelligent design" and the like to be mentioned and discussed in brief. I don't want an end result that is eloquent but doesn't dare to say anything of value because it might tick off pro-pseudoscientists. If people working on this article violate NPOV to push an agenda, then this is the problem, not the article.
Once again, the current article is fine, what it lacks, for the most part, is a brief summary of the opinions about the subjects mentioned, with the subjects themselves discussed in their respective articles. --Eloquence 01:13 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)~
I have no objection to the article containing a brief number of examples that show the broad range of subjects that are sometimes treated as pseudoscience. But whether SETI or astrology or intelligent design are pseudosciences is not about pseudoscience; it is about SETI or astrology or intelligent design as the case may be. Examples are merely illustrative. If the examples are not "proper" examples then, rather than make the subject more understandable, they create more confusion and unclarity. The article does include a workable list of criteria for determining whether a subject may be classed as pseudoscience; I would feel more comfortable if we strictly conformed to those criteria; that would be a more scientific approach.
To maintain NPOV in this article we need to avoid both a pro-pseudoscience bias and an anti-pseudoscience bias.
Eloquence, if you note my earlier comments, I have already made the point that I still regard the inclusion of examples of possibly pseudoscientific topics as illustrative examples in this article as essential. I have also said that extensive discussions of whether a particular topic is regarded as pseudoscience, by whom, and on what grounds, is appropriate for a particular article page (eg SETI, acupuncture, homeopathy, telepathy). However, to attempt to categorise and summarise what might become very complex arguments about the views of a particular activity in a list where there is not space to do so is likely to lead to endless arguments and isn't particularly useful information, as anybody who wants to find out more should read the topic article anyway! Therefore, if there has to be a list, and we're going to have arguments about it, I would prefer it to be as loosely defined as possible so we don't have to bother with pointless categorization and summarization arguments. --Robert Merkel 11:33 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)
We are in agreement up to a point: detailed discussions are best placed in their respective subject articles. But a separate pseudoscience list with loose criteria is a cop out that only encourages sloppy work. If a particular discussion gets too long, we can always move it to its subject article while retaining a brief summary. What we should try to do is quantify opinions. This can be done, for example, by searching scientific databases for "field name + pseudoscien*". (That alone does not suffice, because any article so found may actually argue that the field is not pseudoscientific.) Skeptical organizations like CSICOP are also a good source for finding scientific claims. I for one think that the current presentation is fairly accurate, but it lacks a few pseudoscientific fields.

--Eloquence 12:00 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)

The classification section on pseudoscience leaves out a few factors in my opinion. It leaves out possibilities such as noting that observations have been made that are not verifiable but that make no claims. For example, I navigated here from the auras page. I can see auras. It's possible that it's a medical condition, a vision problem, or some kind of psychological problem. I suppose from your perspective it's possible that I'm lying to you. However, I make no claims, other than I am observing something that you can't apparently photograph. Others have made these observations as well, and some of the ways that auras are seen fall nicely into a couple of distinct categories. So is the ability to see auras pseudoscientific? No scientific claims are being made, but the rudiments of the scientific process are being used (by taking observations).

Also, does someone first have to claim something is scientific for it to be pseudoscience? --Godshatter 08:19, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Taking observations is not the rudiment of the scientific method. Everybody makes observations. The scientific method is about making claims from observations. If you aren't making claims of any sort, then nobody would confuse it with science, I'm fairly sure. And if that's the case, then I doubt anybody would bother to call it pseudoscience. Though I will say this acknowledging that 100 years of philosophical debate has yet to provide anything close to a way to define what is science and what is not. --Fastfission 13:33, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Lir and Vera Cruz have their say

I agree with Robert Merkel. Vera Cruz

Thanks for supporting my point. --Eloquence

That was very rude and such statements do not foster a positive community environment here at wikipedia. Vera Cruz

I had no idea you could be funny, Lir! -Eloquence 01:22 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)

I am well aware of the "Lir/Vera Cruz" debates, but would it not be to everybody's benefit to accept a simple comment at it's face value without regard to what individual is making the comment? Eclecticology

Agreement on some points

It seems, then, that we are all agreed on the following points:

  1. This article should be about psudoscience in general
  2. It is not about the merits of any particular instance of an alleged psudoscience.
  3. In order to explain the concept of a psudoscience lucidly, it is necessary to use some illustrative examples.
  4. But this article is not the proper place to debate the status of those examples.
  5. Instead, there should be individual articles on whichever alleged psudosciences seem to merit it: for example, astrology, palmistry, creation science, SETI, and so on.

Other points remain at issue, but these five are not. I am suggesting that we can table discussion of the remaining controversial points for the time being in order to take action on the points that are not controversial. (Should there be a list? If so, what sort of list? What goes in and what stays out? - These are all matters that can be dealt with seperately.) In the meantime, all that is required is one or two or at most three examples that are clearly non-controversial.

I am sure that we can all agree that chemistry is not a psudoscience: that one is iron-clad. To contrast with it, can we not find an iron-clad example of a psudoscience? It is obvious that none of the currently controversial ones are suitable - the very fact that they are controversial shows that. So why not choose an extinct psudoscience as our example: one that did represent itself as a real science and has subsequently been completely discredited.

I'll suggest two or three possibilities in a moment, but please bear it in mind that the suitability of these particular examples is not relevant to the validity of my suggestion: in other words, if you think my examples are bad, do not discard the underlying validity of the idea unless and until we have considered and rejected all possible candidates for the role of non-contoversial psudoscience.

I'm sure that others will come up with better candidates, but, just to provide a starting point, what about phrenology? Or scientology? (Is that one completely dead yet?) Or astrology? (Yes, there are people who still believe in it, but not one of them is a scientist. Not the best choice, this one, but it would do at a pinch.) The history of science must be littered with former psudosciences that are now defunct. Which is the most suitable one to use as an example?

Tannin 12:43 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)

I can't follow you. Why should we limit ourselves to two or three examples? Your logic seems to be "As long as nobody is likely to show up and be offended by a particular example, it's a good one". Sorry, I don't buy it. We're not here to create a non-offensive wishy-washy encyclopedia, we're here to create a complete and accurate encyclopedia. That entails coverage of controversial subjects in the articles where they belong. Again, a detailed discussion may be reserved for the subject articles, but there's no reason not to have a summary of the opinions here ("most medical professionals believe .." etc.). This reminds me of the Richard Wagner discussion, where it was argued that Wagner's anti-Semitism should be discussed elsewhere because it would be too upsetting for Wagner fans .. --Eloquence 13:09 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)
I'm surprised, Eloquence. It's very simple propositon, after all. To explain the concept of "psudoscience" is one task, and that task (a) needs no more than two or three examples, and (b) requires that the examples cited be clear and accurate, and sufficiently uncontroversial that the mere mention of them does not invite partisans to wade in and obscure the real topic (what is a psudoscience) with their own agenda (why X is/is not a psudoscience).
This is not about being non-offensive, it's about being practical. I have no objection to having most medical professionals believe statements in a secondary part of the article (i.e., after point #1 in my list above is satisfied) - indeed, I think it is important that these things be covered - and I retain an open mind as to whether that purpose is best served by a single, two-part article or by two seperate articles. But it is an elementary rule of both good teaching and good writing that a subject should first be defined and introduced in as plain and simple a way as possible, free of distractions, and only then should the complexities be tackled.
Of those 5 numbered points I made above, which one do you not agree with? Tannin
Sorry, perhaps I misunderstood you. Yes, in the first part of the article, we should use non-controversial examples. But the question "is X pseudoscience or is it not" should be discussed for most X here until the list gets too long. --Eloquence
Excellent. I think we are making progress. I suppose the next question must be the more difficult one of how to decide if any given X ought to be listed. Is it better to select grounds for this a priori, or just on an ad hoc basis as each question arises? Tannin
First, we must note that nobody wants to be called a pseudoscientist -- this word can, by its nature, only be objectively applied by others. We must therefore look at the number of scientists who are not directly involved with a particular field and who express an opinion as to its status as pseudoscience. If a strong majority of these scientists feels that the field is pseudoscience, this should be mentioned in the article (preferably with references, such as database search results). In the case of SETI, for example, some astronomers feel that it is pseudoscience or questionable science, but these are a small minority. As to the inevitable question "why scientists", scientists are the largest group sharing a similar definition of pseudoscience and understanding of the scientific method; other groups such as religions are also relevant, but they typically do not use the term and, if so, with greatly varying definition. --Eloquence 14:24 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)

Acupuncture and lucid dreaming

Not to throw a monkey wrench into the works, but...

The statement that "acupuncture and lucid dreaming may be considered protosciences" is a little off the mark to me. Specifically, acupuncture makes two types of claims: (i) that the practice of acupuncture will "cure what ails ya"; and (ii) that the theory of acupunture (qi, etc.) is an accurate representation of physical reality. At first thought, it seems to me that the protoscientific aspect of acupuncture is only (i); this appears to be a set of claims which are testable (e.g., "if there is back pain, then accupuncture at points a, b, c, etc."), and may or may not turn out to be verifiable. But the vitalistic theory underpinning (ii) seems less likely to be testable; and in fact may already be refutable (e.g., the claim that there are energy nodes located in a series of chains within the body). It is in the latter area that people tend to claim that acupuncture is a pseudo (rather proto) science - evidence which contradicts the theory tends to be discounted, because the practice still works (according to some; I'm not arguing either way here!).

To contrast, radiation cancer therapy (as practiced by standard Western medicine) doesn't stand just on its observed efficacy in treating cancer - it is also accompanied by a theory of how it works, based on the scientific method as applied to medicine. Which is the "science", the practice of radiation therapy, or the theory which describes "why" it works?

How do we deal with issues of this nature? Is the area of interest to be taken as the results of the techniques, or the theory which purports to be proven by the results of the techniques?

To me, a better (i.e., less ambiguous) example of a protoscience might be the "membrane" theory of gravitation - it's a theory all right, but it is currently untestable (and may never be testable). OK, the example is a bit too abstract (OK, way too abstract!), but I hope the point gets across. (Psychotherapy a better example?) It's the "may" in "may never" that makes it a protoscience to me... Chas zzz brown 22:23 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

Good points Chas. However, using psychotherepy as an example would open a huge can of worms. This is not the place to go into detail, but essentially the effacacy of psychotherepy has been pretty well documented. Within the limits of study error, it seems to reliably score "success" values within a fairly narrow and readily reproducable range. On the face of things, this says that psychotherapy has had modest but demonstrable success. What is equally well documented but (for obvious reasons) less well-known, is that similarly measured "success" values of other non-chemical intervention methods fall into that same predictable range, and these "other" treatments include any number of clearly non-scientific approaches: palmistry, astrology, crystal therapy, and so on. Psychotherapy does work, with demonstrated success rates (as I recall) of the order of one-third, and there have been many examples of particularly effective psychotherapists who are able to improve on this figure reliably. The particular type of therapy practiced, however, does not predict any individual therapist's success rate. The bottom line is that most people are able to effect measurable improvements in their client's wellbeing at least some of the time, and that some people are able to effect improvements most of the time, but there is no particular evidence to show that the method they use matters a damn (be it Freudian psychoanalysis, Rogerian client-centred therapy, or astrology). The literature provides compelling evidence for only two observations: (a) that sitting down and talking to someone often helps, and that some people are better to talk to than others, and (b) that psychological therapists are very good at not reading the literature. Tannin 00:24 Jan 25, 2003 (UTC)

Perpetual motion

The last paragraph implies that the idea of perpetual motion involves a logical contradiction - which it doesn't. It goes against a well-tested scientific theory - thermodynamics - but it could plausibly be possible even though there's no accepted good reason for thinking so, hope excepted. As such it belongs to a quite different category to mathematical impossibilities like trisecting the angle. I'd call it plain pseudoscience, myself, though some might disagree.

Wolfram

I see that recently an anonymous user removed the Wolfram item from the list of pseudosciences, with the comment/question "Why does genius Wolfram appear on the list?". I plan to add it the entry back in, along with a bit more in the article on some additional criteria for pseudosciences. Some of the criteria by which Wolfram's A New Kind of Science qualify for pseudoscience status are grandiose and unsubstantiated claims, and bypassing the methods of science in the large, namely peer review of his ideas. Did you hear about his aborted contract to have his book published by Addison Wesley? He wanted the reviewers to sign a non-disclosure statement and promise not to study math or physics for the ensuing ten years. A real nut-case, genius or no. No, I did not get this from reading all 1280 pages of his tome. I have read a couple of scathing reviews in the Notices of the AMS and the Bulletin of the AMS. And Freeman Dyson's comment regarding ANKOS is "There's a tradition of scientists approaching senility to come up with grand, improbable theories. Wolfram is unusual in that he's doing this in his 40s." So there are more than a few professionals who consider this particular work to be pseudoscience. Grizzly

I would probably keep it off for different reasons. I would distinguish between pseudoscience and nut-case science. What distinguishes the latter would be the connection with a single individual. When he's gone his "science" will also be gone and draw no more interest than an historical curiosity. ☮ Eclecticology 17:07 27 May 2003 (UTC)
Heavy stuff! Does a lack of peer review make science pseudoscience? It shouldn't. Peer review is not part of the scientific method itself, it's a part of scientific professionalism, which some could argue, is itself a contradiction of terms. I think Wolfram does bonified theoretical experimentation, via the empirical method, which distinguishes himself from pseudoscientists. Eclecticology is right: history will sort-out the importance of his work. Wolfram's a bonified scientist with grandiose claims, nothing less. rmbh 19:47, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)
Peer review is a basic tenant of science. If you close off your theories to scrutiny, you are not acting in a scientific manner. A credible scientist willw ant their theory to be subjected to the scrutiny of other scientists. Think about it, reproducibility is a very basic requirement for scientific practice, but how can you reproduce something if you won't open your theory to scrutiny? Scientists will have no idea whether the results they got mean anything unless they know how the theory works. Nathan J. Yoder 00:58, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Defining pseudoscience

I am concerned about the posted definition of pseudoscience, that it claims some data is collected scientifically but was not actually performed via the scientific method. For example, don't the Princeton group PEAR or the Psychophysical Research labs (I can't find links to it) actually perform scientifically valid experiments? They and others have found both evidence supporting parapsychology and evidence undermining it. However, they are on controvertial topics, and therefore rather than being labeled protoscience, they are considered pseudoscience. I agree that the vast majority of pseudoscience does not stand up to the rigors of the scientific method (see Bad Astronomy for extensive debunking), but isn't it possible that some DOES do things "right"? If they did, I would still call them pseudoscience.

In addition, I don't feel Occam's Razor is a good criterion for defining science/pseudoscience. Take the Big Bang for example: to quote John Dobson, is it more likely that "nothing made something from nothing (even a kindergartener knows that can't happen)" or that an omnipotent omniscient power did it? I think God is a "simpler" explanation, even though I don't believe in him! But perhaps this conversation treads the line between science and religion--which many philosophers, anthropologists and some educators feel are the same thing: "a systematic method of understanding the empirical world" (Sara Delamont).

--zandperl 13:22, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)


Well you've hit on one of the problems of using Occam's razor as the criterion for demarcation. Simplicity is no easier to pin down than science. In fact it may be difficult to find a criterion that actually solves the problem, rather than just displacing it. Unbiased peer review also comes up every now and again as a possible candidate. In this case it is the concept bias that presents difficulties.

If I understand you correctly, you say that the subject matter of a research program can be the sole judge of things. It doesn't matter that the methods of science are bieng applied. How do you come to this conclusion? --213.113.78.12 18:52, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I guess it's a matter of peer review: the majority of the science community (if you define science in the Western academia-centric POV) considers certain fields to be included in science (such as physics, biology, chemistry, math) and other fields to be external to science (such as telepathy, UFOlogy, religion, spirituality). Some of these "external" fields the scientists do respect to a certain degree (religion, spirituality), while others they deride and label pseudoscience (telepathy, UFOlogy). As a current member of academia, I generally agree with those labels based upon the field of study. However, as an educator trying to make science more accessible to a diverse group of people, I am uncertain in the case where something like telepathy is studied in a scientific manner. This also brings up the issue of "who is a scientist?" and various forms of elitism, but probably this is not the proper forum for that. Maybe Talk:science education would be better? --zandperl 22:35, 21 Oct 2003 (UTC)

About Paul Feyerabend

I removed these words said about Feyerabend:

Feyerabend has been quite famous for his statements, comparing science to voodoo in example. His way of thinking boils down to: "Anything goes."

I have studied Feyerabend for many years and know of no instance where he compares science to voodoo. Feyerabend's thinking hardly ever "boils down". And when it did he was always ready to mix things up again. These two quotes show what I mean:

The only principle which does not inhibit progress is: anything goes.
'anything goes' is not a 'principle' I hold...but the terrified exclamation of a rationalist who takes a closer look at history.
Sorry, my professors have misled me. Please accept my humblest apologies. - Sigg3.net

Say two "Hail Mary"s and three "Our Father"s and you are forgiven :) More seriously, one of the problems with Feyerabend is that he is so difficult to pin down. You can find him arguing for relativism and against it. Elsewhere he defends astrology only to say that it "bores him to tears" later. He is overly argumentative, inconsistent, often rude. It all makes great reading. --Chris 11:42, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks again. Seems like interesting reading, I will check it out sometime. - Sigg3.net 20:59, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Evidence and mathematical proof

It says on this page that experimentalists, apparently as a class, think that experiment leads to an equal or higher standard of certainty than mathematical proof. Can someone support this claim? If not, it should be removed. Gene Ward Smith 10:16, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

experimentalists, inparticular the foremost ones, think that experiments leads to an equal or higher standard of certainty (as far as I can tell). "Support this claim"? See Nikola Tesla or Edwin H. Armstrong's view on the "superiority" of mathematics ... "Should be removed"? umm no ... Sincerely, JDR
The discussion of "proof" vs. "proof" is utterly pointless, allthough interesting. When it comes to experimentalists, I find that it goes without saying that they neglect other proofs than those you can observe through an experiment. - Sigg3.net 12:23, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The characterization of Marxism-Leninism as a Pseudoscience is based on the self-characterization of Marxism-Leninism as a science: for example, "The open abandonment by the Soviet revisionists of the scientific Marxist-Leninist concept of socialism comes out clearly, also, when they proclaim the development of the productive forces as the only decisive factor of its construction." and "The frontal attack of Soviet revisionism on the fundamental questions of Marxism-Leninism could not leave the theory and practice of scientific socialism untouched." [1] Fred Bauder 05:55, Feb 22, 2004 (UTC)

Intuition

Re:

If the claims of a given pseudoscience can be experimentally tested it may be real science, however odd or astonishing. If they cannot be tested, it is likely pseudoscience. If the claims made are inconsistent with existing experimental results or established theory, it is often presumed to be pseudoscience. Conversly, if the claims of any given "science" cannot be experimentally tested it may not be a real science, however odd or astonishing.

The last sentence was recently added. I essentially have no complaint about it except for the last words. "Odd or astonishing" represents an immediate intuitive opinion of the subject. Thus we establish the scientific truth of something that would otherwise have been odd or astonishing, and disprove something that would have initially been intuitively acceptable. Eclecticology 00:12, 2004 Mar 4 (UTC)

Biogeometry

I'm looking for skeptic info about biogeometry, negative green, Chaumery and De Belizal for w:nl:Biogeometrie and w:nl:negatief groen. Guaka 17:54, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Zionology

On Talk:Zionology, I've raised the question whether Zionology is properly included in the Category:Pseudoscience. I mention the point here in the hope that people who've thought about the definition of "pseudoscience" will contribute there. I can see good arguments each way. (The particular point at issue is whether to remove the Pseudoscience category listing from the Zionology article, so I suggest that responses should be on that Talk page rather than this one.) JamesMLane 20:22, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Some maintain that there is nothing scientific in any kind of "political science", thus it makes no sense to characterize any particular political study as a "pseudoscience".

The definition

I've changed a key element of the definition from "one or more of these characteristics" to "a combination of these characteristics". This removes the implication that any one of these alone is sufficient to term something a pseudoscience. I treat the word "claim" as somewhat equivalent to "theory". When a theory is first put forth it often lacks any kind of evidence, it can be nothing more than a call to others to look into the matter. Similarly, the application of Ockham's Razor may not be determinative, because there can be times when using it may be an unwarranted short-cut. The other three fare better as stand-alone characteristics. Eclecticology 23 July

In defense of Feyerabend (again)

If I'm not mistaken, almost the same note on Feyerabend was inserted a while ago:

Feyerabend also infamously claimed that witchcraft and astrology should be considered as scientific as any of the canon scientific disiciplines.

Since it has re-appeared I should perhaps explain a little before I remove it once more. First of all, it is simply not the case that Feyerabend made such a claim.

In the introduction to Against Method F. says that he thinks it "necessary to re-examine our attitude towards myth, religion, magic, witchcraft and towards all those ideas which rationalists would like to see forever removed from the surface of the earth ".

If one didn't read further it is possible to imagine that he went on to suggest that such things should should be considered scientific. This is not the case. What he does suggest is that science is not an autonomous form of reasoning:

"A scientist who wishes to maximize the empirical content of the views he holds and who wants to understand them as clearly as he possibly can must therefore introduce other views; that is, he must adopt a pluralistic methodology. [...] Knowledge so conceived is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges towards an ideal view; it is not a gradual approach to the truth. It is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives, each single theory, each fairy tale, each myth that is part of the collection forcing the others into greater articulation and all of them contributing, via this process of competition, to the development of our consciousness." (Feyerabend, 1975, Against Method, p. 30)

In Three Dialogues on Knowledge, Feyerabend went to the defense of astrology in face of rationalist critcism. Here his fictional interlocutor is forced to admit that he has only a subjuctive bias against astrology and only rhetorical means of attacking it.

Claiming that witchcraft and astrology are scientific is, admittedly, the kind of thing Feyerabend might do. To my knowledge he stopped short of this claim. Chris 11:11, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

In my reading of Against Method, it was not Feyerabend's purpose to say that witchcraft or astrology were scientific so much as to say that that philosophically speaking one could not easily demarcate between what is "scientific" and what is not. That is, there would be no rigid line separating the two -- which is not the same thing as saying that witchcraft is scientific (rather, it calls into question what makes something rigidly "scientific"). --Fastfission 19:23, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Demarcation section merged and extracted

I have merged the demarcation section with that on the Scientific Method article and extracted it to its own article: Demarcation Problem. I think that there is still some material to merge from The Criterion of Demarcation, but I'll wait to see if there are any complaints so far. -- Chris 08:27, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

All three demarcation sections are now merged from Pseudoscience, Falsifiability and the Scientific Method. -- Chris

SETI

RK removed a part of the article that mentioned exobiology, astrobiology, SETI, and CETI, stating that they are not pseudoscience... which is true, but that isn't what the article said of them. I think the point was made quite well that:

  1. These fields are "young fields of science."
  2. They are "sometimes frowned upon."
  3. The point was driven home: "are not considered pseudoscientific or protoscientific by most scientists..."

I think the section served as a good disambiguation, pointing out that some newer fields of legitimate science are, indeed, sometimes frowned upon, and are often incorrectly labeled "pseudoscience" by those who might wish to criticize them.AdmN 14:58, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I like RK's last changes, good stuff. :) AdmN 17:27, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Editing

The community at www.randi.org has recently been notified of this article in a request for skeptical help, and that's why I at least am here.

I have been trying to revise the article to focus on the idea that pseudoscience is a property of the means of justifying or investigating a claim more than a property of a claim itself. Many of the fields called "pseudoscientific" here actually have been investigated sceintifically, but the scientific study fails to confirm the hypotheses. Also, the [i]sine qua non[/i] of a pseudoscience is that it be purported to be science without following the appropriate procedures.

Part of the conflation in the article is that the word "science" can mean several different things. The four that are most important here are 1) the scientific method, 2) the overall process of doing the scientific method with other people, 3) a body of work in which science 1 and 2 has been useful, and 4) a statement of accuracy produced by 1 and 2. It seems to me that 3 and 4 are very different from 1 and 2 and should be in separate threads. 1 and 2 science per se and apply everywhere science is used, while 3 and 4 describe particular applications of science. Pseudoscience seems to me, as a term, more related to 1 and 2. Usually, pseudoscience emphasized 2 without doing 1 properly, although sometimes there are social processes (such as allowing hostiles access to your data) that it fails to meet as well.

I noticed that there was a reference to cold fusion, but it seems to be gone. Cold fusion is actually a good example, because it's going through the phases of protoscience, junk science, science, and pseudoscience in roughly that order.

However, to talk about this, what the previous author said may be a good idea. Make two articles. Call them Article I and Article II.

Article I would be about what pseudoscience is, as contrasted to protoscience, junk science, and science. Article I could be made from a completely neutral point of view without using phrases like "some people believe." Examples, such as cold fusion, would only be used when they are useful as historical examples to compare and contrast. It would contain the main section without the harm part, the Classifying Pseudoscience section, about half the Pseudoscience and Protoscience section, the Demarcation section, and just a reference to pseudomathematics.

Article II would contain examples, a description of harm, the Examples, the other half of the Pseudoscience and Protoscience section.

Both will have to be rewritten and expanded so that they flow and make sense, but that's the easy part.

What do y'all think?

Neutrality Disputed

I'm still really new here, but I find it odd that an anon IP can come along and place the text "The neutrality of this article is disputed." on the article without discussing it here on the talk page or even providing any edit summary, so I've performed my first wiki "revert". Does anyone believe that the article, in its current form, needs a neutrality disclaimer? AdmN 04:16, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hit-and-run neutrality disputes like that don't count, reverting is fine. The place an article's neutrality might be disputed is here, on its talk page: a notice without a record of what's being objected to just doesn't cut it. (And no, I don't think it needs it either). - Nunh-huh 04:22, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Demarcation clarification needed

An addition to the demarcation section reads "Newton-Smith has criticized both approaches, arguing that only a rough heuristic is needed...". Which two approaches are refered to by "both approaches"? Since I couldn't find much about Newton-Smith on the web it might be an idea for those who know more about him to fill in a few details. In particular a short description of his "rough heuristic" would be appreciated. -- Chris 13:43, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Removed last para on demarcation:

"Fortunately, this is of minor relevance with respect to pseudoscience. The claimant has already presented the claim as scientific, but if the actual justification does not use the Scientific Method or ignores results produced by the Scientific Method, then it is pseudoscience."

After saying in the first paragraph that "a century of active dialogue" has failed to produce agreement on demarcation criteria, I don't think we can then glibly state that scientific method marks the boundry and all other discussion is of "minor relevance". Especially so since the nature and relevance of scientific method is also a topic of endless debate. -- Chris 14:04, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, no kidding. How'd that slip in there? --Fastfission 04:32, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Is this still an invalid NPOV alert, or have valid reasons come up? I figured I'd check before removing the NPOV alert... [[User:GregNorc|GregNorc (talk) ]]

United States Supreme Court decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals

"The Frye rule is now superseded by this decision. The Court's ruling in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals effectively establishes, as the law of the land, the Popperian principle of falsification as the determinant of scientific knowledge." [2]. The source deals with the implications of this decision on expert witnesses in cases of child sexual abuse. (They are "experts", too often.) --Moonlight shadow 16:36, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Pseudomathematics

Should pseudomathematics be a subsection on this page? Doing so implies that it is a sub-category of pseudoscience, and perhaps that math is a sub-category of science, while I do not believe that either of those statements are generally accepted. I would suggest removing the subsection and listing the topic in the "see also" section. --zandperl 20:31, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I would argue that there is no such thing as pseudomathematics. The classifications of pseduomath stated in the article are all tasks undertaken by a crank. In that sense, I would create (or modify, haven't checked) the entry crank and list some common attributes instead.

Non-NPOV

This view-point is woven deeper into the fabric of the article than I'm able to untangle, but still, the article approaches pseudo-science as a negative of science. That's not NPOV. Basically, if pseudo-science can not be weighed on its own, which judging from the name is what I would expect, then it shouldn't be covered like this at all. Aliter 19:13, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  • "Psuedoscience" is by definition a perjorative term, I'm not sure how to get around that -- the name itself virtually defines it as a "negative of science." One example might be the way scientific racism is handled, which tries (but perhaps does not accomplish) as an article to emphasize that the term is perjorative, that its application to specific people/work is often contested, and then explain what it means and the history of it. That is, one could rewrite the introduction to imply that the existence of "pseudoscience" at all is assuming a certain POV, rather than just postulating it as a given. --Fastfission 19:53, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That article is not about scientific racism, but rather: about the term "scientific racism". We're quite close to the border with Wiktionary here. It could still be an article, but is this the most appropriate title?
I agree the same approach could be used for pseudoscience, however, I think it would require more rewriting than just an introductory paragraph. Aliter 19:18, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Close to wiktionary or not, I'm not sure how one can write an article on a contested term which does not in some way acknowledge the history/use of that term itself, as a term... Just a comment. --Fastfission 19:38, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
If it were not possible, that could be because it really was just a dictionary entry, rather than an encyclopedic one. Aliter 19:20, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

OK, so if we're going to change this to an article on the term "pseudoscience":

  1. What does this mean for all other terms in wikipedia?
  2. Will this still be the right title?

Aliter 19:20, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The more I think about it, the more I think it would be just a mess to try and really historicize this term on here. I think a few paragraphs on the controversy of using the term, and whether demarcation is even possible, would probably be fine, and I think it already has that. I'm not really worried about it either way. I don't think it's possible to get away from the notion of pseudoscience as a negative or false science -- it's in the name by default. A non-pejorative name like "alternative ways of knowing" would have to be used if you wanted to avoid that connotation. Maybe a paragraph on just this question -- is pseudoscience a pejorative term? -- would be enough to balance things out? --Fastfission 15:21, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In my view, pseudoscience is used to classify a field whose practitioners are falsely trying to use the name science for their work without following the rules of science in an attempt to gain the prestige or clout of being a science. If the people in that field simply want to use the glamour of the name: science, without the rigor of the accepted scientific methods and techniques, then they are practicing pseudoscience and are in the LIE when they call their work science.

This article does a very good job of stating basically that. How can that be point of view? Perhaps those crying POV are practitioners of one of the fields labeled pseudoscience by the article and rather than properly defend (if they could) their field, they try to call the whole thing biased. If your favorite pseudoscience is listed here and you don't like that - then clarify the situation in that field, clean it up so it is not considered a pseudoscience, or pick up your marbles and go away.

The issue is clear, the definitions are clear, and I see no major problem with NPOV vs POV in this article. -Vsmith 17:00, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Misconceptions

I have just finished reading the comments on this talk page and most of the disagreements seem to result from the misconceptions about the definitions. I know that it is written in the article, but it seems to be confusing nonetheless, so I’ll try to briefly explain what I believe to cause the most problems.

First of all, “scientific” does not mean “true” and “pseudoscientific” does not mean “false.” Also, “unscientific” does not mean “false” and still it does not have to mean “pseudoscientific.”

Some fields of knowledge are scientific, others are not. The distinction is in the method, not in the truth or importance or value thereof. Those fields that are based on the scientific method are scientific, those that are not, are not. Additionally, some of the fields that are not scientific, claim to be scientific, and those are pseudoscientific. (I am not aware of any fields that falsely claim to not be scientific, but those would be cryptoscientific.) So it is a matter of two questions: (1) “is it scientific?” and (2) “does it claim to be scientific?”

Now, the difference between scientific and not-scientific fields is in the method, while the difference between not-scientific and pseudoscientific fields is only in the claim of being scientific, which itself does not affect the underlying concepts whatsoever, so any pseudoscientific field can be just as true/correct/insightful as any other explicitly not-scientific one, even though there might be no way to verify it scientifically—by definition. (I overuse the term “field” but that is because I try to avoid using terms such as “theory” and “hypothesis” which both have strict scientific definitions.)

For example, creationism or intelligent design may be true, even being examples of pseudoscience. By not following the Occam’s razor they may be suboptimal as scientific hypotheses, by not providing verifiable predictions they may be irrelevant from the scientific point of view, by not being falsifiable they may be meaningless from the scientific point of view, et cetera, but that doesn’t mean they are not “true”—whatever that means—and furthermore, what may be even more important here, if they didn’t claim to be scientific in the first place, they would not be examples of pseudoscience, but rather questions of philosophy, theology and religion.

On the other hand, we can have, and in fact we do have, purely scientific theories which are false, which we know to be false, and which we even still use because they are good approximations of reality, like the classical Newtonian mechanics.

The point is that “pseudoscience” per se is not a pejorative term, at least not by definition. Anything that is pseudoscientific can be true and correct in every aspect except the fact whether it follows the scientific method or not, which itself is quite an objective fact, for those rules to follow are rather straightforward. Nothing that doesn’t claim to be scientific can ever be called pseudoscientific, so it is fairly easy to avoid being called pseudoscientific in the first place.

Now I’ve read what I’ve written above and I can only hope that it would decrease the amount of confusion instead of increasing it even further. If I have accidentally written anything worth including in the article, which I somehow doubt, please feel free to copy it. Rafał Pocztarski 10:01, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the article does give that impression of good and bad study, in my opinion, hence my doubts. Also, if that is the definition of science, it ought to be very prominent in that article, which it currently is not. As it is, this gives an impression of circular definition. Aliter 23:02, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I assume that you are referring to the way how I have described science in the text above: “Those fields that are based on the scientific method are scientific, those that are not, are not.” It would be a circular definition if the scientific method itself was defined as a method used in science, but in fact it is a strict set of rules to follow. Rafał Pocztarski 11:08, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The problem is that the difference between pseudoscience and science -- the demarcation problem -- it not a rigorously justifiable problem; hence the collapse in philosophical circles of Popper and Lakatos' positivism. Pseudoscience may not be, by definition, a perjorative term, but it is certainly taken as one. Nobody is proud to do pseudoscience -- everybody wants to say they do science. To try and define what is science and what is not by the method is an approach to science only shared by laymen and undergraduate scientists, and to examine the history of science is to find exceptions to every rule counted among "science" (i.e. Paul Feyerabend). Numerous sociological and anthropological, much less historical, studies of scientific practice (i.e. Sharon Traweek's well-respected study on particle physics) have shown time and time again that even the practicing scientists know that the "scientific method" is a way to explain your results to the public more than it is a research program.
All of which is said by me not to denegrate science nor to be postmodern or anything like that, but to emphasize that the strong push to label something as psuedoscience (as a rigorous category) is generally only undertaken by those who ascribe to a particular brand of positivism, one not even ascribed to by most senior scientists in their field (much less historians, sociologists, or anthropologists of science). That is, "pseudoscience" is not a simple category which can be assigned based on the characteristics of the research in question.
Personally, I feel that in an operational sense, what is "science" is what scientists communicate with, what is non-science or often pseudoscience is what scientists do not communicate with. The Cold fusion practitioners became psuedoscientists when they stopped being talked to by the scientists. For this model "scientist" refers to someone with recognized academic/industrial/military credentials as a "scientist" and nothing more. That's my personal take on it, anyway -- that is not something to be included in the article, of course.
Now the question arises: what sort of article should Wikipedia have on the subject? Personally, I think the current one stands just fine, if it is made clear from the beginning that pseudoscience is a contested category in and of itself (much less the assignment to sciences). I think it would be wonderful to have a history of the term but I don't know if such things have been written on before (OED says the term was first used in the mid-19th century, which feels about right to me, as this is the period when scientists became extremely anxious about their own subjectivity for the first time and began setting up elaboratorate technical and philosophical mechanisms to reinforce their notions of objectivity, to variable effect).
Despite all of this writing, I'm not actually that concerned on a personal level with this, but I can understand how someone would find the Wikipedia entry to be have a very positivistic slant to it; but part of that is because the notion of pseudoscience, taken seriously, itself has a very positivistic slant to it. --Fastfission 15:09, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)


Exobiology

Exobiology has no place in this article - it is no more a protoscience than the study of DNA (both begun around the same time) and it certainly isn't pseudoscience. It's just applying our knowledge of extremophiles to known planetary conditions, and has been studied in situ by the likes of Viking, and was the subject of the recent Beagle 2 mission. Future missions on the subject include JIMO. Study on Earth continues apace. Dan100 23:00, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)

The question in the context here is not whether it is protoscience but whether it is regarded by some as protoscience -- and I think that certain approaches to it are, in the way that certain forms of cryptozoology are as well. I'm not passing my own judgment on it, the question is whether or not it is sometimes put into that category, and I'm pretty sure that it is. This article is not the place to debate the merits of such classification, though -- its inclusion in this article is only to indicate that it is sometimes questioned on its methodology. There are quite a few non-fringe people who think that speculative observationary sciences of this sort do not conform to the ideals of the scientific method and would thus be considered a form of proto- or pseudoscience.
As I understand it, the designation of protoscience is not about the age of a field, but about its epistemic status; about whether or not it has the conceptual tools developed to be considered a "true" science. Do I think this is a useful distinction? Not entirely, but that's not really the point. Evolutionary psychology is often included in the same distinction. Again, not necessarily included by me (this is not about what I, or you, think are protosciences). Whether it is supported by NASA influences this distinction depends on whether you take a philosophical approach to the classification scheme (is it based on methodology?) or an operational one (is it based on whether it is done by authorized "scientists"?). I think most people talking about pseudoscience do so with the former (personally, I like the latter, but this article isn't about my view of things). Does it matter that it has been along for 40 years and that you have studied it for two of them? Not by a philosophical definition of pseudoscience or protoscience. The hardcore critic (e.g. Feyerabend) would say, "Alchemy was studied for three times that long, yet it is still methodologically poor today!"
Astrobiology is listed both on the pages for protoscience and List of protosciences, by the way. I don't have terribly strong feelings on this either way, I have to admit, but it seems more accurate to include it on the list of "thought of by others to be" than to remove it simply because you think it isn't a protoscience. The question that is posed is: "Do some people regard exobiology/astrobiology as being in part or wholly a protoscientific enterprise?" I think the answer is "yes", but I'm most definitely willing to listen to other opinions. --Fastfission 02:18, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)


I think, considering that, we should leave it out of this page and leave it on the Protoscience page. But please don't compare it to something like cryptozoology - do a biological sciences degree at a university and you will quite likely study exobiology at some point (how I experienced it). As I said, it's just comparing the known conditions on other planets (as measured by telescopes or probes) to the extreme environments on Earth (eg deep underground, frozen lakes, ocean vents, geyesers) where microbes (somehow) exist. It's not particularly fanciful, and I don't think it's even slightly close to being pseudoscience. Protoscience maybe though.

I also recieved a message from COMPATT stating that exobiology's case to be regarded as mainstream science would be strengthened if in-situ study of ET life occured - again let me stress that such study was the mission of Beagle 2 and the Viking program. Viking's results were inconclusive, and sadly Beagle 2 never reached the surface of Mars, so yes it's yet to happen, many many hundreds of millions of pounds/dollars have been spent on such efforts!

Fastfission, I note the exobiology page makes no mention of extremophiles - I'll update that later :) Dan100 17:37, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Added an example

"by asserting claims or theories without first verifying them in experiments"

I think this describes a subsection of this subject not mentioned. The wording seems ackward to me though, if anyone can make it sound better, by all means, edit it. [[User:GregNorc|GregNorc (talk) ]]

I'm not sure asserting theories without experimenting is something only pseudoscience does. One could easily interpret that in a way which would make Einstein a pseudoscientist, unless I'm missing something. It seems to miss the fact that not all science is experiment. --Fastfission 13:27, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Adding controversial examples does not help people understand pseudoscience. If you wish to argue that some particular theory is pseudoscience you should do it on the page relevant to it, not here. DJ Clayworth 22:05, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

NPOV tag

I put an NPOV tag on this because I believe the introduction did not make any attempt to inform the reader that this is a value-laden label. Black-and-white. Us-against-them. Over-simplification. Kind of like "racist". The person applying the label to someone else considers it valid, but the person to whom the label is applied can never agree with it. Shouldn't the intro say something about this aspect?

For an example of how this has been treated elsewhere in Wikipedia, see Racism. Quoting from there (replace racist with pseudoscientist): ". . . there have been few in developed nations who describe themselves as racist, so that identification of a group or person as racist is nearly always controversial." Something like that seems to be missing in the intro to this article. I have made a poor attempt to reflect this in the first paragraph; I'm sure someone else can do it better. --Smithfarm 10:31, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In case somebody immediately reverts my edits, here is my (admittedly inadequate) version of the first paragraph:

Pseudoscience is a term used by some advocates of classical science when referring to alternative and/or disputed fields of scientific endeavor. The term is generally applied to a body of knowledge that, in the opinion of the user, only purports to be scientific or supported by science but fails to comply with the scientific method. Pseudoscience, these advocates say, is a kind of counterfeit or masquerade of science that makes use of some of the superficial trappings of science but does not involve the substance of science.

I would add a sentence to the effect that "No one who has been labeled an advocate of, or believer in, pseudoscience is known to have agreed with the use of that term to describe their work." --Smithfarm 10:41, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but that lets pseudoscience off way too easily. It usually isn't a personal opinion that makes something a pseudoscience; it's a complete lack of correct application of the scientific method. To use one example, the non-existence of perpetual motion machines isn't an opinion, it's a consequence of the laws of thermodynamics. And whenever anyone comes up to you and claims to have a perpetual motion machine, you know they are not acting scientifically; no opinion is required. The only thing anyone needs to do to escape the label of pseudoscience is to support the rigorous appication of the scientific method.
Atlant 11:32, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

So let me get this straight. You agree that Pseudoscience is a label, but oppose any mention of the fact in the article? Why not simply state that "Pseudoscience is a label used to refer to any supposedly scientific endeavor that does not rely on rigorous application of the scientific method"? Why the value-laden language? --Smithfarm 11:58, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That would be an acceptable statement. My main point is/was that whether something is pseudoscience or not isn't an opinion (in contrast to your originally-proposed lede). Something is simply pseudoscience when its proponents refuse to allow it to be tested by the scientific method.
Atlant 12:09, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Here's my suggestion:
A pseudoscience is any body of knowledge purported to be scientific or supported by science but which is judged by the mainstream scientific community to fail to comply with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is seen as a kind of counterfeit or masquerade of science that makes use of some of the superficial trappings of science but does not involve the substance of science.
I think it is important to use "mainstream scientific community" as our demarcation principle. As the article clearly states, there is no hard-and-fast way to tell whether something is pseudoscience or not from a philosophical point of view. From a practical point of view, though, it is easy to say that "pseudoscience is what the mainstream scientific community says it is," which I think is also the most accurate way of defining it. This is more complex than saying it is simply an "opinion", but also lets us avoid pretending it is just a simple rule which can be applied (which anybody well versed in the history and philosophy of science will realize is not the case). I also think adding the line that those who are labeled it usually reject the label is worth adding as well. I say this as someone who has no tolerance for pseudoscience, but recognize that what is science and what isn't is a historically contested problem which has little chance to be resolved along purely philosophical lines. Hence I prefer a pragmatic approach, "pseudoscience is what scientists say it is", which tells you exactly who is doing the labeling and what they think it means (and one is free to question that, which I think is just fine). --Fastfission 16:47, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
That sounds fine to me.
Atlant 17:18, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think Fastfission's proposed solution would resolve the POV issues I had. Thanks. --Smithfarm 20:59, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I tried to brush up the entire intro along these lines. Let me know if anybody thinks I went too far either way. --Fastfission 03:26, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
User:Barnaby dawson has just changed the "universal" objection of people whose work is labelled as pseudoscience to "almost always" object. Is that justified? Does Barnaby dawson know of anyone who doesn't object to the label being applied to their work? --Smithfarm 08:52, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Justified. Universal objection is way too broad. Do you know that all object? Don't even know if almost always can be verified, certainly universal can't be. Maybe should read presumably almost always object. No? Vsmith 13:14, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Suggestion: with few or no exceptions instead of almost always. Since neither of us knows whether all object, but we presume that very few do not object, if any. --Smithfarm 18:35, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Anyone for Newton Smith?

I will now remove the reference to Newton Smith that reads,

"Newton-Smith has criticized both approaches, arguing that only a rough heuristic is needed to be able to do real science."

The removed sentence has been there for a while, but no extra information has emerged. If anyone feels strongly about Smith's contribution, then this might be a good time to begin an article on him, or add something more substantial here. Chris 08:35, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Category:Pseudoscience

FYI, the Category:Pseudoscience has been nominated for deletion. Editors wishing to register an opinion on one side or the other should make their comments promptly. Thanks, -Willmcw 02:59, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

Psychoanalysis?

Psychoanalysis is listed as an example of a pseudoscience, but I think it's a poor choice. I can understand how one might feel that it doesn't fully conform to the scientific method, but psychoanalysis doesn't really purport to be a fully scientific field for the most part. If there's no objection, I'll remove it from the list. Deleuze 14:08, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)



Somewhat Scientific?

I always thought that pseudoscience was a mixture of science and non-science, the result being something that has not been proven to be scientifically true but has not been proven scientifically false; therfore being a beleif that is supported partially by something that is science-based, but not science itself.

This article describes pseudo-science as something incorrectly assumed as scientific. If that is the definition, then what is the word for my definition, as described above? --Munchkinguy 04:46, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

No, pseudoscience is not a mixture of science and non-science, it is all non-scientific that tries to seem or appear scientific. Protoscience may be more like what you say. Bubba73 (talk), 05:00, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Unscientific does not mean false

User:Rfl]] writes above: "“scientific” does not mean “true” and “pseudoscientific” [or unscientific] does not mean “false.”" I, and it seems User:Atlant, agree the definition given in the intro is incomplete without this clarification of 'pseudoscience.' It is a popular misconception that pseudoscientific means false, but it seems more accurate to define it as (to put it simply) 'unscientific but claiming to be scientific.'--Nectarflowed T 02:40, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Anything can fit the claim that "it doesn't mean it's false!" Despite the lack of evidence, all religions can say "it doesn't mean we're wrong." This is also the case with logical fallacies: although the means to get to the conclusions are completely illogical, "it doesn't mean the conclusions are false!" This clarification probably should be in the article, but not in the lead section, since it's not in the lead sections for similar articles. God doesn't say in the lead section: "Despite the lack of any physical evidence of His existence, it doesn't mean there is no God!" Or, along more similar lines, fallacy doesn't include such a clarification in its lead section. --brian0918™ 03:05, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)


I agree with brian -- I don't think it is necessary. The introductory line as it is which defines it as "Pseudoscience refers to any body of knowledge or practice which purports to be scientific or supported by science but which is judged by the mainstream scientific community to fail to comply with the scientific method," is fine as it is for an introduction -- it doesn't engage with the question of truth or false at all which I think is the correct stance. However if people really thought this was necessary to emphasize, I think a better approach might be to modify this line:
As the term pseudoscience has negative connotations, those who are labelled as practicing or advocating it almost always reject this classification, and often the distinction itself.
into:
The term "pseudoscience" has negative connotations, implying generally that things so labeled are false and deceptive (though a strict interpretation of the term would not necessarily have it mean either). As such, those who are labelled as practicing or advocating a "pseudoscience" almost always reject this classification, and often the distinction itself.
What do you think? I think that is the better place to put a statement like that, not right in the intro, for the reasons brian gave, and because it the question of truthness/falseness is a complicated one and should be handled a little more carefully than saying "it doesn't necessarily mean it is false". The term almost certainly, however, implies deceptiveness ("fake science") if you accept the classification. I don't think people are confused when they think being called "pseudoscience" implies falseness -- it's often a deliberate association! --Fastfission 02:03, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I like your version... go with it. --brian0918™ 02:51, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I disagree. Your definition of pseudoscience allows the scientific establishment to define anything it disagrees with as pseudoscience. A pseudoscience should be defined as "A set of empirical claims represented by its proponents as scientific but actually having no falsifiable empirical content." This differentiates pseudoscience from 1) an outdated or already falsified science, such as Ptolemy's astronomy 2) philosophy or religion(which do not represent themselves as sciences) or 3) scientific theories that are falsifiable, but for whatever reason have not been accepted my mainstream scientists. (unsigned, confusingly placed post by 71.49.21.45 on 19:20, 30 November 2005)

Medical profession as authorities on what is true science

It is an appeal to authority to claim that one field or another is "pseudoscience" because the "medical profession" says so. Since the term pseudoscience is a value judgment, the burden of proof falls on those who make the judgment to prove their case. These examples constitute biased polemics written from the POV of the status quo - the same status quo, by the way that thought sanitary methods were quackery not that many years ago. --Leifern June 30, 2005 23:14 (UTC)

  • Thanks for the original research. --brian0918™ 30 June 2005 23:26 (UTC)
    • I'm not sure what that comment means. --Leifern June 30, 2005 23:32 (UTC)
      • Wikipedia isn't in the business of changing the world. We simply summarize those who do. --brian0918™ 30 June 2005 23:44 (UTC)

What the User:Brian0918 may be referring to is the policy of Wikipedia that we should only use information from verifiable sources. We're not here to "prove" anything, just to summarize in an NPOV manner the verifiable sources on a topic. If notable sources say something is X, then we should include that assertion rather than attempting to prove, on our own, that X is true. So, "appeal to authority" is what Wikipedia is all about. Cheers, -Willmcw June 30, 2005 23:36 (UTC)

  • That's fine; but there's a difference between saying "X is true" and "Y says that X is true." --Leifern July 1, 2005 01:15 (UTC)
  • Yes, that's why the page goes to some considerable trouble to discuss the problematic aspect of the term "pseudoscience", whose POV it is, and why a number of people don't believe there even exists such a thing. Re-read the first line again and I think you'll see that the Y says X is definitely the formulation used." --Fastfission 1 July 2005 02:30 (UTC)

It's not an appeal to authority. Appeal to authority only applies when you're using unqualified authorities to back up an argument, like using the opinion of a cardiologist on a matter of urology. This is an appeal to expert testimony (qualified experts), which is perfectly valid. Nathan J. Yoder 6 July 2005 17:54 (UTC)


Well, what Mr. Leifern has stated certainly appears to be an appeal to authority! I think Mr. Yoder is referring to the associated logical fallacy, which could be invoked if, say, Tom Cruise was to pronounce on whether psychiatry was part of medical science.

Also, the policy of no original research doesn't apply to the talk pages. But where is the authority of the "medical profession" referenced in the article? I don't see a problem. If Mr. Leifern is able to demonstrate that a given entry in the list deserves to be called a 'science' because the discipline involved appears to follow the scientific method, I'm sure we would have no objection in removing it from the list, or at least starting a discussion.--Kbk 03:31, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

In my not so humble opinion, medicine is sometimes (or often) well below the thresold of the scientific method (despite its claim). AnyFile 21:45, 23 August 2005 (UTC)


If you would have paid closer attention in your Classical Logic courses Apeal to Authority is not a fallacy. What you are thinking of is Appeal to Improper Authority which is considered a fallacy. For example "dentists generally agree that Einstien's Theory of Relativity has been well confirmed by experiment" would be an Appeal to Improper Authority, even though the claim referenced is probably true, whereas "physcists generally agree that Einstien's Theory of Relativity has been well confirmed by experiment" is an Appeal to Proper Authority. Both are Appeals to Authority but only the former is fallicious (even though claim being supported is the same). If all Appeals to Authority were to be considered fallicious just about every single scientific paper ever written would have to be considered fallicious, as referencing the work of other scientists, i.e. authorities on a subject that the author may or may not be familiar with,and most always not nearly as familiar as the person they are referencing, is ubiquitous and necessary in science, as we can't all study every aspect of such a broad subject as physics or medicine.

Also note, as someone has already pointed out, if all Appeals to Authority were considered fallicious you would have no argument yourself, as the idea that Appeals to Authority are fallicious comes from your misunderstanding of logic, which is a field I'm assuming your not very familiar with yourself since you don't understand the different kinds of appeals to authority, and therefore you are obviously appealing to authority (authority which you apparently misunderstood).--Brentt 04:56, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Moreover, as the article on Appeal to Authority points out, it's not fallacious to say something is probably true because some legitimate authority says so. It would be falacious to say that something must be true because an authority says so.

But this is beside the point. The article doesn't commit a falacy because it's not making an argument. It's not saying "You shouldn't believe such-and-such theory because mainstream scientists call it pseudo-science." It's reporting on how the term pseudo-science is used, and what it's used to refer to. Statements like "The majority of doctors consider such-and-such pseudo-science" are statements of fact. The article makes no claim as to whether you should believe them. --Tim314

judged by the mainstream scientific community?

Why not change that to read simply "which fails to comply with the scientific method"? The "mainstream scientific community" has been known to be wrong, sometimes spectacularly, and has itself sometimes failed to comply with the scientific method. ObsidianOrder 1 July 2005 07:46 (UTC)

If you hope to achieve a more objective demarcation in this way, I'm afraid this will not help. The significance of scientific method is a controversial topic. What constitutes scientific method is decided to a large extent by consensus and is, again, not settled. I would be tempted to move in the opposite direction and remove the reference to scientific method rather than community. --Chris 1 July 2005 08:54 (UTC)
Actually I think we can have both, in that it is the community that judges something pseudoscience by its lack of compliance with the scientific method. Just saying sci com doesn't tell us what crieria they judge it by. Just saying sci meth doesn't tell us who judges compliance. Dunc|☺ 1 July 2005 08:57 (UTC)
Sounds good. --brian0918™ 1 July 2005 13:22 (UTC)
I still disagree. There is an objective standard, I think "scientific method" itself is pretty well defined. How it is applied in each particular case is indeed subjective and sometimes darn compicated (cold fusion anyone?), but the sci com consensus is not necessarily the ultimate authority on that. What I'm trying to say is that they're not right by definition. They may be right or not depending on whether they're following/fairly applying their own rules. ObsidianOrder 2 July 2005 03:15 (UTC)
"Just saying sci meth doesn't tell us who judges compliance." - there is no single ultimate arbiter, that's exactly my point. Sometimes the sci com cannot reach consensus. Sometimes it does reach consensus but later turns out to be wrong (and in those cases, does something instantaneously turn from pseudoscience into science?). So everyone ends up having to judge compliance for themselves. For all that, it is an objective standard, just not one with an obvious answer in every case. ObsidianOrder 2 July 2005 03:15 (UTC)

Let's see if we can come to an agreement on whether "scientific method" is well defined or not. To my mind there are are number of proposed scientific methods. To start with there are the many and similar sounding inductive methods, an example of which is documented in the scientific method article. Looking at the history section of the same article we see that the inductive method has changed over its history. This history of change continues right up to recent times when the logical positivists tried to prove the objectivity of their own version(s) of inductive scientific method. After Popper the inductive method went out of fashion to some degree, at least among philosophers of science. That has lead some to reformulate scientific method in terms of Popper's philosophy, essentially replacing the 'validation' step with a 'falsification' step, as if that would do his philosophy justice! Not that I'm a fan of Popper mind you :-)

So there is no single scientific method. Or am I wrong? Is there one version of these methods that is more "objective" than the others? Whatever standards we choose our scientific method by, the Baconian ideal of having a mechanical method of producing knowledge will never be a reality. I don't believe that we can take people out of the equation completely. --Chris 2 July 2005 13:55 (UTC)

You're quite right, as far as the philosophy of science goes. The practical application is quite a bit simpler (at least conceptually). Anyone who proceeds by iterative verification/refinement of hypotheses by means of experiments and/or empirical observation is essentially applying the scientific method. Whether they are doing it well depends a lot more on practical details (experimental controls, reproducibility, isolation, considering and testing alternate possible hypotheses, proper use of statistics) than it does on Popper vs Kuhn or what have you. ObsidianOrder 2 July 2005 15:52 (UTC)
  • The idea of what the "scientific method" has been or is, and whether or not it defines "science" or not (or all disciplines of science) has historically and philosophically been in flux for a long time. It is as fruitless for Wikipedia to try and establish demarcation criteria based on philosophical grounds as it has been for philosophers over the last century. It is better for us to take a sociological approach, "here is what group X thinks is pseudoscience," than to try and define it rigorously ourselves, as nobody has found a good way to do that. Furthermore, any rigorous definition we try to come up with is likely to differ from other definitions and it is not really Wikipedia's place to say who is "correct" in this response. It is also impossible to avoid POV problems if we don't take a sociological approach. Anybody who argues that there is a single scientific method or that it is an easy question has obviously not engaged much with the philosophical debates on the topic and is not really aware of the issues at stake, in my opinion. --Fastfission 2 July 2005 15:26 (UTC)
  • But yes, we should explain what the standards are that the scientific community claims they violate, while still noting that these standards and their applicability and their interpretations are contested, etc. The ultimate decision of who goes into the category must be sociological, though. That is, we must report what the "scientific community" judges, not make the judgments ourselves. --Fastfission 2 July 2005 15:30 (UTC)
I vehemently disagree with the idea of a "sociological definition". We should not make judgements ourselves, granted, but we can describe some of the applicable criteria, mention what is considered a really important authority (the sci com - it is not the ultimate authority though), and leave it at that. Science obviously has an existence independent of the sci com and so does the pseudo version. ObsidianOrder 2 July 2005 15:44 (UTC)
Agreed. We are definitely starting to fall into the original research regime. --brian0918™ 2 July 2005 15:58 (UTC)
The application of the criteria is not straightforward. That's the whole point. I don't think you understand the issues at stake here, why it is difficult to apply something as easy as "falsifiability". We fall into POV problems and original research problems when we try to decide on our own whether a given field satisfies a given criteria.
Where do we get the criteria from? Did you figure them out yourself? What philosopher or scientist are you going to hold as the gold standard? Carl Sagan? Paul Feyerabend? Imre Lakatos? Phillip E. Johnson? How to choose?
How are you going to decide what counts as "falsifiability"? What about if a theory is only hypothetically falsifiable -- using technology or conditions that we can't yet verify?
How do you decide when an idea falls from science to pseudoscience? Why did cold fusion fall into the latter category when it did? Why is string theory still considered legitimate science though it is not yet falsifiable?
Real historians, real philosophers, real scientists, have near impossible times answering this questions along strict methodological lines. The literature on demarcation is long and fundamentally unsettled. As many, many historians and philosophers have shown, what is judged as "science" at one time is best defined by what other people in the recognized "scientific community" define as being included in their field. There is no true test of what is "science" and what is not. The reason cold fusion is "pseudoscience" and string theory is "science" is because the scientific community -- difficult to define, sometimes hard to assess, but it certainly exists to some extent -- believes that string theory is still within the realm of scientific investigation and cold fusion is not. In the end they may be wrong on both counts! It's not for us to sort out -- it is easier, NPOV, and more correct to say, "Cold fusion is considered pseudoscience by the mainstream scientific community" than it is to say, "Well, maybe Cold fusion doesn't satisfy this one requirement, though not all people believe that requirement is necessary, and there are numerous historical examples of people violating that requirement with things we would today consider science, and many things that we would consider non-science which satisified that requirement."
If you don't know about the philosophical or historical literature I'm referring to, I'd be happy to give references and starting points. But if you have no training in the history and philosophy of science then I don't recommend jumping into making substantive decisions on these issues with any more rigor than you would expect me to jump into an article about organic chemistry with no training on the subject, playing it from the hip.
The "scientific community" is the only authority on what is "science" and what is not. There is no other NPOV approach to the issue. Obviously there are times when other authorities make judgments, but they are always heavily contested and questions are raised as to the boundary crossings taking place (i.e. judgments about what is "science" in schools or courtroom contexts). I don't think Wikipedia should be any different in this respect.
The other nice thing about a sociological definition is it avoids us having endless debates over whether any given field satisfies or violates any given criteria. If we can find references in mainstream scientific literature which regard it and treat it as a pseudoscience, then we can easily cite those and be done with it. Otherwise expect new hassles everyday for people trying to argue that aspects of creation biology or homopathy don't fit under a given definition and so the whole theory should not be listed, or that aspects of evolutionary psychology do fit under a given definition and should be listed. A century of debate hasn't resolved the question among experts -- we shouldn't have the gall to believe we can do it ourselves. --Fastfission 2 July 2005 16:29 (UTC)
A last point on "original research": Let's consider two options for this.
In one, we muddle over what we think makes something pseudoscientific or not, and then decided whether it applies to various practices and beliefs. Then we try to parse out why certain things are not pseudoscientific.
In the other, we report what fields are "considered" to be pseudoscience by relevant authorities.
Which of those looks more like original research to you? Which of those looks more likely to be NPOV to you? I think the answer is clearly the latter. Which then raises the question: on whose authority? Carl Sagan's? Paul Feyerabend's? The Discovery Institute?
I think the best answer is to allude to the larger and admittedly vague "scientific community" -- it is the only thing which can be reasonably considered an "authority" on "science". It is easy to find citations from "mainstream" scientists about most of these fields. And if there truly is ambiguity, it can be easily noted.
Attribution of POV allows us to be NPOV. And there's no way to attribute POV if we try to take a strictly philosophical definition; all NPOV is sociological in nature, it is all about attribution of views. --Fastfission 2 July 2005 17:19 (UTC)
  • It sounds to me like we're all just being really lazy. We don't want to bother to research what people in the scientific community actually think of each of these topics, so we're stuck with applying our own opinions. --brian0918™ 2 July 2005 21:21 (UTC)
  • What are you referring to, specifically? --Fastfission 2 July 2005 21:59 (UTC)
"the best answer is to allude to the larger and admittedly vague "scientific community" You avoid the issue of vagueness by deferring to the policy statements of The National Academies of Science. The NAS represents the scientific community as a whole on matters of national science policy. It was granted a charter by the Congress to advise the government by representing the position of the mainstream science community, and has done so for something like the 100 years or some such. FeloniousMonk 2 July 2005 22:46 (UTC)
  • Well, I want to avoid referring to any specific organization, in this case the NAS, in part because 1. they are not in the business of going through every practice and making pronouncements on them (so it would be hard to find the answer in many cases), 2. their neutrality as a group is sometimes called into question, and 3. they are usually country-specific (in this case, the USA), which people generally frown upon around here. But I'm happy with using them as a major source when applicable. --Fastfission 3 July 2005 20:28 (UTC)
Fastfission: "The "scientific community" is the only authority on what is "science" and what is not." - says who? For one thing, what if they don't agree with each other? (happens most of the time, actually). What if most agree but there is a really prominent dissenting voice? For another, science existed well before there was a "scientific community" in the modern sense. The point is that the definition should be only based on objective criteria, and then we can say that we defer to a consensus view (if one exists) of the scientific community about how to apply the objective criteria. In other words, the definition is not "sociological", but we can can (and should) certainly cite well known authorities when it comes to applying it to particular cases. I agree completely about attributing views in each particular case, but I think any specification of a group whose views are supposed to be absolutely authoritative does not belong as part of the definition, that's all.
"National Academies of Science"? I can't believe you guys are so authority-oriented. The NAS opinion in 1890, if I remember correctly, was that heavier-than-air flight is impossible (see [3]). Incidentally the Wright brothers were not part of the scientific community at all.
Let's have a look at cold fusion, since you mentioned it. Nobel-prize winner physicist Brian Josephson thinks it's solid science (see this review of research on the subject hosted at his home page). The NAS probably thinks it is not. And the scientific community view is... ?! ObsidianOrder 3 July 2005 05:54 (UTC)
Cold fusion is anathema in the USA and has been for years. It's a great example of a scientific field which has become so politicized that it's not possible to work on a PhD in that area in the USA even if you have some good ideas. You can't get funded, published, or mentored. The few people working on it are cranks or scientists who have the freedom to work independently, often because they are at the end of their careers. Nonetheless, recent results continue to be interesting and the DOE is now re-evaluating whether it should start to fund investigations again.
You have to ignore the cranks and concentrate on the real science. Please read this book to gain an appreciation for what has happened recently. At least read the editorial reviews on Amazon:
"Excess Heat: Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed (2nd Edition)"
Remember that the science of superconductivity progressed for fifty years before the BCS theory was developed to explain it. Semiconductors took about as long; the early crystal detectors used in 1900's radios were not understood theoretically for decades, and they were hard to reproduce.
'Cold fusion' may never pan out as an energy source (and there may be no 'fusion' involved), but there is clearly some interesting physics going on and there is a significant group of scientists working on it world-wide. It is in no sense comparable to the other examples of pseudoscience listed in the entry, and that's why I moved it to the protoscience page. --Kbk 7 July 2005 21:36 (UTC)


  • Nobody has supposed that the scientific community, however measured, is "correct." Just because the NAS judged at the time, given the information as they knew it, something which we now know to be incorrect says nothing about their status as representing what is "science" and what is not.
Disagreement, dissention, etc. does not apply in any way here that it does not in any other scientific question. If the question was, "How old is the universe?" then one clearly recognizes that this is a scientific question best answered by the scientific community. Whether it is the NAS, a prominent number of well-respected astronomers, etc., it is not hard to say "The general scientific opinion is X, even though there may be some variance as to this aspect of it." This is no different. It is easy enough to say, "Most mainstream scientists think that X is a pseudoscientific practice, though some do not for X reason."
Most people, by the way, don't class the Wright Brothers as scientists, but as "inventors" -- usually thought of as a somewhat different community. But anyway, that's a more complicated issue. But heck, let's use this as an example: How would you write an encyclopedia article on heavier-than-air flight in 1890? Would you want the editors to argue with each other, given their own feelings on the possibility or whether it adequately satisfied any arbitrary number of requirements, to decide whether to label it as pseudoscience or not? Or would you rather they wrote, "The mainstream scientific community believes this to be pseudoscience"? If they wrote the latter, then they wouldn't be wrong when it was decided otherwise in retrospect -- the scrutiny would fall onto the mainstream scientific community rather than the encyclopedia! If they did it the other way, they'd be doing original research, first of all, and secondly it would be their error when they were wrong. If they were right, they'd be going against the conclusions of mainstream science, which I don't think is the correct role for an encyclopedia.
The scientific community as a whole thinks Cold fusion is pseudoscience. That is easy enough to judge, the number of researchers who choose to take it is minimal, most articles on it in major outlet journals (i.e. Science, Nature) say they think it is bunk. It could easily be, and should be, noted on that article's own page that a few noteworthy and respectable people support it, but their views are not shared by the community at large. How hard was that? Not very. Much easier than you and me arguing over whether or not we think it is falsifiable or not. Which would be original research, anyway.
See my comments on cold fusion, above. --Kbk 7 July 2005 21:36 (UTC)
Listen: obviously some authority must be appealed to anyway for us to label things one way or another in Wikipedia. Why not just make the article reflect that explicitly? Is it really such a bad definition to say that "pseudoscience" means that the practices in question are thought by the mainstream scientific community to not comply with a variety of criteria? It is the only NPOV to approach it -- to say they don't comply with the criteria suddenly makes Wikipedia the authority, which is incorrect. --Fastfission 3 July 2005 20:28 (UTC)
  • For what it's worth, I agree with ObsidianOrder, Leifern, and possibly that what a few others have stated. The definition as is means: "Something is pseudoscience simply because a bunch of people say it's 'pseudoscience'." If we keep that, then the word doesn't actually refer to anything... it's an empty concept. I would go with this: Pseudoscience refers to any body of knowledge or practice which purports to be scientific or supported by science but which is judged not to comply with the scientific method. In my opinion, that is essentially the same as what ObsidianOrder suggested: Pseudoscience refers to any body of knowledge or practice which fails to comply with the scientific method. "Judging" (i.e. judging whether or not something complies eith the scientific method) is implicit in his suggestion anyway, but now we're just stating it explicitly. Edwardian 3 July 2005 06:32 (UTC)
  • Judged by who? By Wikipedians? No. By the mainstream scientific community. And you're misrepresenting what I'm arguing for. The definition I currently favor is:
"Pseudoscience refers to any body of knowledge or practice which purports to be scientific or supported by science but which is judged by the mainstream scientific community to fail to comply with the scientific method."
Which makes it far less than empty. It says that the given authority thinks it doesn't comply with the scientific method. (I might want to add "and/or a variety of other criteria" on there as well, but such as small details) We're naming the authority. What you propose is to just not name it -- I think this is incorrect. And I think it opens the door for people to say, "By who? By you?" which is the source of all of our POV problems. --Fastfission 3 July 2005 20:28 (UTC)
  • Indeed we've already opened that door because all of this beg's the question, who gives the mainstream scientific community the authority to judge what is pseudoscience. You suggest it is Wilkpedians! My suggestion was only an attempt to resolve the disagreement, and that is why I favor ObsidianOrder's original suggestion (i.e. Pseudoscience refers to any body of knowledge or practice which fails to comply with the scientific method.). Edwardian 3 July 2005 21:36 (UTC)
  • The original suggestion makes it so that we Wikipedians are the ones who are trying to judge whether something complies with the scientific method, assuming we even agree on a definition of that. What gives the mainstream scientific community the authority to judge is because it is their boundaries we are talking about -- science is not something that exists out there in mental space, it is something practiced by people known to be "scientists" who operate in a number of different environments for different reasons on different things. "Science" itself is a sociological category, it is a description of practices, institutions, and careers. I don't think it's too radical to say that the authority to decide what is "science" or not lies in the scientific community. --Fastfission 3 July 2005 23:19 (UTC)

Why would we prefer to define pseudoscience in terms of scientific method instead of, say Popper's falsifiability, or for that matter Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit? Is there an argument that method serves us better than a simple heuristic like Occams Razor, or Lakatos' Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes? And then we come back to the argument of Fastfission: that Wikipedia is not the place to play armchair philosopher. Can we really decide the issue without stamping our POV on the article? Just because the above criteria are more objective than a socialogical definition does not imply that our choice in favour of one of them will be similarly objective. ---Chris 3 July 2005 15:18 (UTC)

  • I don't see why the sociological definition is less objective. I'm really just trying to note that we're talking about "mainstream scientific POV" here, which is really a pretty wide category. Whether it is mainstream POV, Karl Popper's interpreted-beyond-the-grave POV, Carl Sagan's books' POV, etc., it is going to be someone's POV. Better to keep it as wide open as possible while also restricting it to its base core -- I think "mainstream scientific community" encompasses all of those sources easily, while making it still quite clear the POV we are talking about. But anyway, I agree with everything you have written with the exception of that small bit, of course. --Fastfission 3 July 2005 20:28 (UTC)
  • The core of the sociological definition is this: "This is pseudoscience because I say it is." What could be more subjective than that? Edwardian 3 July 2005 21:46 (UTC)

The judgement is subjective. It is, nevertheless, possible to objectivly determine whether or not you said this. Such is also the case for the sayings of the scientific community. Maybe Fastfission has another angle on this, but I'm guessing this is what he meant. --Chris 3 July 2005 22:10 (UTC)

No, you're wrong about the core. The core of the sociological definition is, "This is pseudoscience because the scientific community says it is." That's quite a different thing. The list of criteria is just an elaboration of why they classify it as such. --Fastfission 3 July 2005 23:19 (UTC)

If science refers to "the organized body of knowledge gained by the process for evaluating empirical knowledge (i.e. the scientific method)", then pseudoscience should refer to those things that are not that... or at least be defined in similar terms. I know this is quite simplistic, but the term is not "pseudofalsifibility". If we really feel that there is no one objective definition to the term but rather many subjective definitions, then that is how the article should begin: "The term 'pseudoscience' has many definitions."Edwardian 3 July 2005 19:33 (UTC)
  • Ah, but what happens when the people of X practice show up here and say, "Listen, Creation biology satisfies all the requirements you want. You want a falsifiable statement? Sure, here you go. You want an organized research program? Here you go. You want some empirical data? Well here you go. See, we are scientific!" Are you going to say, "Well, I think that some of that is bunk, sorry"? Or are you going to say, "Well, the biologists disagree, sorry." It's the latter approach which you'll be able to get away with.
If pseudoscience had an easy to apply and interpret set of criteria, this would of course not be a question at all. Unfortunately such is not the case, as the article clearly explains. The ability to easily and clearly demarcate between science and pseudoscience has not yet been accomplished by some of the brightest minds about such things, so for the time being I think we need a definition which clearly assigns the judgment to a relevant authority.--Fastfission 3 July 2005 20:28 (UTC)
  • Assigned by whom? Wilkpedians? As above, who judges what is a relevant authority? Edwardian 3 July 2005 21:37 (UTC)
  • I think most would agree that the relevant authority in a given field of scientific inquiry is the scientific community, writ largely. Now if there is a source of serious disagreement -- i.e., if the AAAS and the NAS take completely opposing positions, or there are many scientists on both sides of the line, then that would present a special case that we would discuss and figure out what made the most sense. But barring those rare moments, I think my definition works pretty well, and makes such disputes the exception rather than the rule. --Fastfission 3 July 2005 23:19 (UTC)

Consensus or Majority?

This is just for anyone who is interested. The word "consensus" (used in the opening Pseudoscience paragraph) is quite 'flaky' in it's definition. http://www.answers.com/consensus&r=67 gives 3 distinct definitions. I thought it meant unanimous, only. http://www.answers.com/topic/scientific-consensus?hl=consensus is an interesting read; the definition there is "Consensus usually means overwhelming majority, not simple majority nor total agreement." I don't suppose there is a single more precise word to use, is there? RossNixon 3 July 2005 10:14 (UTC)

  • I think consensus is appropriate here. Another possible alternative might be "common", but I'd like to see others' opinions on this before committing to a change. --brian0918™ 3 July 2005 12:52 (UTC)
  • Would this make the statement more true? "OFTEN the consensus opinion of the mainstream scientific community is relied upon to make such a determination." Edwardian 3 July 2005 19:16 (UTC)
  • Consensus is better than "majority" or "overwhelming majority". The question is not a simple count of hands, it's whether there is any substantial disagreement. If *everyone* thinks X but one really prominent scientist in that field disagrees, you don't have consensus. I also like "often" or "usually" to prefix that sentence as Edwardian suggested. ObsidianOrder
Given that consensus is a key feature of general wikipedia policy, I think it is an appropriate term for use anywhere in the encyclopedia. It is specifically defined somewhere in the pedia policies, just dig around a little. SOrry, don't mean to beat a dead horse, but had to comment. Shaggorama 09:57, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Proposals for new definition

The thread above is getting more than a little unwieldy so I've extracted the concrete proposals for a new definition:

Pseudoscience refers to any body of knowledge or practice which purports to be scientific or supported by science but which is judged by the mainstream scientific community to fail to comply with the scientific method.
Pseudoscience refers to any body of knowledge or practice which fails to comply with the scientific method.

...and one of my own which avoids any mention of the troublesome scientific method.

Pseudoscience refers to any body of knowledge or practice which purports to be scientific or supported by science but which is judged by the mainstream scientific community to disregard accepted standards of scientific research.

Phrasing it like this we can then go on, if necessary, to enumerate some of those standards (progressivness, compliance to method etc.) --Chris 3 July 2005 22:41 (UTC)

  • What I don't understand is why this part is necessary: "is judged by the mainstream scientific community". What other judges are out there whose opinions we allow to be considered truth in our articles? Besides, saying that it is "judged by mainstream science to disregard accepted scientific standards" is redundant. A simpler and less weasely-sounding version would be: "... but which disregards accepted standards of scientific research." This would still allow you to enumerate these standards, which I think should belong in some article, or at least summarized here. --brian0918™ 3 July 2005 22:55 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure if "disregard" is quite right but "fails to comply with a number of stated criteria" would probably work. Anyway I'm happy with getting beyond the singular obsession with "the scientific method", because it's not quite right anyway ("the method", if we assume there to be one, is only part of the criteria usually listed). As for "other judges" -- assuming that Wikipedia represents primarily the scientific POV is not completely correct though we sometimes lean that way. I think "accepted scientific standards" begs the question a bit. Why not say, "judged to fall outside the domain of science"?
There is not single list of "accepted scientific standards" and those certainly aren't what the list of criteria provided here measure. That's part of the problem of demarcation -- Mertonian norms (as they are usually known as) don't actually apply to what is considered legitimate scientific research and never have. There is no clear reason why Creation science is not scientific but SETI are string theory both are. The best reason to give why the former is classified (by mainstream scientists, not by creationists) as "pseudoscience" and the latter two are not is "because the scientific community doesn't think the latter are outside the boundaries of science." That's the sociological definition. If you delve in deeper, you will probably find that it comes down to trust (which can be related to institutionalization, affliation, and reputation) more than anything else.
It's this lack of clear demarcation which makes it so important for us to attribute very explicitly the POV. It is much easier to reply, "Don't like the scientists' judgments? Take it up with them" than to try and outline how exactly some strange field of pseudoscience doesn't comply with point 7 of our 20 point list. Surely you can see how this simplifies things from a practical editing point of view if you don't from a more philosophical point of view. --Fastfission 3 July 2005 23:26 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you guys can't see (and respond to) what I'm saying. It's pretty simple, really. Whether someone is or is not following the scientific method is a question of objective fact. Whether anyone thinks they do or do not is entirely subjective. Yes, the opinion of the scientific community (*if* it can reach a consensus) is important. But it cannot overrule *reality*. They have been known to be wrong (oh - the opposition to the tectonic plates theory? phlogiston? bloodletting? I'm sure you can think of more than a few examples). So their *opinion* cannot be part of the definition. On the other hand, when we talk about specific cases, *then* we should rely on the consensus opinion *if it exists* (so we can avoid doing original research), or else we should attribute to specific prominent authorities. What is so problematic about this? ObsidianOrder 4 July 2005 00:33 (UTC)

  • I'm not sure you're understanding what we're saying. We're saying that establishing this "reality" is not easy, not straightforward, and potentially not possible. That's what the problem of demarcation is all about -- read the section of it in the article (and its own article) if you're having trouble understanding why this is. Because of this difficulty, and because of its potentially negative connotations, we don't want it to fall to Wikipedia to have to decide the "reality" in this sense. That's original research. Let's move this into another domain: What's the age of the universe? That's an "objective fact". Would you trust my back of the envelope calculation, or the calculation supported by the scientific community? Better yet, what's the version to be included by Wikipedia? Is it possible that the scientific community will have a different answer in the next decade? If history is any source of inspiration, yes. Does that mean it is still not the best answer we have at the present? No. Further yet: does it mean that we should include our own idiosyncratic reasoning as the answer rather than theirs? No, not at all. What's problematic about your formulation is 1. you think this is a simple thing, 100 years of philosophy says it is not, 2. you don't seem to understand why attribution is important and useful, and 3. you don't seem to understand what "no original research" means and why your definition would force us to violate it. --Fastfission 4 July 2005 00:46 (UTC)
  • The problem I have with “attribution” is that the ultimate identification of something considered to be pseudoscience is not made by definition, but rather it is left up to an entity incapable of identifying anything. If I come across something that I think is pseudoscience, where specifically do I turn to verify whether it really is or not? Where do I find the “mainstream scientific community”? Do I take a poll of every biologist, chemist, physicist, etc. in the nation, or just a statistically significant sample? By what definition of “pseudoscience” do THEY use in order to make their identification of whether it is or not?Edwardian 4 July 2005 03:20 (UTC)
  • FastFission, I'm glad you brought up the age of the universe. Would you define that as "the time for which the universe has existed *in the opinion of the sci com*"? No, it is simply what it is. Now, when it comes to answering the question with a specific number, you would of course quote authorities. However, when it comes to the definition of what it means, or to the *correct* answer to the question, what the authorities think is immaterial. ObsidianOrder 4 July 2005 05:36 (UTC)
  • I also don't see how my definition creates any problems of original research or lack of attribution. It changes absolutely nothing when it comes to dealing with specific cases. You'd still have to quote authorities. It's just that they are not right *by definition*. ObsidianOrder 4 July 2005 05:46 (UTC)

FastFission, regarding two comments that you posted above: 1) The core of the sociological definition is, "This is pseudoscience because the scientific community says it is." 2) I don't think it's too radical to say that the authority to decide what is "science" or not lies in the scientific community.

I would consider destroying any useful meaning within a definition as “radical”. If the definition of "science” is arbitrary, then so must be the definition of “scientist” since they are interrelated terms. Consequently, that opens the door for anyone to claim that he or she is a scientist since science is whatever he or she wants it to be.

  • Scientist: “Science is what I say it is.”
  • Me: “Who the hell are you?
  • Scientist: “I am a scientist.”
  • Me: “What makes you think so?”
  • Scientist: “I know science.”
  • Me: “What is science?”
  • Scientist: “Science is what I say it is.”
  • Me: “Oh, I get it.”

Edwardian 4 July 2005 03:54 (UTC)

  • Edwardian - exactly, brilliant reductio ad absurdum. ObsidianOrder 4 July 2005 05:36 (UTC)

You seem to have tied yourselves in some unlikely logical knots. In practice I would not have any trouble reading a few issues of Scientific American or Nature to get a feel for who is included in the scientific community. Likewise I can refer to the Skeptical Inquirer or similar if I want to know what the scientific community believes is pseudoscientific. It is not, in any case, absurd that the scientific community has won my trust and admiration. To instead place my trust in some abstract and simplistic method to define pseudoscience would be to engage in metaphysics. No, worse than that, it would display disturbing religious tendencies. (and I know already I'm going to regret saying the 'R' word) --Chris 4 July 2005 08:05 (UTC)

  • I would agree that an uncritical acceptance of what authority states might be considered a "disturbing religious tendency". Edwardian 4 July 2005 09:21 (UTC)
    • Then it is fortunate that we have a tradition of providing and accepting criticism in the scientific community. --Chris 4 July 2005 09:27 (UTC)
      • Were you "providing" or "accepting"?! Edwardian 4 July 2005 09:33 (UTC)
        • Not sure I understand. --Chris 4 July 2005 09:39 (UTC)

I just want to make one thing clear about my thoughts on method. It is not the case that I believe there is no place for method in science. I do think that method in science is somewhat analagous to a recipe in cooking; just because I have a great recipe for souffle does not make me a master chef. At the same time, if you've ever studied a master chef, you'll recognise this description (from one of my favourite columnists, Joel On Software):

Now, the Naked Chef doesn't follow no stinkin' Operations Manual. He doesn't measure anything. While he's cooking, you see a flurry of food tossed around willy-nilly. "We'll just put a bit of extra rosemary in there, that won't hurt, and give it a good old shake," he says. " Mash it up. Perfect. Just chuck it all over the place." (Yes, it really looks like he's just chucking it all over the place. Sorry, but if I tried to chuck it all over the place, it wouldn't work.) It takes about 14 seconds and he's basically improvised a complete gourmet meal with roasted slashed fillet of sea-bass stuffed with herbs, baked on mushroom potatoes with a salsa-verde. Yum.

Nevertheless, if I'm learning how to cook or indeed if I happen to be a master chef and want to tell someone how to reproduce one of my creations, then a recipe is indispensable. In other words, I think method has more to do with communication than practice. --Chris 4 July 2005 09:00 (UTC)

This is great in cooking, and possibly even sometimes in engineering, but it would be a disaster in science. Not least because science is supposed to be reproducible ;) ObsidianOrder 4 July 2005 09:24 (UTC)

Dictionary as initial starting point?

Might I suggest that we use a dictionary as the initial basis for how to go about this? Take your pick:

  • a system of theories, assumptions, and methods erroneously regarded as scientific -- M-W
  • A theory, methodology, or practice that is considered to be without scientific foundation. -- American Heritage Dictionary
  • an activity resembling science but based on fallacious assumptions. -- WordNet Princeton University

Which of these definitions would allow us to make some headway on this? --brian0918™ 4 July 2005 03:57 (UTC)

Brian - I looked up the same, they are somewhat inconclusive. (does anyone have the Oxford English Dictionary definition btw?) AHD is explicitly "sociological" ("is considered" without regard to whether it *is* or not). M-W is implicitly "non-sociological" (if it is "erroneously regarded" then mere opinions don't determine what is or is not scientific) and WordNet is explicitly "non-sociological" ("fallacious" is presumably relative to an objective standard). ObsidianOrder
Of the three, I like the second one: A theory, methodology, or practice that is considered to be without scientific foundation. To me, it really doesn't matter if the "is considered" is included or not because that act of "considering" (or "regarding" or "thinking" or "labeling" or "judging", etc.) by someone is implicit even if not stated explicitly. Tell me how you call something "pseudoscience" without considering that it is or not? Edwardian 4 July 2005 09:21 (UTC)
Edwardian - the problem is that the definition does not depend on whether it actually is without scientific foundation, merely on whether it is considered by *someone* (presumably the speaker) to be so. Maybe it is considered to be so incorrectly? I think that is the definition that FastFission would probably pick :) ObsidianOrder 4 July 2005 09:30 (UTC)

While we are quoting authorities, here's the definition form the Sceptic's Dictionary:

  • "A pseudoscience is set of ideas based on theories put forth as scientific when they are not scientific." [4]

"are not" is pretty definite, and pretty independent on anyone's opinion, wouldn't you say? And from The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (Houghton Mifflin, 2002):

  • "A system of theories or assertions about the natural world that claim or appear to be scientific but that, in fact, are not."

There you go again with "in fact", which as usual trumps opinion ;) ObsidianOrder 4 July 2005 09:30 (UTC)

Perhaps I should also quote this page from as recently as April 5, 2005:

  • "A pseudoscience is any body of knowledge purported to be scientific or supported by science but which fails to comply with the scientific method." [5]

The "judged by the mainstream scientific community" bit was added by FastFission in this edit [6]. So I am not trying to suggest a "new" definition, merely to bring back the original one which has persisted through most of the history of this page. P.S. The discussion leading to that can be found here. It is pretty slim, and as far as I can tell does not address the same concerns we are talking about now. ObsidianOrder 4 July 2005 10:52 (UTC)

Finally, an analogy which might be useful: justice is not defined as "whatever judges consider to be just". It is an abstract idea which nonetheless admits concrete definition and application, although not always easily. We attempt to approach it by relying on judges (and juries, and lawyers, and congressmen, and so forth). While practically we have to rely on them, we could never reasonably say that they are part of the definition. That is especially important because it includes the recognition that they can be wrong. Even so, to suggest that justice is not defined by judges is not the same as to advocate using lynch mobs instead. Similarly, to suggest that science is not defined by scientists is not the same as to advocate relying on Voodoo priests instead. ObsidianOrder 4 July 2005 11:05 (UTC)

How about this from the Oxford Companion To Philospohy,

  • A term of epistemic abuse of variable and disputed content. The most general feature of the situation is one in which one segment of the epistemic community attempts to alert another that certain theses have had confered on them an epistemic status they do not deserve.

I wish I could repeat the whole article. The conclusion goes, Those who characterize an epistemic doctrine or practice as pseudo-science are normally responding to a Gestalt which they may confusedly rationalize according to whatever view of the nature of science prevails.

--Chris 4 July 2005 17:50 (UTC)

Wow, Chris, those guys have obviously not visited a lab recently. I think most practicing scientists are a lot more concerned with gritty details such as reproducibility and good controls than with "characterising the gestalt of the epistemic community". I think that gives you the difference between scientists and philosophers right there. I don't mean to disparage what you're quoting, it is actually something I agree with (I think), but think of it this way - if I am unwilling to give scientists exclusive license to define science, surely I would not give that to philosophers of science? On a humorous note, here is the definition of philosophy from wikipedia: "What philosophy is, or should be, is itself a philosophical question that philosophers have understood and treated differently through the ages." ObsidianOrder 4 July 2005 23:15 (UTC)
  • Yeah, that's a pretty ridiculous definition. The vast majority of scientists are too busy doing their work to be concerned with the philosophy of science and what defines pseudoscience. This may be what allows certain groups the opportunity to influence school boards to teach their views. --brian0918™ 5 July 2005 02:27 (UTC)
  • I imagine that you are both correct; firstly that the philosophical definition has little to do with a day in the lab. Also I agree that most practicing scientists could not care less about the definition of pseudoscience.
Now, if I read what ObsidianOrder has written, you appear to want a clear-cut, factual definition of pseudoscience. In effect, I see you as wanting to apply the rigour of science to what, one has to imagine, may be a merely conceptual distinction. Do I understand you? As much as I would like to see such a definition, philosophers despite their efforts have failed to provide one. But you think that we can ignore what philosophers say, on the grounds that...well, perhaps on the grounds that they are too philosophical. At the same time we agree with each other that scientists have not, and do not pay the issue much attention. Why then will you not accept a sociological definition? Are you hoping to achieve that which philosophy has failed to? --Chris 5 July 2005 06:50 (UTC)
  • I will try to understand this in another way. We might like to assume that what constitutes pseudoscience is amenable to a factual description (and now I mean one that does not involve opinion), at least in principle. When we don't know, or can't agree on what those facts are, can we feel safe in this assumption? I would say no. This is the definition I prefer,
  • Pseudoscience refers to any body of knowledge or practice which purports to be scientific or supported by science but which is judged to fall outside the domain of science. The standards applied in such judgements vary, but often make reference to scientific method or failure to apply a heuristic such as Occam's Razor. A number of attempts have been made to apply philosophical rigor to the notion with mixed results. These include Karl Popper's criterion of falsifiability and the historiographical approach of Imre Lakatos in his Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes. Other historians and philosophers of science, chiefly Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend have argued, from a historical perspective, that a clear philosophical distinction between science and pseudoscience is neither possible nor desirable.

--Chris 5 July 2005 09:01 (UTC)

Chris - I understand your point and agree, with some qualifications. Yes, I think what constitutes pseudoscience is definitely amenable to a factual description in principle, regardless of whether we know or agree on a particular set of criteria (in a sense this is the exact same assumption made by science about everything, so that would be only consistent). Yes, assuming one particular set of factual criteria is not a safe assumption, but we're hoping that we will progressively get closer (and Popper's notion of falsifiability was certainly an advance on that front, woulnd't you say?). That said, in many practical cases the distinction is very obvious regardless of the details of the definition one prefers (for example in the reckless disregard for empirical evidence shown by something like the hollow-earth theory, or in the refusal to describe any experimental setup that can be duplicated in many other fringe fields). That's some decent writing by the way, I would have no problem if that became the new agreed-upon definition, given that (if I read it correctly) it is not an explicitly sociological definition. I still think it leans pretty heavily towards the view that a philosopher (rather than a scientist) might take. But at least it does not specify a single infallible authority, so it's ok by me ;) ObsidianOrder 5 July 2005 09:42 (UTC)

  • I agree with the changes for the same reason (i.e. does not specify a single infallible authority). Edwardian 6 July 2005 22:40 (UTC)
  • Chris's version seems a little one-sided (in favor of those who are being labeled as practitioners of pseudoscience). I highly doubt that a scientist's first thought when he hears news about fringe views is to apply Occam's Razor or even the scientific method (at least, using that exact term). The more likely thought would be about falsifiability, testability, the assumptions that are made, etc. --brian0918™ 5 July 2005 12:53 (UTC)
  • Chris, how does the current introduction favor those labeled as practitioners of pseudoscience? Edwardian 6 July 2005 22:42 (UTC)
  • Maybe. I've added this version to the article anyhow. We'll see how it goes from there. I was forced to take this text out,
    The possibility of separating out "scientific" from "non-scientific" practices on the basis of methodological distinctions is highly contested in the philosophical and historical community (see "the problem of demarcation", below).
    which is a shame because I like phrasing, but for the moment it does not flow well from the introductory paragraph. --Chris
    • That could go in a criticisms section, maybe. --brian0918™ 5 July 2005 15:45 (UTC)

Kbk's proposed changes

(User:Njyoder copied the thread to Talk:Cold fusion#Discussion moved over from pseudoscience article. User:ObsidianOrder then deleted the thread here.)

(Kbk subsequently re-introduced Yoder's original comments in order to address his first point, and to further comment on whether cold fusion is a pseudoscience. Kbk did this so that there will be a record if this subject comes up in the future. --Kbk 21:48, 10 July 2005 (UTC))

Yoder's comments:


I reverted two changes by Kbk so they could be discussed here first.

First, he removed the two sentences describing pseudo-science:

  • by asserting claims or theories without first verifying them in experiments
  • by asserting claims without supporting experimental evidence;

Second, he removed cold fusion from the list of pseudosciences and added it on the protoscience page on the basis that it is actually a protoscience.

Those two sentences aren't referring to hypotheses, they are referring to something ideas trumpeted as fact or a well-established theory which have not built upon existing scientific principles. Instead of saying "asserting claims" you could say "asserting a hypothesis as fact/as a well-established theory" or something along those lines.

I think I understand Mr. Yoder's concerns. As I explained in my comment on the original edit, it's not uncommon for scientists to propose a hypothesis which has not yet been experimentally confirmed. Einstein's prediction of the deflection of light by the sun is a good example. On that basis, the first sentence is eliminated.
The two sentences are almost redundant, but not quite. One of the characteristics of the scientific method is that hypotheses or claims must be connected to the objective reality of previous experimental results.
I think Mr. Yoder is reading more into the second sentence than than the actual content justifies. However, adding a sentence similar to the following would seem to be reasonable:
"* by asserting claims or theories unconnected to previous experimental results"
Absent further discussion, I made this change. --Kbk 04:05, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
Professional scientists understand that all hypotheses are tentative. With the passage of time and experimental confirmation a hypothesis becomes increasingly established, but it can be superceeded at any time if the weight of experiment goes against it, or if a better theory is developed. Sometimes the new hypothesis is a refinement, and sometimes it's an entirely different point of view relating the existing experimental data. e.g. general relativity vs. Newtonian gravitational theory. The real question is whether the proposer is interested in following the scientific process and is open to criticism, or is just dogmatically stating his conclusions.
Another sign of pseudoscience is when the proposer tosses overboard large swaths of established knowledge and starts over, while presenting exaggerated claims regarding all the problems his new system solves. For example, AETHER (ETHER) THEORY. We haven't really covered the fact that real science usually proceeds incrementally. Not always, of course, but big jumps are usually a warning sign.
As a further comment, perhaps the list should be re-ordered to put the most characteristic traits at the top. --Kbk 21:48, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

As for cold fusion, it's been well established that it does contradict well-established principles, it doesn't have any succesful experimentation and comes close to being a perpetual source of energy. To classify it as a protoscience when it has been tested and failed miserably, time and time again, is a bit misleading.

As mentioned above, the rather extensive discussion on whether cold fusion is good science have been moved to the CF talk page. Certainly the DOE review is a lot less negative than the previous one, and I hope everyone who is contributing to that thread has read the last couple of paragraphs of the DOE review. They seem to indicate that the DOE would be willing to fund focused "CF" experimentation, though they aren't enthusiastic about continued calorimetric experimentation.
My concern for this article is different: are the CF investigators following the scientific method? To quote from the pathological science article:
"In fact, the test of pathological science is not whether a reported discovery turns out to be true, but the nature of the claims and the evidence for them."
If Dr. McKubre and Dr. Hagelstein are following the scientific method, then CF is not pseudoscience. Protoscience, yes (we are still at the confirmation stage); pathological science, possibly; but if you eliminate the cranks in the field (who are doing what cranks usually do) and focus on the real physicists and chemists and their work, it seems to me that there is little question but that they are doing hard science. Sure, they are having problems with reproducibility, and it may all turn out to be a dead end. But disproved hypotheses and unconfirmed experiments don't automatically become pseudoscience. If the scientific method was followed, it was science - but the results turned out negatively, and that's something to build on in the future. --Kbk 21:48, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Nathan J. Yoder 7 July 2005 22:35 (UTC)

Section entitled "See also"

I noticed in the "See also" section there is a subsection entitled "Related topics" and another entitled "Other". Is it possible to be combine these two lists, or combine some of them with the "Fields often associated with pseudoscience" section? Are not the "others" related topics? Edwardian 8 July 2005 20:55 (UTC)

Judged by whom?

Simply saying pseudoscience is "judged to fall outside the domain of science" raises the question of who's doing the judging. I think it can be replaced with "which falls outside the domain of science". After all, who determines what is in the domain of science? Surely they should also be doing the judging. --brian0918™ Ni! 16:50, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. Perhaps we could tighted up the whole sentence by saying: "Pseudoscience refers to a body of knowledge or practice that is mistakenly regarded as scientific." S.N. Hillbrand 18:00, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
Alright, I've replaced it with the M-W definition which says the same thing (and is verifiable as not being original research). --brian0918™ Ni! 18:47, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
How about, "Pseudoscience refers to any body of knowledge, methodology, or practice which, while superficially appearing to be scientific, cannot be demonstated to have been developed while following the scientific method."--Kbk 18:54, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
I'm trying to avoid original research here. Using the dictionary definition is as close as we can get to not redefining a term. --brian0918™ Ni! 19:05, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
The original research topic states that that an entry is disallowed if it "provides new definitions of old terms." Specifically, in what way is my suggestion a "new definition of [an] old term"? After all, every dictionary and encyclopedia has slightly different wording for its definitions, and even the current definition in the article isn't exactly the same as the dictionary entry referenced. There is no Wikipedia policy requiring that the definition of a term quote a dictionary. In fact, that would seem to violate copyright. 'Erroneously' is an ambiguous term which doesn't resolve the issue of authority, and my suggestion is an attempt to clarify what it means. --Kbk 20:28, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
By using a dictionary definition, we are referencing an "authoritative" source, which is important for such a controversial topic. My other problem with your version is that it only references the scientific method. --brian0918™ Ni! 23:43, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
"Only references the scientific method": What do you think is missing? --Kbk 03:42, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
I'm ok with pretty much all of the proposed definitions, whether "judged to be" or "is", as long as whoever is doing the judging is not specified explicitly (as we talked about earlier). A point of interest, I wonder if someone who has an Oxford English Dictionary handy could look that up? In my experience, that tends to be a better dictionary. ObsidianOrder 02:10, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
I looked up the OED definition (several different editions) and it is: "a body of beliefs, practices or theories mistakenly regarded as based on scientific method" (from memory, I don't have a copy with me). Curiously they all said "scientific method" not "the scientific method". Well, that's pretty close to the current definition anyway, except for "method". Close enough. ObsidianOrder 02:44, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Specific entries in the list

Historic metrology, see the Megalithic yard and theAnti-metric movement

I would argue that these are entirely different phenomenon. The Anti-metric movement is not pseudoscience. It simply proposes that for a number of economic, cultural, and even scientific reasons the non-metric systems (esp. imperial) are preferable in common use to the metric system. FYI, it has been quite successful in the U.S. OTOH, the Megalithic yard is classic pseudoscience or alternative science. Therefore, I'm going to strip the entry down to "Megalithic yard". -Willmcw 18:24, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

Section entitled "Fields often associated with pseudoscience"

The following sentence appears at the end of the aforementioned section: "A number of self-proclaimed alternative medicine treatments have been designated pseudoscience by critics, largely because some of these methods inspire false hope in terminally ill patients, and end up costing large amounts of money without actually providing any real benefit, treatment, or cure for various ailments." Critics of alternative medicine call those treatments "pseudoscience" because they appear to them to be "pseudoscientific", NOT because they inspire false hope, etc. Any suggestions on what to do with this statement? Edwardian 05:06, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, delete it. Alternately, "... because they make far-reaching claims not supported by sufficient evidence". A number of the things this would refer to have some positive effects, however irresponsible people make wildly exaggerated claims about the benefits. ObsidianOrder 10:36, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Psychiatry

It really bothers me that psychiatry is not listed as a pseudoscience; • by asserting claims or theories without first verifying them in experiments – ‘although the cause of depression is not know, it COULD be a chemical imbalance’ • by asserting claims which cannot be verified or falsified (claims that violate falsifiability); see above... • by asserting claims without supporting experimental evidence; these drugs make u bettert they cure ur illness, what about all the people going into hospitals while taking them, people trying to commit suicide, people getting SERIOUS withdrawl symptoms after stopping them. • by asserting claims which contradict experimentally established results; ritalin has been said to be safe for children, yet has caused cancer of lab rats • by failing to provide an experimental possibility of reproducible results; there is no way to PROVE a chemical imbalance, and there has been no evidence of someone being cured by these drugs • by failing to submit results to peer review prior to publicizing them (called "science by press conference") unpublished medical journals show that even the scientists and the companies knew of harmful effects. • by claiming a theory predicts something that it does not; chemical imbalance

- by a lack of progress toward additional evidence of its claims. – if antipsychiatric drugs truly worked, admittence in hospital for depression would have gone down over the years. This is the opposite of what has happened, and more and more people every day begin taking these drugs

Psychiatry is considered science by the scientific community. Now, you wouldn't have anything to do with Scientology would you? Scientology opposition to psychiatry has been documented, and on some thinking probably ought to be added to the page, if they do indeed use pseudoscientific arugments. Dunc|☺ 15:35, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
Psichiatry is considered part of the medicine by the medicine. It is not part of the science. The whole medicine is not part of the science. Despite the fact that nowday doctors seem to act in a repititevely way basing their action on protocols, medicine (in many aspect) is very far from being able to be considerable a science (even if some aspect of it can be). Nowdays medicine try to pretend to be scientific, but in this way the only thing that happend is that doctors looses their human contact with the patients. Returning to psichiatry. Psichiatry is considered part of the medicine (and this think may be questioned too, there is no scientific proof of it, it is part of the medicine for the medicine, but for the point of view of a sceptical scientist, there are many points to doubt this). Now if medicine were parts of science, we could conclude that psichiatry is part of science. But since not all the parts of medicine are scientific we can not conclude that psichiatry is scientific. This is just logic, and so this reasonement should stand as true not only in every scientific reaonment, but also in any type of mathematical reasoment and also in any reasoment who want to be logic. In symbol A \subset B\,,B \subset C\; \Rightarrow \; A \subset C but A \not\subset B\,,B \subset C\; \not\Rightarrow \; A \subset C. The point is that the following is not true \exists \;a: a \in B \cup C \; \Rightarrow \; \left ( \forall \; a \in B \; \Rightarrow \; a \in C \right )
Why do you belive that psychiatry is scientific? Because psichiatrists state so? But, remember, every pseudoscience state the same. So what we have reached: looking for a reason why psychiatry could be a science, we have found that it can be inside the set of the pseudoscience (i.e. that it has the caracteristic of a pseudoscience).
BTW I am not member of Scientology. It is just that it has never happened that a psychiatrist given a proof of the validity of their theory. (well, actually there is not an homogeny theory among them, they are in disappoint on foundamental thing, and there is comlety lack of foundamental basis). It is on the part who want to prove that his system is a science to give proof of it. On the other hand is part of the science to dubts on everything taht lacks of proof (see for instance Francis Bacon) AnyFile 22:25, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I will accept that you are not scientologist because apart from them there does seem to be a concerted movement against it. I think there is ongoing discussion on talk:List of alternative, speculative and disputed theories as to how to list something that is widely considered scientific by the scientific community with some dispute, such as psychiatry, with patent nonsense such as astrology. Either way, NPOV policy must be followed. Dunc|☺ 22:55, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
I was not the one who started this section (I have not written the part with the list). So there shold be almost two people here considering psychiatry a pseudoscience. The only thing I found out on List of alternative, speculative and disputed theories (in the article, not in the talk page) is Psychic surgery (a sort of torture for which a Nobel Prize was given ... blah). I belive that it is Not-NPOV to not state how real fact are.
1) Psychiatrist claim psychiatry to be scientific and/or scientific based
2)Psychiatry has never give proof of its validity in a scientific way
(morover that psychiatry is not valid is evident from the fact that it gain very little success, compared to other discipline of medicine, and that when the method to combact a disease is discovered, that was thinking of competence of Psychiatry, this disease is no more of competence of psychiatry: this happened for Tubercolosis, Sifilide and diabet, and many other!)
Now even not counting whaqt is in parentesis point 1) and 2) is enought to conclude that psychiatry is a pseudoscience. If you still reject this, I have to point out that the first duty of a scientist is to doubt of every theory, also of the one written by him/herself. Now phyciatrist never doubt against what they claim, and so their method is not scientific. They pubblish result in favour of their method (actually the few that exist, and are in favour only after they have beem adegutely edited to respect the teory), but they omit to report any fact that is aginst their theory. Now this is comletely aginst the scientific method! So what shall we conclude? And what the scientific method (and some century of history of science) tell us? We have to doubt of the teory! (note: this a a step of the scientific method, this does not mean that the theory is false. This is just part of the scientific method: we have to doubt even of the theory we belive true and found out if there is a problem in them). At this point we should look for problem in the theory (we had to put it in doubt to be able to this, if we had not done this, the problems could be solved by the theory itself). And in the case of Psychiatry we find a lots of problems. One of the main problem is that there is not a consistency theory. They cange the cards on the table every time they need it. Now I am not surprised that you refrain to belive that psychiatry have not a scientific validity. It is a common problem that Francis Bacon have explained with the term of idola theatri. You refrain to reget the validity of psychiatry becouse you have always read that it is valid. But can you trust what you read? It was written only by person with interest on it (and we know very well that this system is perfect for phychiatrist and pharmacheutic industry to earn a lot of money). The only proof they give are self-proof. To go on in their proof you have to admit the thesis.
I want to point out that (as someone else written in the first section of the present page) psudoscience means not false. Pheraps there are something true in what they say, but it is not science.
In short every thing that claim to be scientific but can not prove it and what it claim it is a pseudoscience
This can be too extremistic. But in the case of Psychiatry, psychiatrists do much more of this. (so one can also state that psychaitry is aginst the science!!)
AnyFile 20:45, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Mathematics was the only organon and scientific tool for proof that Psychiatry is not a science. C.P.: The given set of well formed formulas and draw only valid conclusions. Q.E.D.

I cannot understand this last (anonymous) comment. I know that in mathematics there are some terms definid with name like well defined problem. In this case it is a definition and there is the definition and it is not an ethic or healt definition and it is not used to put people in seage. On the opposit side, psychiatric definition are unclear and written with the explicit aim of making easier of inserting a greate number of people in a desease definition. Psychiatric definition of desease and disagnosys are not etiologic. Also the people who wrote the DSM should know that there is some problems in the definition inside this book: they state a disclamer saying that it can no used in legal question. AnyFile 13:29, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
Quotated from above: - by a lack of progress toward additional evidence of its claims. – if antipsychiatric drugs truly worked, admittence in hospital for depression would have gone down over the years. This is the opposite of what has happened, and more and more people every day begin taking these drugs
By antipsychiatric I believe you are referring to 'antipsychothic' (if not, let me know). The statement seems very illogical to me. Intuitively, it seems outright wrong. If I had a fixed number of dogs, in which I could correctly detect "anormalities" or diseases, and I could easily treat them with a drug, the number would decline. Objections to your statement; 1) Population is not a fixed mass, 2) there is no correct way to (easily) detect "anormalities" or diseases and 3) other factors than population growth may introduce new incidents of any disease (in casu a good example could be sudden financial decline) and 4) if you had read a psychiatric journal you'd see that drugs they may use do not necessarily "treat" a patient but reduce the illness while keeping the side-effects down since medication has still far to go (and allthough this could "add weight" to your cause, let me point out that the methods psychiatry use today are more humane than to either simply a) lock people away or b) kill them, which both have been common practice earlier). - Sigg3.net 21:54, 30 August 2005 (UTC)


I removed Psychiatry. While the validity of some claims accepted by psychiatry may be disputed psychiatry as a whole is rarely considered a pseudo-science(with the exception of scientologists, who themeselves are usually considered adherents to pseudo-science.) Psychiatrists make testable hypothesis and do double-blind studies, and generally follow the tenets of science, and it often saves lives. The fact that you have busy psychiatric wards in almost all hospitals should be enough to make this a non-issue. Anyone who has worked or been in a psychiatric ward would laugh at the fact that this dispute exists. I personally have been commited for being suicidally depressed, a fact which saved my life. While in the psychiatric ward I came across many patients being helped by this well established science who were worse off than me. Psychiatrists are MDs with full medical credentials. Adding it would be like adding the theory of relativity without adding physics. Using symbolic logic just makes you look pretentious, not scientific,(unless your working on a mathematical theory) especially since it did nothing to add to the discussion. Psychiatry is a science because it uses the scientific method to test claims, not because "psychiatrists say so". If in some instances studies are done improperly, which does often happen, as with any science, this does not reflect on the entire field. For example, many anti-depressants cause depressed people not to be depressed. This has been shown in numerous double-blind studies. You may nit-pick about what it means to be depressed, but that is not a blow to psychiatry, that simply shows that you havn't been around clinically depressed people. The same goes for numerous other treatable mental disorders. And in regards to the first poster in this section: the side effects of drugs are well studied in psychiatry (that's how you know about them for god sakes! Because they've been studied by psychiatrists! Your implicitly contradicting yourself.) so mentioning the side effects that were found through psychiatric studies of medication does not prove that psychiatry is a pseudo-science, it proves that it is a well established science! When they study a drug they weigh the risks with the benefits, and anti-depressants lessen the risk of suicide among depressed people even if it increases the risk in a subset of the study group. (Which is the issue in the psychiatric study your refering to.) That is not a contradiction, the studies you are refering to have showed that over the first few days, in a certain age group, the risk of suicide is greater, but over time the risk of suicide is significantly less. It saves more lives than it kills in other words. And about ritalin, yes, ADD and ADHD and thier associated treatments have a controversial status, but this is a instance of controversy within a scientific discipline (again the controversy is mostly among psychiatrists), the controversy does nothing to prove that psychiatry is not in fact a science, as a matter of fact, as with depression it shows if anything that psychiatry is a healthy science and not a dogma.

I suspect we have a case of this page being edited by zealous scientolgists. I will be watching this page and if it comes to an edit war so be it. If this comes to the attention of Wikipedia moderators I am confident that they'll come down on the people trying to add psychiatry as being POV, not the people who are reasonably trying to keep it off this list. --Brentt 08:51, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't be surpised that the opening paragraph, which is rife with misstatements, fallacies and nonsense, was written by Tom Cruise.  :) Jim62sch 14:06, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

disputed tag

I removed the tags inserted by User:Rktect as that user did not provide discussion here nor has added any edits to the page (at least not recently). If you dispute, then explain what is disputed here. Just slapping the tag on is absurd and a cop out. Vsmith 19:36, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

dispute

I dispute the concept that any non scientific paridigm or methodology is by definition false. You touch on this in the article ("Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend have argued, from a sociology of knowledge perspective, that a clear philosophical distinction between science and pseudoscience is neither possible nor desirable.") but don't really develop it so that it appears a dismissable eccentricity. The problem is that what is accepted as proven fact is subject to change.

Pseudoscience is any body of knowledge, methodology, or practice that is erroneously regarded as scientific [1].

Newton's methods were the very essence of unscientific, the man was an alchemist. By many modern definitions of pseudoscience, which apparently include corresponding with others labled pseudocscientist he was a first rate Loon engaged in original research and the like.

This sentence is bizzare. It starts out correctly asserting that "The term "pseudoscience" often has negative connotations, implying generally that things so labeled are false and deceptive (though a strict interpretation of the term would not necessarily have it mean either). But this part " As such, those who are labelled as practicing or advocating a "pseudoscience" almost always reject this classification, and often the distinction itself." is not saved by the caveat "almost". Labeling is labeling

Clearly you don't know very much about Newton. He was part of a circle of (now famous) empiricists inlcuding Boyle, Hooke, Halley, Wren, Flamsteed, & other members of the Royal Society. He was obsessed with alchemy and mysticism for part of his later life, true, but that doesn't make him an alchemist, nor does it make the rest of his work non-scientific. ObsidianOrder 21:59, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Actually that was my point. He is an example of a mystic and alchemist that we use labels like empiricist to reclaim under the banner of science. Despite that his methodology was alchemical, hence not what we would think of as scientific, and despite that he investigated things like fluxions and pyramids which sound sort of mystical and alchemical until you realize that those investigations have more to do with mathematics than pseudoscience, he was proceeding from the POV of the natural philosopher. If we can get our heads around the concept, the essence of the scientific method could even include his pyramidiocy which he incorporated into his theories of gravity or in neo-platonist terms, motion and rest.Rktect 16:48, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

Classifying pseudoscience

Pseudoscience fails to meet the criteria met by science generally (including the scientific method), and can be identified by a combination of these characteristics:

  • by asserting claims or theories unconnected to previous experimental results;

Think back to when science was still focused on three dimensions of space and one of time. Where do the previous experimental results for the last eleven dimensions of branes come from?

  • by asserting claims which cannot be verified or falsified (claims that violate falsifiability);

Heizenberg's uncertainty principle is pseudoscience?

  • by asserting claims which contradict experimentally established results;

Einsteins theory of relativity?

  • by failing to provide an experimental possibility of reproducible results;

quantum mechanics?

Are all scientists who hold their cards close to the vest for reasons of competition for funding pseudo scientists?

  • by claiming a theory predicts something that it does not;

If you claim a theory predicts something thats a prediction. Predictions are necessary to testable hypothesis

  • by claiming a theory predicts something that it has not been shown to predict;

same as above

  • by violating Occam's Razor, the heuristic principle of choosing the explanation that requires the fewest additional assumptions when multiple viable explanations are possible (and the more egregious the violation, the more likely); or
  • by a lack of progress toward additional evidence of its claims.

hydrogen fusion?

Pseudoscience is distinguishable from revelation, theology, or spirituality in that it claims to offer insight into the physical world by "scientific" means.

Sometimes people who believe in science seem just as dogmatic about their insights as their religious bretheren. The problem is that anything we believe is a bias against the alternative.

Systems of thought that rely upon "divine" or "inspired" knowledge are not considered pseudoscience if they do not claim either to be scientific or to overturn well-established science. There are also bodies of practical knowledge that are not claimed to be scientific. These are also not pseudoscience.

That contradicts some of the other criteria

Pseudoscience is also distinguishable from misleading statements in some popular science, where commonly held beliefs are thought to meet the criteria of science, but often don't. The issue is muddled, however, because it is believed that "pop" science blurs the divide between science and pseudoscience among the general public.

The term "pseudoscience" is often used by adherents of fields considered pseudoscientific to criticize their mainstream equivalents. Hence, for instance, supporters of creationism often characterize evolution as a pseudoscience, as do supporters of Dianetics with respect to psychiatry. Such criticisms are, however, generally regarded as fringe viewpoints.

Its the dismissive nature of labeling things we don't believe in as fringe and things we do believe in as mainstream that create the problem. To avoid pseudoscience you need to maintain NPOV but thats difficultif you think you know that some things are just unprecedented and therefore impossible.Rktect 21:18, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

Rktect - none of the examples you give from science apply. Take a few university courses in physics and you'll find out why. Quantum mechanics makes reproducible predictions; Heizenberg's principle is certainly falsifiable; higher dimensions are considered as one of the possible explanations of the results of high-energy particle collision experiments; and so on. Finally, you misread a couple of the criteria: "If you claim a theory predicts something thats a prediction." - no, the prediction has to logically follow from the premises of the theory (or hypothesis, actually, until it's tested). If I claim that general relativity predicts that faster than light travel is possible (when in fact it predicts the opposite) that is nonsense, it does not follow, and it is unscientific. "contradicts some of the other criteria" - how so? It is a very useful distinction, actually. ObsidianOrder 22:09, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

While I agree that he examples might have been better-chosen, the sentiment expressed by Rktech is sound - at the least, it should be represented in the article. Some examples from Feyerabend might prove more intractable. Banno 23:06, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

I am sympathetic to the sentiment, but this was just a really bad argument for it. Sorry if I got impatient, the misrepresentation/misunderstanding of physics theories makes me snappy I guess. Try again: give me an intractable example. ObsidianOrder 07:09, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

David R Hawkins

I would appreciate some help editing this. There aren't any active editors that know about the subject from the skeptical side, and are willing to produce an NPOV article. (There is an active skeptical editor who isn't trying to produce an NPOV article, however.) Fortunately, the main editor does seem to be interested in working towards an NPOV article, even if his biases on the subject show. --Prosfilaes 19:42, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Wow, that article is currently in pretty sad shape. I'll try to help. ObsidianOrder 06:31, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

acupuncture

Prosfilaes: "I don't see how the talk on the Quackery page matters" - it matters because the issue was fairly extensively discussed and more or less settled. Yes, a number of people probably think it is pseudoscientific. The available evidence however would seem to indicate it is (proto)scientific. Yes, I know that this list is prefaced with "often associated with..." and "many consider — to varying extents ...", but I think that's just an evasion; the list is clearly what the page editors (or some abstract the wikipedia consensus) consider particularly likely to be pseudoscience, based on available sources and evidence. Also, I think we already settled on this page that people's opinions are not what determines whether something is pseudoscience or not. If you really want to add acupuncture to the list, please provide concrete evidence (facts not opinions) that it is really pseudoscience. My evidence to the contrary is here: [7] [8] and also all the studies that these two sources cite in their bibliography sections (66 in one, 239 in the other). I really don't want to get into a lengthy discussion here since the topic is peripheral to this page - perhaps we should take this to Talk:Acupuncture? ObsidianOrder 07:01, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

I think that it should be what it says it is, and not attempt to be some sort of Wikipedia consensus on what pseudoscience is. And given that, it is indeed considered by many a pseudoscience, and says so right at the start of the acupuncture article.--Prosfilaes 07:49, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
Nice try, but you're seriously misquoting the acupuncture article. It says that "the traditional theory underlying its mechanisms has no basis in modern scientific conceptions of physiology" - as opposed to the practice, which is what the term "acupuncture" actually means (again from that article: "... is an alternative medical practice and a therapeutic technique" - not a theory, in other words). I hope that clears things up. As for "should be what it says it is" - then maybe we should add tons of other things to that list. How do you define "many" anyway? How do you determine what goes on the list? If the list is based purely on opinions, can you actually cite sources (some kind of opinion poll, maybe?) for why any single item should be on there? This is a stupid position. ObsidianOrder 07:42, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
Then it will be accurate if we specify that the reference is to the traditional theory of acupuncture. Does that work? JamesMLane 09:12, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
James: yes, that is a very reasonable approach. Perhaps mention qi? Or even make qi the primary entry and mention acupuncture under that? The acupuncture entry in List of alternative, speculative and disputed theories is perfect, as far as I'm concerned, although it is obviously too verbose to include as-is here. ObsidianOrder 14:31, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
I think that there is no clear line between acupuncture and its traditional theory. The fact that there is no name for its traditional theory besides acupuncture is a good sign of that. I personally would take a look at James Randi's website, and then at a few other skeptical websites, to see if it was considered pseudoscience by the big voices in the field.--Prosfilaes 18:18, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
I think if you really want authoritative sources (assuming you don't consider the professional acupuncturists authoritative) you should look at mainstream MDs in various medical fields who have actually done work with it. Randi is not an authority on absolutely anything except stage magic. "big voices"? - just as for any of the other entries on the list, you have to look not at what the majority view is, but at whether there is a substantial dissenting group of scientists in the relevant field, and obviously in this case there is. No consensus -> no entry. ObsidianOrder 14:31, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
James Randi has spent decades working on pseudoscience, is very well known and respected in the field, and has published several well-known books on the subject. I'd call him an authority on pseudoscience. You're trying to unilaterly set the standards on what gets listed; I don't see any reason why not to list things that majority view considers pseudoscience, even if it means making another list. There's no need to require consensus here.--Prosfilaes 18:43, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
"decades working on pseudoscience" - heh. how does one do that, exactly? develop new kinds of pseudoscience, or...? sorry, but Randi is a joke and an embarrasment to professional scientists. "unilaterly" - no, just trying to establish a consistent standard; there isn't one right now. "majority view" - and you're going to source that how, exactly? "no need to require consensus" - yes, there is, for two reasons: one, if there is a substantial dissenting group within a discipline, that makes it presumptively a legitimate scientific dispute and not pseudoscience; two, consensus is much easier to demonstrate (lack of notable counterexamples) than majority (some kind of poll? which is unlikely to exist). ObsidianOrder 10:19, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Electric Universe

I just don't understand why this is listed in this section. It is I believe correctly listed in List of alternative, speculative and disputed theories but I don't think it sits well at all with acupuncture, astrology etc. While these latter disciplines may or may not be true, they don't use the language or method of science. Whereas the electric universe protagonists, including Noble prize-winner Hannes Alfven are research scientists, submit papers to journals etc. Of course this area is speculative, but that just means it should be listed with the alternative fringe theories list. I think its totally non-NPOV to label their ideas pseudoscience. They are speculative, of course, but so are lots of things in physics these days. Trious 23:52, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I second this. Remove it. ObsidianOrder 10:20, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
Done. Sorry about non-informative edit comment, I pressed Enter too soon, I'm fairly new to this! It should have said "Removed electric universe, see talk." It might just get reverted though... Trious 13:06, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Looks like it got reverted. I heard that the recent explosion that a probe created on an asteroid "disproved" the electric universe theory. So I'm adding this back in. RossNixon 01:18, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
Being wrong doesn't make the theory psuedoscience. I thought this issue had been done to death already. "Electric universe" is a current within science. It may be wrong, and the proponents may be guilty of bad methodology, that is not the point. Most of the papers about it seem to be published in the IEEE plasma journals. Is the IEEE psuedoscientific? Would the IEEE be publishing articles about astrology or graphology?? Trious 08:53, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Scientists against pseudoscience

Some scientists dispute the concept of pseudoscience as being offensive and unnecessary. Indeed, scientists already have several neutral notions (a theory, a hypothesis, etc.) which can be used instead of pseudoscience. Mainstream science has a natural way of assessing these hypotheses and theories (peer review, predictions, confirming experiments, etc.) which turn them in either mainstream science, nonsense or theories with a limited range of applications. History of science knows a lot of examples where mainstream science of the past becomes pseudoscience of the present (old theory of heat transfer) and pseudoscience of the past becomes the mainstream science of the present (Lobachevsky non-Euclidian geometry). (added to article by 130.88.75.195)

I have a lot of problems with this paragraph. First, we shouldn't say "some scientists"; we should name them, possibly even quote them. The point of pseudoscience is that science has assessed these theories, and found them bogus, but they're still running around in the wild. It's not unnatural that the disproved science of the past, if it lives on today, is pseudoscience; if it were scientific, it would have died a natural death. As for Lobachevsky's geometry, I don't remember it ever being considered pseudoscience; it took some time to catch on, and may have been considered wrong, but that's different. In any case, mathematics doesn't play by exactly the same set of rules as science, so I'm not sure it's a valid argument, one way or the other. --Prosfilaes 13:51, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

It's acceptable to say "some scientists"; if there are some scientists ... some could be named, but that is not "necessary". A possibly quote from them would help reinforce this point though. True "pseudoscience" are bogus theories (eg., flat earth), but they're still running around in the wild. Some pseudoskeptics call some protosciences "bogus" and these "skeptics" supposedly "disprove" these fields, considering them "wrong". As to the mathmatics, mathematician can build structures that have no relation to reality (... have they thought of a way to test string theory yet?). Sincerely, JDR 15:20, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

I think if people are asking for names, they should be provided so the claim can be verified, and it's probably helpful to put them in the article, too, so it's not a vague "some scientists".--Prosfilaes 01:53, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
First, some names. Laudan, philisopher, "If we would stand up and be counted on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like ‘pseudo-science’ and ‘unscientific’ from our vocabulary; they are just hollow phrases which do only emotive work for us", also look at the discussion at http://www.srmhp.org/0202/pseudoscience.html. Lakatos, philosopher, see the discussion at http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/lakatos/scienceAndPseudoscienceTranscript.htm. Me and lot of my friends - physicists - though we do not write works on theory of science. Second, Lobachevsky. He got all blame and sticks and punches from fellow mathematicians who said that he invented useless "pseudoworlds" or "pseudogeometries" and in the end was sucked by Kazan University. And although he managed to prove the equivalence of his theory to arithmetics his works were approved only after his death due to work of Klein. (Gauss did not publish his works on non-Euclidian geometry only for the fear to be the first and to be labelled crazy which was in case of Lobachevsky.) Also, Boltzmann committed suicide since some guy Oswald (who was the science of those days being the first Nobel prize winner) thought that atoms is pseudoscience ironically a year before the atoms were discovered. Vavilov was killed in Russia only because communist party thought that genetics is pseudoscience. This list is far from being complete (Bruno, Copernicus, Galileo, etc.) and for me is more than enough to garantee the correction I wrote to the article on pseudosience. And it is sad that this correction was removed without consultation by somebody who decided that his judgement is better in a good spirit of "pseudoscience" myth. The question is: are you Prosfilaes strong enough to restore the text you did not write even if you disagree with it but feels that somebody else can think that way?
Dear Prosfilaes - thanks a lot for restoring the text - we shall fight "pseudoscientists" by proving them wrong (if we can and if they are)!
How does that fight them? Homeopathy and astrology have been proved wrong many times and show no signs of noticing.--Prosfilaes 16:46, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I think that you take notion of science too wide - homeopathy and astrology are not sciences, they are disciplines, or collection of some (probably wrong) knowledge. Homeopathy and astrology are collection of advices which are not based on scientific method, so you cannot prove them wrong. You can either follow these advices or through them away. If these guys are not harmful - we should just warn others. I agree with you that we cannot leave these guys completely alone since they would come up with Aryan-race idea and try to kill half of Europe. To finish this discussion - there is a very nice sufi saying - "Oh God, how many times stupid speculations of a fool were closer to the truth than careful considerations of a wise. And, oh God, how much work a wise needs to apply in order to make these stupid speculations useful." For me it sums all.
I'm sure all the people who talk homeopathic medicines offered on the same shelf with real medicines, instead of real medicines, recognize your fine distinctions.--Prosfilaes 16:50, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Non-standard cosmologies

I believe that its time we removed the link to Non-Standard cosmologies from the list of pseudosciences. For a start, it is not a link to a pseudoscience but a link to a page which details a number of theories. Second, the page mainly details theories that are on the fringes of science but are not psuedoscience. They are just hypotheses that have been rejected (e.g. steady state universe) or continue to enjoy fringe support (plasma cosmology). So it doesn't really fit on the list. Trious 16:59, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Second. Remove them. ObsidianOrder 22:01, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Not p-science: metaphysics, telekinesis, telepathy

I removed these from the list, but it looks like they were mindlessly reverted by Willmcw. Anyway, my reasons are as follows:

  • Metaphysics: this is a philosophical term. As far as I can remember, it comes from the fact that these matters were dealt with my Aristotle after he dealt with physics. According to Princeton's WordNet it is "the philosophical study of being and knowing". It is totally ridiculous to list this as a p-science. It is not a single system, but a general term. It is like having "philosophy", or "epistemology" or something in the list.
  • Telepathy, telekenesis: these are activities, which may or may not exist. They are not systems of thought or bodies of knowledge, dogma etc. They are merely activities, like walking, reading etc. (There may of course be belief systems that assert that these activities are real.)

Trious 22:43, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Not mindlessly reverted. This page has been controversial so major changes, like deleting several entries from a list, are scrutinized. As for these examples, telepathy may be an activity like levitating. But the explanations for it are generally pseudoscientific. I agree with your point about "metaphyscis" and will remove it. Cheers, -Willmcw 22:59, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Well then the explanations for levitating could form part of a psuedoscience. But levitating is not a psuedoscience. If we are going to start listing strange activites as psuedosciences there are a lot more we could add! e.g. spontaneous combustion, extra-sensory perception, raising the dead etc. Compare these to say astrology. This is a body of knowledge, not an activity.Trious 23:12, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
If you prefer we can add the words, "explanations of..." in front of telepathy and telekenesis. If you read the articles they are full of pseudoscientific explanations and experiments. -Willmcw 23:17, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
OK. I think we should keep the list for systems of organised knowledge, like astrology, accupuncture, graphology. I think over time a lot of things had creeped into this list that shouldn't have ever been there (metaphysics, for example). Anyway, regarding telexxxxx I think it is not right to list activities as opposed to knowledge systems. If there psuedoscientific systems that assert that bizarre activies like these are real, then by all means include them in the list. Trious 23:24, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
If only pseudoscience limited itself as well. Unfortunately, it does not. Since we shouldn't split out the explanations of Telexxxx from their articles, the systems of organizsed knowledge which support them are mixed in with the activities. I'll add the "explanations of..." text. -Willmcw 23:28, 4 October 2005 (UTC)


Dianetics vs. Scientology

I replaced "Dianetics" with "Scientology" in the list of pseudo-sciences, as Dianetics is only one small part of the practices of Scientology, which include many pseudo-scientific practices and ideas not covered in Dianetics (as a matter of fact the most notorious and silly pseudo-scientific aspects of Scientology are only officially divulged to advanced members, who have already invested tens of thousands of dollars and are therefore much more willing to accept outrageous claims.)

I don't think this is accurate. Dianetics explicitly claims to be a science ("the science of the mind"); Scientology does not (it's an "applied religious philosophy", apparently). Dianetics was cited at the time as a pseudoscience - see Martin Gardner's famous book "Fads and Fallacies in the name of Science" (1951). -- ChrisO 09:45, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
When LRH claimed it was "the science of the mind" he wasn't only refering to Dianetics, he was refering to the then nascent Scientology also. Scientology clearly makes scientific claims and claims that contradict established findings of modern science, even to a greater extent than ID advocates, concerning the age of the earth for example and human origins, using explanations that are reminscent of C.G. Jung's theories (the claim that the sci-fi genre of "Space Opera" is a sub-concious recollection of real events for example or the practice of auditing, which is pseudo-scientific in that it's using scientific-like instruments to make inductions about how the mind works.) Much of Scientology is an expansion of Dianetics. Just the fact that Scientology makes an alternative, and testable, claim to human origins, which is contradictory to almost all evidence, and justifies it with scientific-like explanations qualifies it as a pseudo-science.
But even if you disagree with that, the fact remains that Scientology expands on Dianetics in the more advanced courses, and Scientology, not just Dianetics was what LRH was refering to when he said it "the science of the mind."
But since your argument is clearly better than mine I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
--Brentt 10:01, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
This debate is a little hard to follow as not everyone is signing their contributions. Anyway, I'm going to weigh in and say that I think dianetics is the p-science, not scientology itself. One of the reasons I say this is that Scientology itself refers to dianetics as a science - they consider it to be the science that their belief system is based upon. I don't think you can separate dianetics from Scientology, but it seems a little incorrect to label Scientology a p-science - it is a religion/cult/whatever that believes in the p-science of dianetics, among other things. But I've made a little change to the list to reflect the fact that dianetics is part of scientology. Incidentally the Scientologists have a "Free Stress Test" stall near me each week so I might ask what they think!Trious 17:36, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Gene Ray's Time Cube (list of pseudosciences)

Since no other pseudoscience is referenced by it's creator, and is rather referenced by it's common name, of which it is in the alphabetical place of, I changed the awkward:

to

Someone reverted it (along with my addition of Novelty Theory, see below) and labeled it a minor edit, I thought it would be a rather uncontroversial edit, but apparently not, can you say what's the matter with it before you revert it please? Referencing a theory by it's creator is simply awkward in a list which references the common name of the theory in all other cases.--Brentt 23:41, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Novelty Theory added to list of pseudosciences

I added Terence McKenna's Novelty Theory a popular eschatological pseudo-scientific theory that is claimed to be on a "sound mathematical" and scientific basis, and then proponents (primarily the late McKenna) go on to say that the basis is a number sequence in the I Ching and the date of the (misunderstood) end of the Mayan Calendar, along with some other pseudo-mathematical rational. I thought it would be rather uncontroversial, (except among Terence Mckenna fans perhaps, of which I am one in some aspects of his work, such as preserving ehtnogenic plants), addition to the list but somebody reverted it. (Along with my minor edit of referencing Time Cube by it's name instead of it's creator, see above.) For that fact I suppose it warrants a discussion: What is the problem? --Brentt 23:37, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree that with Brentt that Novelty Theory should be on the list. (Was it a parody/hoax though? Looking at the page about it I couldn't tell. Either way I suppose it fits the bill as a pseudoscience.) Trious 13:26, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
It most definitely was not a parody or hoax. I think your refering to the printout at the end of one of the programs meant to "demonstrate" the theory mentioned on Novelty Theory wikipedia page? That appears to be the programmer's rather idiosyncratic interpretation of the theory. It is taken seriously by many people, indcluding Terence McKenna, and is responsible for most of the popularity of forecasting 2012 as a significant year.--Brentt 21:16, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Quit Adding Well Established Behavioral Sciences to the List!

Look people, quit adding psychology and psyciatry to the list! They are well-established behavioral sciences in which the scientific method is normally adhered to. --Brentt 03:40, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Classifying pseudoscience

The list of criteria that may classify pseudoscience is somewhat loosily applied, and are not hard and fast rules. That should be made clear.

  • by asserting claims or theories unconnected to previous experimental results;
  • I believe that Einstein came up with relativilty through a dream. A thought experiment if you like, or perhaps based on his previous experience of experimentation. But not a scientific experiment in the traditional sense. And did Darwin base his theories on previous experimental results?
Off the top of my head (w/o looking it up), the anamoly in the precession of the orbit of Mercury was known before the theory of Relativity, which explained it. Also, the Michaelson-Morley experiment (and others) that failed to find ether. But at any rate, it was confirmed by subsequent experiments. Darwin based his theories on observations (pretty much his equivalent of an experiment.) Bubba73 (talk), 05:58, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Ian: A dream my arse, it came from a Gedanke experiment in which he asked, "can one ever, even if travelling at light speed, catch up to a photon?" Secondly, both theories have been backed up by experimental analysis since Einstein proposded them. Your syllogism is faulty, in that initially, relativity would have been at worst a protoscience that included falsifiable equations. These equations have been solved thus verifying the status of relativity as science. Additionally, Bubba is correct. Jim62sch 14:18, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
  • by asserting claims which cannot be verified or falsified (claims that violate falsifiability);
  • We will never be able to verify or falsify the Big Bang, only find evidence that either supports or tends to reject it. It may argued that the Big Bang is not a theory, but the criterial mentions "claims" which does not exclude claiming there was a Big Bang.
No, the Big Bang theory is falsifiable. Bubba73 (talk), 05:58, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
In fact LIGO and LIGO II are in the process of finding the gravity waves that would have resulted from the big bang and the initial period of inflation. Circa 2020, a new platform, LISA, will enhance our abilities to find these gravity waves at a distance of 9 billion light years (far beyond the distance to the center of the universe). Jim62sch 14:22, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
  • by asserting claims which contradict experimentally established results;
Note that "broken" is in quotes. From the article: "Physicists knew that at atomic scales over very short periods of time, statistical mechanics is pushed beyond its limit, and the second law does not apply" They already knew it didn't apply at small scals and short time periods, the experiment was about where that starts to happen. So there is no contradiction. Bubba73 (talk), 00:45, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes, there's a very good reason for the development of quantum mechanics. Jim62sch 14:26, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
  • by failing to provide an experimental possibility of reproducible results;
  • So a star goes supernova. How do you reproduce that, except by a chance observation
In some fields, observation is the equivalent of an experiment. So maybe the artice should read "experiment/observation". Bubba73 (talk), 06:02, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Actually, there are efforts underway to simulate both supernovae and and black holes. Additionally, as equations were proposed regarding what would happen in a supernovae, and as those equations have been verified by observation, Ian's argument is, once again, flawed. Jim62sch 14:26, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
  • by failing to submit results to peer review prior to publicizing them (called "science by press conference")
  • Didn't Darwin publish his book without peer review first?
No, first he cowrote a paper with Wallace.--Prosfilaes 08:27, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
See publication of Darwin's theory. A few trusted friends such as Asa Gray, Joseph Dalton Hooker and Charles Lyell were aware of Darwin's work before he published it. — Dunc|☺ 11:48, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
  • by claiming a theory predicts something that it does not;
  • How do you know of theory predicts something until it is verified? Surely it's not pseudoscience until then?
A theory should make perdictions. This probably refers to predictions of the theory not matching what is actually observed. Bubba73 (talk), 00:45, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
Ian really needs to spend some serious time learning about science, physics, etc. Jim62sch 14:29, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
  • by violating Occam's Razor,
  • This is guideline at best
A guideline? Is that supposed to be dismissive? Jim62sch 14:29, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

And by definition this list is pseudoscientific because it fails nearly all the criteria on the list! --Iantresman 16:09, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Violating any individual point does not necessarily indicate pseudoscience (though some are stronger indicators than others), but violating several of them is indicative. — Dunc|☺ 11:48, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree. Letigimate science may occaisionally fit one of the points. Bubba73 (talk), 00:28, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
Bingo, Dunc. Jim62sch 14:29, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Overall condemnation of this article

This article is drinking the Kool-Aid big time. For example, the articles says that science that is not subject to the mainstream peer review process is "pseudoscience". There is nothing about the established peer review process that is intrinsic to the nature of science - peer review is just a socially constructed mechanism that mainstream scientists happen to accept. It is particularly ironic that this argument is uncritically accepted by a Wikipedia article, since it the situation is exactly analogous to a situation where someone describes Wikipedia as a "pseudoencyclopedia" because it is not subject to traditional standards of expert authorship and expert review. The entire concept of pseudoscience is lacking in rigour and it is doubtful whether it deserves an article at all. Certainly it does not deserve an article like this one, which is little more than propaganda for the existing scientific establishment. (Unsigned by 146.201.98.89 at 17:06, 29 November 2005)

This article should be outright deleted. There are several disputes going on, each of which should be happening in a different article. For example, the debate about the scientific merit of psychiatry belongs on the pscyhiatry page or pages of various mental disorders. That is an example of why a "pseudoscience" article is a bad idea. Delete it. (Unsigned by 71.49.21.45 on 19:20, 30 November 2005)

Please sign your posts with --~~~~. We aren't going to delete every controversial article. The concept of pseudoscience is out there, and people want to look up the article on it. So the article is going to stay. Period. --Prosfilaes 01:05, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
The article must stay. Bubba73 (talk), 05:49, 1 December 2005 (UTC)


request for POV help at Roswell UFO incident

I just put up a NPOV at Roswell UFO incident. I would appreciat it if some of you would check this article anf give your opions on the POV/NPOV and edit as you see fit. Bubba73 (talk), 21:46, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Evolution

There's no such thing as "consensus opinion in the scientific community". All one can say is that certain fields have often been associated with this charge of pseudo-science. Pseudo science is an ill defined term. All we can report is what areas are having that charge layed against them. Evolution fits the bill both according to the objective criteria, and according to community usage and accusation.

Sure there is a consensus opinion in the scientific community. There are things the community generally agrees on. The National Center for Science Education created a list of scientists who believe in evolution, limited to Steves, about 1% of the population, and got 367 people to sign it. Given that their opposition's largest lists are about 500 people (with 9 Steve's on the list) that's pretty solid against evolution being a pseudo-science.--Prosfilaes 03:05, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Firstly, this kind of research is ITSELF pseudo science, or should I say pseudo statistics. Did they attempt to gain signatures for people who did NOT believe in evolution? If not, it is a bogus statistic.

Secondly, it is still only statistics for one country, which may be highly skewed by the opinions of that country.

Thirdly, the issue is NOT about whether you believe in evolution, it is about whether evolution is science.

Fourthly, it's not even about that, its merely about whether evolution is often associated with pseudo science. Even creation scientists often do legitimate science. Evolutionists often do bad science, or at least are accused of it, which is what is at issue here.

Fifthly, Wiki is a general purpose encylopedia, and it should report on what people in the community are regarding as pseudo science. It is not for Wiki to be an ivory tower of "the scientific community" ONLY. It has to report from a wider viewpoint.

If we listed every field that has ever been considered a pseudoscience, that some people may consider a pseudoscience, or that has been subject to bad science, we would have to list pretty much every field of science that exists. Regardless of whether or not one believes in evolution, it fits the widely-accepted definition of science (see the Wikipedia articles on science and evolution).

-- It's also widely accepted as pseudo science.

The scientific validity of evolution is rarely disputed among scientists themselves.

-- It's widely disputed among many scientists.

I see no reason to list evolution as an example of pseudoscience. --Cswrye 03:59, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

You don't count the number of people who believe in evolution by counting the number of people who didn't. It wasn't meant as serious statistics, but it does give an indication of how the wind blows.

-- Exactly, it is not serious statistics. It is pseudo statistics and invalid.

Wah, wah, wah. You haven't tried to give another source. You're just flattly asserting that it's widely disputed. It's not.--Prosfilaes 04:31, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

You want a statistic - here is one - 45 percent of U.S. adults said they believe evolution has played no role in shaping humans.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1018_041018_science_religion.html

If you needed surgery, you wouldn't pick a random person to perform surgery on you; you would go to a doctor who has knowledge and skill in surgical procedures. Likewise, it makes sense to look to a scientist to determine what is and is not science, and the vast majority of scientists (95% according to a 1997 Gallup poll mentioned here) believe in some form of evolution. Unless we need to start listing things like the heliocentric theory or the round-earth theory as pseudoscience (since there are still some people in the world who deny those things), I don't see any reason to list evolution as a pseudoscience either. --Cswrye 06:19, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
That's not to say that they think it's pseudoscience. Lots of things are wrong that aren't pseudoscience. That's not even to say that they disbelieve in evolution; they believe it had no role in shaping humans, a much more limited belief. If you want to know whether something is pseudoscience, you ask the people who know something about science. --Prosfilaes 06:39, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

The US in studies has more creationists than any of the first world countries, so if it's skewed, it's skewed the wrong way.--Prosfilaes 04:01, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

-- The world is not limited to "first world countries".

This is turning into a revert war. I will not be doing any more reverts, but if this continues, we may need to to request mediation or arbitration for this issue. --Cswrye 04:26, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Don't worry about getting into a revert war. There are people with sense watching this page. The troll however should worry about WP:NPA.— Dunc|☺ 09:12, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

If 45% of the population think that evolution is phony science, that deserves a mention in ANYBODY'S book. And I'm sure that there are plenty of scientists and at least people who studied science in that 45%.

But at the end of the day, it isn't scientists who define language. The general populace defines language. If the common culture wishes to define pseudo science to mean pink dancing elephants, then that's what the term means. 45% of the US populace thinks that evolution is pseudo science. That deserves ONE LINE in the darned article.

No, we haven't seen that 45% think evolution is a pseudoscience. We know that 45% think that evolution didn't play a part in the human species. In other words, they think it is wrong. A science can be wrong in some particulars without being a pseudoscience. -Willmcw 16:10, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Look, 20 of Americans think that the sun goes around the earth. Does this make the heliocentric solar system wrong? No, it makes 20% of Americans wrong. In addition, 50% believe that humans and dinosaurs co-existed while only 13% can define what a molecule is. Thus, allowing the vox populi to determine what is science is akin to asking a person who knows only Chinese, or French, or Xhosa, to writer a book on English Grammar. see: December 6, 2005 Jim62sch 15:04, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

--- I never suggested that article should say "evolution is pseudo science". Rather I pointed out that evolution is commonly associated with pseudo science. If people believe evolution is wrong about playing a part in the human species that would NOT be a minor particular, that would be a major point. The fact that 45% of people actually have an opinion about a certain point of science makes it a unique situation that deserves the mention.

You never suggested that article should say "evolution is pseudo science"? well we'll not mention it then! — Dunc|☺ 21:37, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

>Instead of an appeal to majority, then please elaborate on why you think evolutionary biology >it is pseudoscience.

None of my edits said that evolutionary biology was pseudo science. What they said was that it was "widely associated" with pseudo science. I take this to mean that a large segment of the population regards this field of endeavour to have a good amount of pseudo science involved.

Of the other items in the pseudo-science list, I would take issue with any argument that they are all 100% pseudo science.

Now, the public's perception that evolution is liberally seeded with pseudo science may well be well justified. Note that I don't have to agree that it is well justified, I don't have to prove it is well justified. I'm just pointing out that they have good reason to think it is well justified. The theory of evolution could be 100% true and it wouldn't mean that evolutionary biology isn't scattered liberally with pseudo science. In fact, evolutionary biology is highly speculative. One minute they might be saying that birds evolved from dinosaurs as if it was fact. Next minute they will find some fossil that makes them think they didn't. One minute they're saying that a particular bone proves a certain thing. Later on they decide the bone isn't even from the animal they thought it was. And evolution has had much more than its fair share of pseudo science fiascos. There was Piltdown man, Nabraska man, Haeckel's Embryos. These are the notorious examples of pseudo science. But people read other articles in the day to day newspapers about how the evolutionary scientists have changed their theory yet again. These are clear examples in the public's mind of pseudo science, and it also fits in their mind the criteria for pseudo science as given in this article.

The public has spoken, evolution has too much pseudo science in it. Now you and I can argue whether they're right or not, but encyclopedias need to report what is believed, not express the personal views of the contributors.

The public has no idea what pseudoscience is, and doesn't seem to care. They haven't said anything about evolution being pseudoscience. Haeckel's embroyos was not pseudoscience; it just happened to be wrong. Not every theory is going to be right. Nebraska man, again, was just wrong. (It was over publicized, but it was quickly forgotten once a close look was taken.) I don't think even Piltdown man should be classified as pseudoscience. It was a hoax.
Rapid change is not a sign of pseudoscience; in fact, I'd say it's a sign of science. Pseudoscience tends to hold on to a theory no matter what the evidence says. Going down the list of pseudosciences in our article, you run across examples which Diderot condemned in the 18th century. Part of science is knowing when to hold the theory, knowing when to fold the theory, knowing when to walk away from a theory, and knowing when to run.--Prosfilaes 23:32, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Sure the public knows what pseudo science is. Pseudo=false. Science=Investigation and explanation of phenomena.

So why is creation science listed as flat out pseudo science? Isn't the hypothesis of a creator just as valid a scientific hypothesis?

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/21/1045638485495.html

Here's an article which says "In top of its bizarre form, it also provides new evidence that refutes a popular argument for the existence of a clever cosmic creator: that some body parts, like an eye, or the natural "outboard motors" on bacteria, are too complex to have evolved gradually, step by step".

If it's possible to present arguments AGAINST there being a creator via science, then it would certainly be possible to present arguments in favour via science.

Unless of course, what we have here, in a premier newspaper is an example of pseudo-science. A scientist using science to argue a theological position about God. So which is it? Is it possible for creation science to have elements of real science, or is evolutionary science heavily associated religious pseudo science?

Now what of this argument that the continual churn of bad ideas in evolutionary biology is all fine and dandy, because it is a sign of good science? Well, the flood geology folks are churning ideas too. They are discussing different theories about how the sediments might have been laid down in a particular way in the great flood. They are discounting bad theories, and coming up with new theories. All within the context of believing the flood occured of course, but no different to evolutionists always interpreting facts within the assumption that evolution occured. So if this is a criteria for "real science", are we going to take flood geology off of the list?

I havn't heard an actual argument yet that allows evolution to stay off the list and some of these others to remain on.

And the fact still remains: the public in large part considers evolution to be rife with false (=pseudo) science. Any article that ignores what is in the top two believed-to-be areas of pseudo-science looks like the men in white coats defending their ivory towers. Maybe the towers need defending, but Wiki is the place to report reality, not defend positions.

Countach 00:18, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Pseudo does not mean false. It means to masquerade as. The definition of science is massively more subtle and complex then what you gave; I invite you to read the article.
The problem with flood geology is that there's no evidence of one big flood. Evolutionists regularly test the underlying phenomeonom; flood geologists don't.
The public at large doesn't think in terms of pseudoscience. When I ran a quick google search using "pseudoscience" as my term, it wasn't until the 25th page that called evolution a pseudoscience. All of the pages discussing pseudoscience as a whole failed to mention evolution, but many managed to mention creationism. I see no evidence that evolution is generally considered a pseudoscience.--Prosfilaes 01:02, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

>Pseudo does not mean false. It means to masquerade as.

Go argue with the Oxford and American Heritage dictionaries.

>Evolutionists regularly test the underlying phenomenon.

Really. Well you won't mind documenting that for us will you? Why don't you show us a recent paper where someone devises a test to see if evolution is true, and then carries through with the test? Let's see the quality of what you come up with. If its of a different order of quality than what the creation scientists do, I could be persuaded to give up.

>The public at large doesn't think in terms of pseudoscience. When I ran a quick >google search using "pseudoscience" as my term, it wasn't until the 25th page that >called evolution a pseudoscience.

You assume that the public at large is interested in constructing web sites about science, pseudo or otherwise.

Yes of course, there are a lot of people who feel strongly on different sides of the evolution debate. And "pseudo-science" or "its not science" is a favourite weapon of the evolution side against the other side. Thus all the web sites topping the google list.

But if we are doing a google battle here, the phrase "flood geology is pseudo science" has a total of 2 hits. "evolution is pseudoscience" has 62 hits. "Creation science is pseudoscience" has 110 hits. Does that mean evolution is 31 times more pseudo than flood geology?

Countach 04:04, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

The American Heritage gives us:
1. False; deceptive; sham: pseudoscience.
2. Apparently similar: pseudocoel.
In other words, "pseudoscience" does not mean science which is wrong, it means something which is falsely presented as science, or similar to science. --Ryano 10:43, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
A group that is not interested in writing web pages, or articles, or books on pseudoscience is not one that I think is terribly interesting for this article. Nor is random sentences typed into google. The point of the google search is not that evolutionists consider creation science a pseudoscience, it's that people who study and write about pseudoscience consider creation science a pseudoscience, and don't consider evolution a pseudoscience.--Prosfilaes 09:05, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, still nobody can cite evidence that "evolutionists regularly test the underlying phenomenon.". Unless and until somebody can show it, it remains pseudo-science by the stated criteria. Countach 03:06, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Uh, no. Whether or not someone drags out the evidence for you (I'm suspecting not) doesn't change whether or not it's pseudo-science one bit.--Prosfilaes 04:06, 12 December 2005 (UTC)


Uh, true. But I will remain in my rights editing the article according to the documented facts. Countach 08:39, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

At best, it's pointless. At worst, repeatedly reverting an article against the wishes of many editors can get you blocked. When faced with a problem like this, you need to come up with a compromise solution or just drop the issue.--Prosfilaes 09:05, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

So nobody can justify their mis-information, but because a lot of people "like" the mis-information, you're going to bully it into remaining there? I suppose if I gather a lot of extra people to edit from our point of view, I could get you blocked? Would that advance the state of truth? The fact remains and has been documented - nearly half the population regard evolution as having a lot of pseudo-science. Bullying doesn't change that documented fact. If someone would like to DOCUMENT that evolution tests its primary assumption, then go ahead. IF YOU CAN'T DOCUMENT IT, WHY ARE YOU REVERTING THE ARTICLE? OBVIOUSLY YOU HAVE NO KNOWLEDGE OF THE SUBJECT MATTER AND ARE JUST REVERTING DUE TO RELIGOUS PREDUDICE. Countach 03:28, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

That's not documented; there's a big difference between evolution in general and the evolution of humanity, and there's a big difference between believing something is wrong, and believing something is pseudoscience. And yelling at us won't help.--Prosfilaes 04:41, 13 December 2005 (UTC)


This is amusing. "Half the population regard evolution as having a lot of pseudo-science." Hehe, and what population are you refering to? Americans maybe? (That says more about the American educational system than evolutionary theory.) Physics has "a lot" of pseudo-science too, in the sense that there are a lot of pseudo-scientific physics theories, that doesn't make physics a pseudo-science. And what is this "primary assumption" you speak of? Your fighting a battle your destined to lose, which in turn is a small part of a larger fight that is destined to be lost by the instigators of it. There is more evidence for evolution than relativity, and direct evidence at that, it HAS been observed (the fundamental flaw in ID thinking is that there is a fundamental differnce between macro and micro evolution, if you allow for one denying the other is silly.) Of course origins is a different story, and IDers tend to get the two mixed up (while providing a non-solution to the question. "How did intelligent beings arise? An intelligent being made them!) --Brentt 08:50, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I hope that this dispute is over by now, but just in case it isn't, I will point out that guidelines for science vs. pseudoscience are mentioned specifically in the NPOV policy. In fact, the evolution vs. creation debate is mentioned as an example in the section titled "Making necessary assumptions". Based on this, it seems to me that evolution would not belong on this article since 1) evolution is the majority view, and 2) although evolution is disputed by a significant minority, that dispute is covered quite thoroughly in other articles. I don't think that this article could add any constructive information to that debate. --Cswrye 06:13, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

>there's a big difference between evolution in general and the evolution of humanity,

Sure. And I have never suggested that "evolution in general" must be denigrated is pseudo science. But if, for example, there is a major problem with "evolution in humanity" in evolutionist circles, that is a major part of evolution science, and would justify the comment that evolution is "associated with" pseudo science. You seem to be intimating you think there is such a problem, so why are you disagreeing with me?

>and >there's a big difference between believing something is wrong, and believing something is >pseudoscience.

There is a difference. But they often go hand in hand. Do you have a point?

>Physics has "a lot" of pseudo-science too, in the sense that there are a lot of >pseudo-scientific physics theories, that doesn't make physics a pseudo-science.

Fine, because I never said evolution "is pseudo science". Stop beating up the straw men.

> And what is this "primary assumption" you speak of?

The assumption that evolution exists as a creative force.

>There is more evidence for evolution than relativity, and direct evidence at that, it HAS >been observed (the fundamental flaw in ID thinking is that there is a fundamental >differnce between macro and micro evolution, if you allow for one denying the other is >silly.)

There is a fundamental difference between creative evolution, and non-creative evolution. The former comes up with new designs. The latter does not. Breeding of new dog breeds is an example of the latter.

>I hope that this dispute is over by now, but just in case it isn't, I will point out that >guidelines for science vs. pseudoscience are mentioned specifically in the NPOV policy.

Yeah. Looks like the policy says that minority views should be represented in articles. So follow the policy.

>2) although evolution is disputed by a significant minority, that dispute is covered >quite thoroughly in other articles.

Irrelevant. Countach 22:20, 19 December 2005 (UTC)


The assumption that evolution exists as a creative force.
You should try reading up on evolution a little more before assuming that this is a "primary assumption" (I don't mean that to sound condescending, this is something that usually has to be pointed out to students of evolution, but it is dealt with quite elegantly in evolutionary theory--atleast the more rigorous kinds--and is anything but a "primary assumption". Its actually quite perceptive of you to notice it--if it wasn't pointed out to you--as it is usually something that has to be pointed out to students of evolution.) It is better understood by most biologists than you probably give them credit for. A thorough book on evolutionary biology will make it clear that there is nothing inherently progressive about natural selection, and then go on to explain how progressiveness, and apparent design, does come about through natural selection. It's much to complicated to go into here, but it has to do with "arms races" (which do not necessarily have to be between two living things). If you would like to know more about it, and see for yourself that it is not a "primary assumption", and only derivative of simpler assumptions, then I can refer you to a pleasurable read by Richard Dawkins called The Blind Watchmaker in which he quite thoroughly explains why it is a common misunderstanding among students of evolution to think that there is something inherently progressive, or "creative", about natural selection, and then goes on to explains how the progression results from "arms races". This is not even unique to the modern synthesis oof evolutionary theory, it was understood by Darwin too. You should really understand where progressivness comes from in evolutionary theory before you start calling it a "primary assumption". Critisize the derivation if you like, but understand it first. You might think it presumptuous that I assume you don't understand it, but if you understood it then you would know it was not a "primary assumption" and was in fact a derivation. The only people that assume a mysterious creative force are ID "theorists". --Brentt 03:13, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


Brentt - I don't think I would even dispute the theoretical possibility that an evolutionary system *could* exist as a creative force. I suspect all your talk about arms races and so forth is to do with building up a case how this *could* work in reality. If that's what you're talking about, I have no argument. The issue is not the assumption about whether it *could* exist, but whether it *does* exist. One can demonstrate very easily the possibility of evolution, just like one could demonstrate the possibility that monkeys on typewriters working long enough could eventually come up with Hamlet. But whether that has *actually* occured, looks to me like an assumption that hasn't been tested. Countach 03:07, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4648598.stm A significant number in Britain also think evolution is pseudo science. Even if you think they are clowns, they are a significant number of clowns and therefore deserve a voice (as per Wiki guidelines) in the article. Countach 23:40, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

No. That article doesn't say anything about pseudoscience. It talks what people believe to be true, which is far from the same thing.--Prosfilaes 01:53, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

As this Wiki article says, pseudoscience "often implies something is false". i.e. falsity is a definition of pseudo-science. Since evolution claims to be a science, and since a large number of people consider it false, it follows that these people consider evolution to be pseudo-science. Stop weaseling, you are just trying to prevent an alternative viewpoint of a large minority from being expressed in this article.

A large number of people think Britney Spears has talent. Shrug. Mark K. Bilbo 01:37, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Evolution doesn't "claim" to be a science, it is a science. No scientists think that evolution is a pseudoscience. Bubba73 (talk), 01:59, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
The fact pseudoscience "often implies something is false" doesn't mean that something that is false is a pseudoscience. That's a complete failure of logic; a implies b (or worse, a often implies b) doesn't mean that b implies a.
Even more so, just because people consider it to be false, doesn't mean they consider it a pseudoscience. If they don't know what pseudoscience is, they can't consider it pseudoscience, no matter what their other opinions on that matter are.--Prosfilaes 03:52, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Chiropractics?

Any thoughts on adding chiropractics to the list, or does that already fall under one of the categories that I'm overlooking? 70.108.124.62 02:08, 9 December 2005 (UTC)Ryan Sommers


Probably should be added, but I imagine a lot of people are going to complain. --Brentt 04:31, 9 December 2005 (UTC)


Yep, indeed, starting with me ;) The "subluxation theory of disease causation" is probably pseudoscientific, the actual practice of chiropractic is not. Seems to be a pretty common problem actually, that while there may be a strong pseudoscientific current within a field (e.g. Qi and acupuncture) the term cannot in fairness be applied to the whole field. ObsidianOrder 05:17, 9 December 2005 (UTC)


I agree. While there does seem to be quite a bit of psuedoscience in chiropractics, not all of chiropractics is pseudoscientific. I wouldn't argue if it were added, but I don't think that it should be added. --Cswrye 05:42, 9 December 2005 (UTC)


No use in starting a big ruckus then, I suppose. 70.108.124.62 10:05, 9 December 2005 (UTC)


There's more below -- Fyslee 12:52, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Pseudomathematics

I changed the pseudo-mathematics section from this:

Pseudomathematics is a form of mathematics-like activity undertaken by many non-mathematicians - and occasionally by mathematicians themselves. The efforts of pseudomathematicians divide into three categories:
*attempting apparently simple classical problems long proved impossible by mainstream mathematics; trying metaphorically or (quite often) literally to square the circle
*generating whole new theories of mathematics or logic from scratch
*attempting hard problems in mathematics (for example, the Goldbach conjecture) using only high-school mathematical knowledge

To this:

Pseudomathematics is a form of mathematics-like activity undertaken by either non-mathematicians or mathematicians themselves which do not conform to the rigorous standards usually applied to mathematical theories.

Because

  • a) division of pseudo-mathematics into three categories is arbitrary and just plain lame, especially since the division made was very inelegant (for example there is nothing inherently pseudo-mathematical about attempting to solve a problem using only HS mathematics: Richard Feynman proved some of Kepler's laws using HS level geometry for the benefit of his first year physics students. Nor is generating a whole new logic or mathethematical theory from scratch necesarrily pseudo-mathematical, it is actually quite fruitful sometimes, as long as it is consistent.)
  • b) I think what distinguishes pseudo-mathematics from real mathematics is ultimately a lack of rigor.

Granted the change makes the section a little short, but its better than having inaccurate information.--Brentt 09:09, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

It has been reverted back (not by me). I like the longer version except that:
generating whole new theories of mathematics or logic from scratch - this should probably mention the lack of rigor, etc
attempting hard problems in mathematics (for example, the Goldbach conjecture) using only high-school mathematical knowledge - this is almost invariably pseudomathematics. Someone mentioned Kepler's laws, but Kepler's laws are pretty simple. They can be done with high school math & physics.
Perhaps it should be said that these are typical cases. Bubba73 (talk), 03:20, 11 December 2005 (UTC)


Ugh,this is irking I thought this would be rather uncontroversial. Its true that "attempting hard problems in mathematics using only high-school mathematical knowledge" is "almost always" pseudo-mathematical, but it is not inherently pseudo-mathematical. And the other objections still stand.
The division is arbitrary, and unless a source can be cited it should be assumed to be "original research" (not to mention innacurate) and therefore against wikipedia policy. If you can source this rather arbitrary and innacurate division of pseudo-mathematics, THEN revert it. Otherwise please leave it off.--Brentt 10:03, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Neuro-Linguistic Programming

I removed NLP from the list of things associated with psuedo-science. I don't see how it can really belong on that list because NLP doesn't claim to be a science. It's purely pragmatic. They don't propose anything about the way the world works or give any theories. Early NLP books started out by saying everything we are about to tell you is a lie. They made it very clear there was no truth or science being discussed. Just some ideas and techniques to be used pragmatically. Does anyone disagree?

Seems fine to me -- if something does not make any claim to be scientific, it can't be pseudoscience. -- The Anome 14:03, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Seeking expert eyes on Natasha Demkina

Hi all. I'd like to ask you, as people familiar with topics on or related to paranormal activity, to review the work at Natasha Demkina, "the girl with X-ray eyes", which has been undergoing a tug-of-war between a primary source and one of his critics. I've tried to bring it to at least NPOV but apparently I muddled the technicalities and there are still sourcing needs.

Would appreciate your comments -- the article is currently under protection but I think it can be taken out shortly.

TIA, - Keith D. Tyler 21:12, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Rename to parascience

There has been a long discussion thread on wikien regarding the prejudicial and pov nature of the term "pseudoscience" as SPOV. I suggest we rename this article to parascience, and in all cases but those implying fraudulent science, we should use the term "parascience" as a neutral and nonprejudicial term. -Ste|vertigo 22:35, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Pseudoscience is the word that people use; parascience is an unfamilar and rarely used term for it. We put biographies under the names they're best known by, so we should keep the article at pseudoscience.--Prosfilaes 23:05, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
Right. Let's open up WP as a platform for "grammar engineering" and political correctness, declaring all insults and dirty words as POV, and expunge them? But this makes no sense for an encyclopedia, since even purely derogatory words require definition, ideally a clinical and NPOV one. While the Believers try to redefine "pseudoscience" or even remove it entirely from WP, Skeptics are just as bad; wanting to get rid of "pseudoskepticism." But this is abhorrant behavior for any scholar, it has nothing to do with truth and education, and everything to do with HIGHLY DISHONEST persuasion tactics. The honest course would be to record and clearly define every single offensive insulting term that the hoards of Believers and Skeptics hurl at each other on JREF and sci.skeptic. Speaking of which, I see that "woo woo" is missing from WP. So is "skepto-path!" --Wjbeaty 21:29, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Nice, a new neologism. Or is it a euphemism? Pseudoscience is a well established and respected term, there's no need to invent a new term, especially for the reasons given. FeloniousMonk 23:10, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't think this serves a purpose either. "Pseudoscience" is a widely-known and accepted term. "Parascience" seems to have a completely different meaning, one that overlaps somewhat with "pseudoscience" but generally refers to a different idea. Even if the change were made, I don't think that it would change anything. It would simply make people believe that "parascience" is POV instead. --Cswrye 00:00, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Terms aren't POV. If someone thinks that a WP entry is POV, they should rewrite it to make it more clinical. Trying to REMOVE a widely used slur is a very dishonest tactic: the book-burner mindset. Note that WP also contains the N word, and all the words you Can't Say on Television, and I'm sure that many people would want to suppress them as well.--Wjbeaty 21:34, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I suggest we merge the renaming suggestion with this article. --Brentt 08:56, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Another really dumb idea. About as good as the other examples of "alleged pseudoscience" "science of questionable validity" or "something which might be science but the scientific community say is not science"... — Dunc|☺ 14:19, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
"Skeptics are just as bad; wanting to get rid of "pseudoskepticism."" I think this is a false claim; please retract or substantiate it in Talk:Pathological skepticism. --Hob Gadling 21:50, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Do not rename, it's fine as it is. This is the more common term by far, and it is accurate. ObsidianOrder 09:46, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
P.S. While we're at it, could whoever requested the move please make a real voting section? ObsidianOrder 09:47, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Pseudoscience being a respected and time-tested term, there is no need to replace it with a neologism that adds noting to clarity, and in fact, merely serves to obfuscate. Additionally, NPOV does not mean that one cannot call fecal matter fecal matter, it merely means that the subject is presented accurately. We do not need the language police of the PC barracks (right- or left-wing) "cleansing" and purging accurate terms that someone finds offensive merely because usage of that term casts doubts on a beloved theory. Jim62sch 13:59, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Reiterating Obsidian's post script request to make this a real voting section, so we can be done with this suggestion. Jim62sch 14:02, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

No! Do not move/rename. I think the consensus is well established in the comments above - and no pseudo-formal voting section is needed. Vsmith 15:34, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Do not rename. Pseudoscience is the common term and it has been used for decades. "Pseudoscience" is a real word ("A theory, methodology, or practice that is considered to be without scientific foundation".) "parascience" doesn't seem to make good sense. Bubba73 (talk), 22:06, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Can we take the suggestion template down now? Its pretty clear its a losing proposition. --Brentt 22:32, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Please do...in fact, I'll do it. Jim62sch 00:37, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

North Poles of Jupiter & Saturn

Re: (though a strict interpretation of the term would not necessarily have it mean either). Yes, pseudo, is the combinatory form of the Greek pseudes (I wish I had a good Greek font) and it does mean false, lying, deceptive, etc. For reference see Liddel & Scott's Greek-English Lexicon. Jim62sch 01:10, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Intelligent design is not "Creationism or a theory invoked in its defense", nor is it religious. It is a scientific theory, come up with by scientists, some of whom are not religious at all, such as Watson & Crick. Cogito-ergo-sum66.19.229.110 14:04, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
If you are being serious, you have my sympathy. Ille qui non cogitet, ipsum necatum est. Jim62sch 22:52, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Neither James Watson, nor Francis Crick were creationists and the latter was a member of the NCSE. The rest of your statement is equally as pathetic. — Dunc|☺ 14:54, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
If ID is "scientific" then so is the theory that invisible elves push molecules around in a way that results in the behavior of matter that we see. If your going to invoke the name of scientists that support ID atleast name scientists that actually DO support ID. --Brentt 00:43, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

It is typical of conventional, materialistic scientists to believe they "own" science to the point of then judging what is a science and what is not a science - depending on only what they can see, measure and weigh. This "view" continues to constrict scientific exploration and allows conventional "scientists" to prance around as if they are the final word on what is to be termed a science or a pseudo-science. The Intelligent Design debate is one such stage where conventional scientists continue to push their own "version" of what is to be called a science. What is most amazing about these conventional scientists is that some would rather lie about observations that do not "fit" their own point of view. Just look at the north poles of Jupiter and Saturn to see this in play. That is, if one can find an uncropped photograph from "scientists" who are scared of that which they not only cannot see - but also that which they can.Theo 11:57, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Gee, now I know why science is called a discipline, and inanity is not. Jim62sch 23:01, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Jupiter and Saturn's poles? Is that where the Intelligent Designer's winter and summer homes are or something? What are you talking about? I'm really curious now, I find this stuff amusing... --Brentt 22:57, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes, please do explain your thesis on the poles of Saturn and Jupiter. (BTW, I'm sure your explanation shall include the south poles of those planets as there is a direct relation between the two.) The world awaits this new theory. Jim62sch 23:01, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Ohhhh! I know what your talking about now, that little dark polygon in the photographs? Oh man, that is toooooo funny. ROFLMAO
k let me explain:::For economic reasons, there are only spacecraft in equitorial orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. That means pictures of the poles have to be taken from the side. I know it looks like a picture from the top, but thats only because someone sat down and pieced several photos together (8 to be exact in this photo of Jupiter's poles I'm looking at.) to make it nicer to look at. That dark spot is simply the top of the photos! Why wouldn't they just expand the field of view and include the tops? Because when they piece the photo together they have to put the photo together in image processing software to correct the angle distortion. Once you get to a certain angle, i.e. at the very top, the distortion is so great it makes it usless, so including it in the original photos is a waste of the camera's field space--its better to zoom in and get a higher resolution for the stuff they are going to be able to use. It probably never occured to them that someone would assume bad faith and think it was a conspiracy!
Are there any website devoted to this? That would be hilarious to see some quack ranting about when the explanation is obvious to anyone who gives it the slightest amount of calm-collected thought.
I don't suppose this will make you rethink all the other, probably equally ludicrous, conspiracy theories you are most likely absolutely convinced of? --Brentt 23:50, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Damn it, Brentt, all along I thought those holes were portals for the Jovian and Saturnian spacecraft. And thus another good theory goes down the drain. Jim62sch 01:34, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

The statements above prove how "rationalization" has taken on a new silliness for some. Try dropping the cynical front. Suggest you study the poles of Jupiter & Saturn seriously without the high school cracks. Improve the discussion with good written material or continue playing with your Playstation, and let the real scientists go about investigating the universe with an open mind and honesty that appears to be missing in your statements. The link you left of Jupiter's north pole is about the worst photo there is and does not even come close to the photographs available. Obviously, you must have some need to prove your "point" with such a horrid image. Suggest you get real. This would improve your knowledge base without the need for sitcom jokes. Also, it is silly to use the term "conspiracy theory" when referring to actual physical evidence that easily shows that the hexagon on Saturn's north pole exists. If you desire "calm-collected thought" - then it is advised you actually practice it when exploring in science. Remember, science is an effort at exploration, and NOT political-correctness or bashing. Suggest you look into the north poles of Jupiter and Saturn - seriously - and refrain from the silliness of "thinking inside the box." The north poles of Jupiter & Saturn are not theories - but facts - and suggest you let go your fears of things you do not immediately understand and get back to honest scientific investigation. That would greatly help some of you to return to reality rather than sitting on your minds. Check out the evidence first. Take a look yourself. Or, is having a look yourself another "consipracy theory?"Theo 03:20, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Well then Glaucon, as you seem to possess the wisdom of the sages, perhaps you might enlighten us on the great mystery that we are missing regarding aurorae and x-rays. So far, there has been no evidence shown, just an assertion absent proof that this somehow relates to, to, well to something as yet undefined. (If you've ever debated you would know that such an action is, well, bad).
As for your remaining drivel, might I suggest that you leap before you look. You, too, have made statements absent empirical evidence regarding the habits of Brentt and myself, apparently because we have stepped on the toes of one of your favorite ideas. Given that your knowledge of either of our backgrounds is nil, it might behoove to refrain to what are very close to being personal attacks, just as it might save you from biting off more than you can chew. Just some pleasant advice, my dear Glaucon.
Oh, and just to save you the trouble of writing a long thesis on the subject, might I suggest that you look at this NASA page [9], which rather than hiding details as you suggested, is quite clear on the whole issue. See, Glaucon, isn't science great? Jim62sch 18:30, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
It's even worse than I thought. Inquiring minds simply must read the following articles and decide for themselves. pro, pro, [NPOV], con, con. Jim62sch 19:49, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps taking advice from Shakesphere would help: "There are more things in heaven and the earth, Horatio, then are dreamt of in your philosophy." Seems many "scientists" could use this reminder.Theo 14:27, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Shakespeare, while a great poet and playwright is hardly best known as a philosopher, although, in a certain way, and not in the way you meant, the quote is accurate. But, let me ask you this: do you know anything of astrophysics, cosmology, genetics, mathematics? Certainly one cannot accuse he scientists in those fields of thinking inside some magic box. In fact, upon further reflection, I can't think of any field where the scientists think inside the box. Furthermore, were it not for scientists thinking outside the box, we'd not be having this pleasant little dialogue in this when and this where.
Moreover, believe it or not, scientists actually do look into, examine and analyze claims or theories that later become classified as pseudoscience, it is not a classification born of some simplistic knee jerk syndrome. Jim62sch
I don't think Shakespeare meant everything you dream up is in the heavens, as you apparently interpret the quote. Judging from your completely non-sensical response I think that you realize that your "theory" made no sense but are resisting admitting it to yourself. Brain Games is now over... --Brentt 05:22, 10 January 2006 (UTC)