Talk:Pseudoscience

Comment

This is potentially a very controversial article, trimmed from a Wikipedia article that has long suffered from disputes, mainly arising from its use as a vehicle to attack particular subjects or fields regarded as discreditable by some, but as respectable by others.

Articles should not seek to promote or to disparage particular beliefs, only to accurately report the opinions of notable authorities when argued carefully in strong, verifiable sources. This article is about the concept of Pseudoscience, and the difficulties of distinguishing pseudoscience from "real" science, and should not get sidetracked into judgements on any area of science or alleged pseudoscience except insofar as is essential to illuminate the problems encountered in trying to make a rigorous distinction. In doing so, the article should not appear either to endorse or to rebutt the proposition that any given area is "pseudoscientific", as a key issue in dispute is whether the term has more than perjorative content. As an on-line encyclopedia, sources should, wherever possible, be verifiable online (e.g. in PubMed abstracts), and some of the present sources could be improved upon in this regard especially. However some major sources are prominent books by Popper, Kuhn and others, and their use is unavoidable; key elements of their content may be available as quotations in secondary sources on-line; if so please add these. The article is still very raw, and I think that neither the views of Popper or those of Kuhn are treated adequately. There should be a section on "popular" conceptions of what constitute pseudoscience; this will be difficult to write neutrally. Gareth Leng 16:20, 28 October 2006 (CDT)

Yes, it is for that reason I was surprised it was selected as one of the pilot articles. Getting hands dirty early I see. :) I'm not sure quoting a dictionary as the first line of an encyclopedia article is something we want to encourage doing either. -- Andrew Lih 04:54, 29 October 2006 (CST)

I think you're correct that the WP article has been used for that purpose (for quite some time, I might add), and you're also quite correct that using it for that purpose is strikingly contrary to the neutrality policy. --Larry Sanger 20:45, 18 January 2007 (CST)

Good point, and fixed?Gareth Leng 08:33, 29 October 2006 (CST)

What concerns me a little is the relatively detailed discussion of 1 & only 1 subject in the last part, psychology, As the article reads, it could be judged as intended to imply that

this is where most of them are found. It may well be that a great many are to be found there, but a discussion of several fields would seem more reasonable. If there's need for a "pseudoscience in psychology" article, so be it, but that is really going to get controversial, It is not my view, but I've known people to say it includes the entire subject. DavidGoodman 23:01, 1 November 2006 (CST)

I think you're absolutely right, and that section is inappropriate and should just be deleted.Gareth Leng 03:31, 3 November 2006 (CST)

Excellent work! This article has transformed from a wholly pejorative embarrassment to a truly education experience. Makes me proud to be a part of it, but all I could find was a missing period;) Good job Gareth. --D. Matt Innis 07:54, 12 December 2006 (CST)

This article is a little weird. A lot of it really belongs under "philosophy of science." It goes on and on about that, but I saw only a handful of references of well-known pseudo-sciences. Wouldn't the reader be better served by a list of oh, five to ten representative ones, along a description of any debate over them that seems especially noteworthy?

I nominate: astrology (gotta have that one), alternative medicine (maybe with subsidiary examples like chiropractic, prayer healing, or acupuncture), ancient astronauts, and ESP / psychic research. Oh, and please trim down the other stuff, and make it not so preachy. And can we get some kind of timeline showing various skeptical campaigns? I know there were anti-Spiritualism activists in between the World Wars. Bei Dawei

Yes, this article is intended as a serious part of the phlosophy of science, and to address the question of whether the term pseudoscience has any "scientific" content at all. It is not intended to pass judgement on whether any particular subject has valid foundations. The list you give all have problems; astrology is not really capable of being confused with science so is scarcely pseudoscience except as a mere pejorative, it has been used extensively as an example, and analysing it as an example has shown how even in this clear cut case of utter rubbish, it's hard to make an objective case distinguishing it from other areas of legitimate science. Chiropractic is a licensed and regulated profession with in some areas a good record of efficacy, and a basis that is not really pseudoscience more "fuzzy" science; acupuncture theory isn't scientific at all in the conventional sense, but again acupuncture has a good record of efficacy in some conditions; prayer healing and spiritualism as religion are outside the domain of science; astronaut stuff is light popular rubbish, and is not treated seriously enough for any authoratative criticism to be citable. The main skeptical campaign that I know of was the AMA crusade against chiropractic which ended in the Wilk case, where the Supreme Court ruled that the AMA had operated a dishonest campaign in defense of its members interests that involved suppressing evidence of the effectiveness of chiropractic. This is covered in the chiropractic article in detail, but is not really relevant here as the issues in the end were about anti competitive selective use of evidence by the AMA, not about weaknesses in the foundations of chiropractic.

Overt debates about the pseudoscientific nature of particular areas don't really feature much in the serious literature except in the context of the demarkation problem (within philosophy), except in some areas of psychology, where these are largely internal debates. Partly, this is because many critics of particular areas simply do not use the term pseudoscience, partly because of the lack of an effective operational definition of pseudoscience, and partly because the pejorative overtones detract from objectivity.

The areas where there has been a lot of serious debate about the pseudoscientific status of a field are 1) intelligent design 2) psychoanalysis and psychotherapies 3) IQ science

Other areas include the social sciences, and nutritional science. I think though that serious critiques belong in their respective articles, not here, which is about the concept of pseudoscience Gareth Leng 06:22, 17 January 2007 (CST)

My point is that there is already an article on Philosophy of Science--this one shouldn't duplicate that.

Point taken re ancient astronauts, which isn't even really about science. (I thought of them because of Carl Sagan.) No objection to the three fields you mention.

"Alternative Medicine" (including chiropractic) is often discussed in medical circles, though perhaps not among philosophers of pseudo-science. I'm not proposing that the article should condemn it, only that it should receive mention as a prominent area of discussion. Bei Dawei

There are certainly overlaps with this and Philosophy of Science, and Scientific Method and also Junk science, hence the plan at the top of this Talk page. The concept of pseudoscience is a marginal issue in the philosophy of science. I have some problems with the content that you have added, mainly in that the discussion of the concept of pseudoscience makes it clear that it is not a well formed objective concept; the argument for example of McNally, Lauder, Feyeraband and Tirozzi is essentially that calling anything pseudocience presupposes that there is an objective demarkation between science and non science, and this is what is deeply disputed. This is NOT a defence of bad science, rather it is to say that something might properly be criticised as illogical, contrary to known facts, vague, incoherent, fraudulent etc, all of which can be documented objectively, but the term pseudoscience is merely an arbitrary judgement based on presumed authority; it's a label guaranteed to inflame but with no content. The problem with any examples therefore is that to sustain a critique on them which is fair requires documentation of these specific criticisms - but these criticisms still do not themselves qualify as criteria for calling something pseudoscience. Now a huge number of things have been called pseudoscience by somebody or other at some time or other in popular sources, and cataloguing these is a bit like writing an article on intelligence with lists of people who've ever been called clever or stupid. In other words I feel that there is an arbitrary editorial element in choosing which to discuss. For the serious cases, we'd be duplicating the critiques on theeir articles (intelligent design for example). I think there might be a virtue in taking one or two examples like phrenology and astrology and analysing the reasons why people have tried to label these as pseudoscience and the difficulties in so doing - philosophers have found it very difficult to find objective reasons for calling even astrology pseudoscience, while calling phrenology pseudoscience seems an ahistorical fallacy. What I'd like to suggest therefore is that this article should be restricted to the plan outlined at the top of the page, and that the bulk of your changes be translated to a rewrite of the potentially overlapping article on Junk science; I think that we we'd be developing separate themes, not designing a rather ungainly camel? What do you think? :)Gareth Leng 05:31, 18 January 2007 (CST)

I have to agree with Gareth in that the examples seem somewhat arbitrarily chosen. I also agree that it's quite important that they not be thus arbitrarily chosen. The only nonarbitrary way to choose more than a few examples, and the best way to choose those examples probably, is to consult many texts that discuss pseudoscience, and see what the main examples used by them are. Then you can say: "In discussions of pseudoscience, the following examples come up frequently: ..." I don't know enough about discussions of pseudoscience and the popular field called "skepticism" to be able to have any opinion on what the examples ought to be.

I must also agree with Bei, however, that the philosophical discussions that go rather deeply into the pure question what "science" means, while obviously directly relevant to the topic of "pseudoscience" (you can't say what spurious science is without defining "science"), might more properly belong in the science article. What seems to be wanted, in my humble nonexpert opinion, are the highlights and conclusions of the in-depth discussions of the nature of science, just enough to make sense of claims made about pseudoscience. --Larry Sanger 22:48, 18 January 2007 (CST)

"For example, the nineteenth-century Western traditions of osteopathy and chiropractic champion certain practices which the mainstream rejects as ineffective, and inconsistent with scientific understandings" No this is a misrepresentation of both. Both are clearly recognised as effective in specific conditions (by for example, summaru statements by NIH, advisory bodies, sstematic reviews etc); both had historical origins that were every bit as eccentric as much of the conventional medicine of the time, and both have plausible but disputed rationale for treatment; there is nothing inconsistent with scientific understanding about either and I don't think I've ever heard that claimed, although I have seen it argued (within the chiropractic literature) that some of the concepts used are pseudoscientific in being vague and imprecise. We really have to be careful in this article, because of the danger that it might express the arrogance of experts. Gareth Leng 12:52, 19 January 2007 (CST)

Hear, hear, Gareth. Experts can indeed be quite arrogant, as can their less-expert followers, and in this article and some others, we can easily find ourselves branded as arrogant elitists if we don't do it right. What's ironic, though, is that you, Gareth, tenured professor at a major research institution, and I, editor-in-chief of this project which is sometimes falsely accused of "elitism," are the ones so strongly insisting on this point--against the unfair and arrogant attitude of the Wikipedia article!!! --Larry Sanger 22:45, 19 January 2007 (CST)

Well said, Gareth, I would love to sit in on one of your lectures. I understand that you have been known to have standing ovations. Now I know why. --Matt Innis (Talk) 23:18, 20 January 2007 (CST)

Chiropractic and PS

Hey guys, while I don't consider myself an expert in PS, I do consider myself an expert in chiropractic and I suppose as long as it is going to get an honorable mention here, you probably could use my input. Anybody have any verifiabble and reliable sources that state it is pseudoscience? Otherwise, the pejorative nature of the term pseudoscience seems a little harsh. Maybe some clarification at least? --Matt Innis (Talk) 08:37, 18 January 2007 (CST)

Whether it *is* a pseudoscience, is an opinion (which I happen to accept). But as a matter of *fact*, it is often *called* a pseudoscience. For that matter, almost every form of CAM has been so labeled. If you just want a citation, I could always hunt up something from the AMA statements from those trials--Bei Dawei

I do appreciate your opinion, but I am also looking for the reliable and verifiable source that says the same thing. In the trial you mention, the AMA admitted that they covered up research that chiropractic was beneficial, I'm not sure that would make them reliable considering at that they were direct competitors at the time. Anything more recent? I think that if we could at least clarify that it is the old Innate Intelligence concepts that were PS would work for me. --Matt Innis (Talk) 22:34, 18 January 2007 (CST)

Some comments on the article at present

"Pseudoscience--combining the Greek pseudo (false) and the Latin scientia (knowledge)--refers to a variety of theories and claims..." OK, this is total nit-picking, and I may be off-base, so take this with a grain of salt. We bold all article topics. Therefore, to mention rather than use the word in a title, it should also be italicized: Pseudoscience. The problem with that is that it looks jarring; people might think the article is about a book or a movie called Pseudoscience. To avoid this, then, we might change it to read: "Pseudoscience...is any of a variety of theories and claims..." But now the problem is that, clearly, we don't want to use the word, because it's a biased epithet; that's why you wrote "refers to" in the first place. It's best, with such epithets, to mention them, not use them. OK, so we can say: "Pseudoscience...is a matter of some controversy. The word pseudoscience is used to refer to any of a variety of theories and claims..." There must be a better way in any case.

OK, more later; must get pizza. --Larry Sanger 19:47, 18 January 2007 (CST)

Well, I think I'll make a few edits myself--see what you think. --Larry Sanger 20:44, 18 January 2007 (CST)

Uh, okay. You could always use quotation marks.

By the way, have we decided not to hyphenate, or did this happen more or less at random? --Bei Dawei

Compare [1] and [2], and also [3] and [4]

In popular usage, "pseudoscience" may also encompass certain theories and claims related to history (e.g., the idea that the Great Pyramid was built by space aliens) or religion (e.g., Spiritualist mediumship).

I don't think this sentence pays its own way. It may be true, but it isn't worth a special mention in the opening paragraph(s). --Larry Sanger 21:18, 18 January 2007 (CST)

My point is that the category of "pseudoscience" inevitably blurs into subjects that are not strictly scientific. For example mediums, psychics, and fortune-tellers are not merely persons championing unorthodox claims about psi, but often also religious figures. Discussions of prehistory (creationism, Atlantis) inevitably shade into discussions of history. And the same group of skeptics who go after psychics, also go after Graham Hancock. --Bei Dawei

OK, I agree with that. But then why not at the same time say that as a concept it is similar to "pseudo-psychology" or "pseudo-philosophy" or any number of other "pseudo"-field epithets--as well as "revisionist history" and so forth, even "cults" for religion (called "sects" in Europe)? If you're going to have a comparison to accusations of non-genuineness in one field, why not broaden the discussion altogether? Probably a good idea. --Larry Sanger 22:16, 18 January 2007 (CST)

No, no--that's much too broad. Think of it this way. The claim that I am able to levitate is simultaneously religious and scientific. It is difficult to distinguish attacks on one, from attacks on the other. Prayer is a little more iffy, since most pray-ers don't make definite claims for it, but prayer studies seem to belong on the same fringe of science / pseudoscience (and attract the same discourse, on both sides).

I would say that for practical purposes, the category of "pseudoscience" blurs into the "pseudofactual" (or unscholarly) in general. For example, Graham Hancock says that the Great Pyramid is a lot older than people think, based on astro-archaeology. (Circa 10,000 BC it would have lined up with Sirius, or some such.) This attracts criticm not only from geologists and astronomers, but historians and archeologists.

On another subject, I think accusations of "pseudoscience" cover several different categories. Some theories claim to be "scientific" but never had a chance, like Time Cube. Others (like cold fusion, or the hollow earth) once seemed plausibly scientific, but later turned out not to be. --Bei Dawei

I think there are too many lengthy quotes in the philosophy section, which should be paraphrased, perhaps. --Larry Sanger 22:37, 18 January 2007 (CST)

Yeah. Plus a lot of it tends to be much too wordy. Try to be concise rather than chatty. (I mean there, not here!) Bei Dawei

OK I've cut the longer quotes, trimmed others and elsewhere. On the preceding sections we must have proper authoritative citations, to explicit statements by notable, relevant authorities. So for example, is there a serious physicist who has prperly argued the case that the work of Pons and Fleischmann pseudoscience? Here for example is a case of refuted science not pseudoscience, but all science in the end is refuted or superceded. I am not happy with this article merely repeating prejudices expressed on websites and in popular media. Cold fusion is an idea that is apparently flawed, but that it was taken seriously enough to be published in Nature indicates it was taken pretty seriously at the time. Everything that is now known to be wrong can be said to be not plausibly scientific - but the pace of scientific change means that in biology for example, textbooks are out of date in containing numerous errors of fact about as soon as they are published. So this is the issue I have a real problem with. It's just too easy to call anything you don't like pseudoscience, and that sounds like a serious charge, but is it? What exactly do you mean by it? Gareth Leng 12:44, 19 January 2007 (CST)

The truth is that I don't know exactly what pseudoscience is, but I can cite mechanisms that are recurrently used by those who use science in inappropriate ways to make a case. For example, there's the "true but not relevant" category: in support of telepathy, vast numbers of details about brain anatomy and function are given , none that directly support that the brain has a telepathic function, but all that do show that some of the peripheral functions that might be involved in telepathy (or communication with the dead, or...fill in the blank) exist: the brain can register phenomenom occuring outside the body, the brain can process data; there are language centers in the brain, a human can "think out loud" and that during this process there are correlations evident on pet scan and EEG, etc. This kind of deluge of scientific data is typically combined with statements that appeal to the common wisdom: like only a small fraction of the human brain is used.Finally, the point is made that many phenomena in neuroscience are hard to prove, along with the inflexibility of scientists or prejudice of scientists against those who respect the paranormal. So it's not that I'd say pseudoscience is anything you don't like, but it is making a claim and then using science to back it while at the same time avoiding the kind of logical proofs that science demands, instead obscuring the issue with dazzling facts that are not relevant, even if they are true. Nancy Sculerati MD 23:14, 19 January 2007 (CST)

Excellent rewriting of the opening paragraphs, Nancy! --Larry Sanger 11:11, 20 January 2007 (CST)

Yeah, I see the same problem of demarcation. "Pseudoscience" kind of lumps together

(1) fields (astrology, psi research, TCM or chiropractic) which are claimed as science, but rejected by the scientific mainstream. (Notice however that we never call "political science" or "social science" pseudosciences, even when we don't accept them as scientific)

(2) particular claims like Bigfoot (or is he a part of a would-be scientific field called "Cryptobiology"?), of which

(2a) Some never had a chance (like Time Cube), while

(2b) Others were considered, but rejected (like the hollow earth theory)

(2c) Some still have a chance (like Bigfoot)

and we could also distinguish between

(2-i.) Those which were "good science," but happened to be wrong (e.g. ether or aether), and

(2-ii.) Those which were accused of being "bad science" (e.g. cold fusion)

(3) scientific criticisms of extra-scientific claims (such as the efficacy of prayer) which, if true, would have scientific implications.

And I still think "pseudoscience" also sometimes expands to include the "pseudoscholarly."

Maybe the article should make these distinctions. Are categories like these discussed in the philosophy of science literature on pseudoscience? Bei Dawei

I agree wholly with Nancy that what she describes is exactly pseudoscience - it is using the jargon and appearance of science to give something credibility without the rigorous skepticism and logical coherence that we demand as scientists. But this is a feature of the weak thinking of individuals, not characteristics of a field. To say that investigating claims of the paranormal is pseudoscience would be sheer nonsense, it's the mode of investigation not the subject that can be faulted. I understand that there is still work continuing on cold fusion, it may be possible and it may not be possible, there may have been flawed experiments and errors, but so it is in all science. Generally it seems that philosophers of science have foundered over any attempts to make the concept of "pseudoscience" scientific in the sense of being capable of any consistent objective definition. In fact the social sciences have certainly in their time come in for a hammering, from people like Alan Sokalas well as Richard Feynmann. There are several problems: first is the ahistorical fallacy: we might recall that Galileo's first major scientific undertaking was to estimate the dimensions of hell, that Newton regarded his major mission as being to date the origin of creation from analysing the bible and that he was an avid alchemist, that Einstein's theory of relativity was greeted with blistering invective at the time, that scientists of recent times like Margulis, Gould, and McClintock have all experienced quite virulent attacks for work now widely if not universally accepted, and that the double Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling is still attacked for his promotion of vitamin C. Gareth Leng 10:40, 21 January 2007 (CST)

I do like the new introduction (though I wonder whether paragraphing could be wedged in there somewhere).

Galileo, on the dimensions of hell? Heh, I think I read something like that on the internet. Turned out to be endothermic, didn't it?  :-)

On reflection, I think the situation with prayer research (3) is that it is a scientific criticism of scientific claims (prayer effects this or that disease) which happen to have deep extra-scientific implications.

About these header quotes: whenever one leads with a quote, it kind of sets the tone for the whole article or section (like a sort of motto). Often the effect is to make the article appear to endorse the sentiment expressed in the quote. So if we use header quotes at all, they should be balanced, even-handed ones (or else a mix). Bei Dawei