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Science and Pseudoscience (Pseudoscience by Wikipedia (Indicators of the…

- - - - Healthcare
        
        Medical science develops and evaluates treatments according to evidence of their efficiency. Pseudoscientific activities in this area give rise to inefficient and sometimes dangerous interventions. Healthcare providers, insurers, government authorities and – most importantly – patients need guidance on how to distinguish between medical science and medical pseudoscience.
      - Expert testimoney
        
        It is essential for the rule of law that courts get the facts right. The reliability of different types of evidence must be correctly determined, and expert testimony must be based on the best available knowledge. Sometimes it is in the interest of litigants to present non-scientific claims as solid science. Therefore courts must be able to distinguish between science and pseudoscience.
      - Environmental policy
        
        In order to be on the safe side against potential disasters it may be legitimate to take preventive measures when there is valid but yet insufficient evidence of an environmental hazard. This must be distinguished from taking measures against an alleged hazard for which there is no valid evidence at all. Therefore, decision-makers in environmental policy must be able to distinguish between scientific and pseudoscientific claims.
      - Science education
        
        The promoters of some pseudosciences (notably creationism) try to introduce their teachings on school curricula. Teachers and school authorities need to have clear criteria of inclusion that protect students against unreliable and disproved teachings.
  - - - The phrases “demarcation of science” and “demarcation of science from pseudoscience” are often used interchangeably, and many authors seem to have regarded them as equal in meaning.
      - In their view the task of drawing the outer boundaries of science is essentially the same as that of drawing the boundary between science and pseudoscience.
      - This picture is oversimplified. All non-science is not pseudoscience, and science has non-trivial borders to other non-scientific phenomena, such as metaphysics, religion, and various types of non-scientific systematized knowledge.
      - “Unscientific” is a narrower concept than “non-scientific” (not scientific), since the former but not the latter term implies some form of contradiction or conflict with science.
      - “Pseudoscientific” is in its turn a narrower concept than “unscientific”. The latter term differs from the former in covering inadvertent mismeasurements and miscalculations and other forms of bad science performed by scientists who are recognized as trying but failing to produce good science.
    - - Many writers on pseudoscience have emphasized that pseudoscience is non-science posing as science.
      - In order for something to be assumed as pseudoscientific, an activity or a teaching has to satisfy the following two criteria: (1)
        it is not scientific, and (2) its major proponents try to create the impression that it is scientific.
    - - There are phenomena that satisfy both criteria above, but are yet not commonly called pseudoscientific. One of the clearest examples of this is fraud in science.
      - Isolated breaches of the requirements of science are not commonly regarded as pseudoscientific. Pseudoscience, at it is commonly conceived, involves a sustained effort to promote teachings different from those that have scientific legitimacy at the time. This explains why fraud in science is not usually regarded as pseudoscientific.
      - Most philosophers of science, and most scientists, prefer to regard science as constituted by methods of inquiry rather than by particular doctrines. This, however, may be as it should since pseudoscience often involves a representation of science as a closed and finished doctrine rather than as a methodology for open-ended inquiry.
    - - Sometimes the term “pseudoscience” is used in a wider sense. As an example, doctrines that conflict with science are sometimes called “pseudoscientific” in spite of not being advanced as scientific.
      - It includes other pseudoscientific doctrines those that “purport to offer alternative accounts to those of science or claim to explain what science cannot explain, whether they are correct or not, such as clairvoyant's predictions.
      - Pseudoscience and anti-science are sometimes difficult to distinguish. Promoters of some pseudosciences (notably homeopathy) tend to vacillate between opposition to science and claims that they themselves represent the best science.
    - - Various proposals have been put forward on exactly what elements in science or pseudoscience criteria of demarcation should be applied to.
      - Proposals include that the demarcation should refer to: (1) a research program, (2) an epistemic field or cognitive discipline, i.e. a group of people with common knowledge aims and their practices, (3) a theory, (4) a practice, (5) a scientific problem or question, and (6) a particular inquiry.
      - Pseudoscience has scientific pretensions, and such pretensions are associated with a person, not a theory, practice or entire field. However, it is the rationality and critical attitude built into institutions, rather than the personal intellectual traits of individuals, that distinguishes science from non-scientific practices such as magic.
    - - Some authors have maintained that the demarcation between science and pseudoscience must be timeless. If this were true, then it would be contradictory to label something as pseudoscience at one but not another point in time.
      - It is an essential feature of science that it methodically strives for improvement through empirical testing, intellectual criticism, and the exploration of new terrain.
      - A standpoint or theory cannot be scientific unless it relates adequately to this process of improvement, which means as a minimum that well-founded rejections of previous scientific standpoints are accepted. The demarcation of science cannot be timeless, for the simple reason that science itself is not timeless.
      - Three major reasons why demarcation is sometimes difficult: (1) science changes over time, (2) science is heterogenous, and (3)established science itself is not free of the defects characteristic of pseudoscience.
  - - - Around 1930, the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle developed various verificationist approaches to science.
      - The basic idea was that a scientific statement could be distinguished from a metaphysical statement by being at least in principle possible to verify.
      - This standpoint was associated with the view that the meaning of a proposition is its method of
      - However, this is not historically quite accurate since the verificationist proposals had the aim of solving a distinctly different demarcation problem, namely that between science and metaphysics.
    - - Popper (1962) refuted verifiability as a criterion for a scientific theory or hypothesis to be scientific. Instead, he proposed as a criterion that the theory be falsifiable, or more precisely that “statements or systems of statements, in order to be ranked as scientific, must be capable of conflicting with possible, or conceivable observations”.
      - Popper presented this proposal as a way to draw the line between statements belonging to the empirical sciences and “all other statements – whether they are of a religious or of a metaphysical character, or simply pseudoscientific”
      - A (theoretical) sentence, is falsifiable if and only if it logically contradicts some (empirical) sentence that describes a logically possible event that it would be logically possible to observe.
      - Logical falsifiability is a much weaker criterion than practical falsifiability. However, even logical falsifiability can create problems in practical demarcations.
    - - In normal science, the scientist's activity consists in solving puzzles rather than testing fundamental theories. In puzzle-solving, current theory is accepted, and is required to define the puzzle.
      - Since antiquity, astronomy has been a puzzle-solving activity and therefore a science. If an astronomer's prediction failed, then this was a puzzle that he could hope to solve for instance with more measurements or with adjustments of the theory.
      - In contrast, the astrologer had no such puzzles since in that discipline “particular failures did not give rise to research puzzles, for no man, however skilled, could make use of them in a constructive attempt to revise the astrological tradition”. Therefore, according to Kuhn, astrology has never been a science.
    - - A theory may be scientific even if there is not a shred of evidence in its favour, and it may be pseudoscientific even if all the available evidence is in its favour. That is, the scientific or non-scientific character of a theory can be determined independently of the facts”
      - The demarcation criterion should not be applied to an isolated hypothesis or theory but rather to a whole research program that is characterized by a series of theories successively replacing each other.
      - Progress in science is only possible if a research program satisfies the minimum requirement that each new theory that is developed in the program has a larger empirical content than its predecessor. If a research program does not satisfy this requirement, then it is pseudoscientific.
      - A theory or discipline is pseudoscientific if it satisfies two criteria: (1) the theory fails to progress and (2) the community of practitioners makes little attempt to develop the theory towards solutions of the problems, shows no concern for attempts to evaluate the theory in relation to others, and is selective in considering confirmations and disconfirmations”
      - Demarcation could be based on the requirement that a scientific discipline be adequately integrated into the other sciences. The various scientific disciplines have strong interconnections that are based on methodology, theory, similarity of models etc.
    - - Science is characterized by an “ethos”, i.e. spirit, that can be summarized as four sets of institutional imperatives.
        
        (1) Universalism, asserts that whatever their origins, truth claims should be subjected to preestablished, impersonal criteria. This implies that the acceptance or rejection of claims should not depend on the personal or social qualities of their protagonists.
        
        (2) Communism, says that the substantive findings of science are the products of social collaboration and therefore belong to the community, rather than being owned by individuals or groups.
        
        (3) Disinterestedness, imposes a pattern of institutional control that is intended to curb the effects of personal or ideological motives that individual scientists may have.
        
        (4) Organized scepticism, implies that science allows detached scrutiny of beliefs that are dearly held by other institutions. This is what sometimes brings science into conflicts with religions and other ideologies.
    - - Belief in authority
        
        It is contended that some person or persons have a special ability to determine what is true or false. Others have to accept their judgments.
      - Nonrepeatable experiments
        
        Reliance is put on experiments that cannot be repeated by others with the same outcome.
      - Handpicked examples
        
        Handpicked examples are used although they are not representative of the general category that the investigation refers to.
      - Unwillingness to test
        
        A theory is not tested although it is possible to test it.
      - Disregard of refuting information
        
        Observations or experiments that conflict with a theory are neglected.
      - Built-in subterfuge
        
        The testing of a theory is so arranged that the theory can only be confirmed, never disconfirmed, by the outcome.
      - Explanations are abandoned without replacement
        
        Tenable explanations are given up without being replaced, so that the new theory leaves much more unexplained than the previous one.
- - - - A number of basic principles are accepted by scientists as standards for determining whether a body of knowledge, method, or practice is scientific. Experimental results should be reproducible and verified by other researchers.
      - These principles are intended to ensure experiments can be reproduced measurably given the same conditions, allowing further investigation to determine whether a hypothesis or theory related to given phenomena is valid and reliable.
      - All gathered data, including the experimental or environmental conditions, are expected to be documented for scrutiny and made available for peer review, allowing further experiments or studies to be conducted to confirm or falsify results.
    - - Statements, hypotheses, or theories have falsifiability or refutability if there is the inherent possibility that they can be proven false. That is, if it is possible to conceive of an observation or an argument which negates them.
      - Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true.
    - - Originality
        
        The tet and research done must present something new to the scientific community
      - Detachment
        
        The scientists' reasons for practicing this science must be simply for the expansion of their knowledge. The scientists should not have personal reasons to expect certain results
      - Universality
        
        No person should be able to more easily obtain the information of a test than another person. Any personal factors should not be factors in someone's ability to receive or perform a type of science.
      - Skepticism
        
        Scientific facts must not be based on faith. One should always question every case and argument and constantly check for errors or invalid claims
      - Public accessibility
        
        Any scientific knowledge one obtains should be made available to everyone.
    - - pseudoscience is primarily distinguishable from science when it is less progressive than alternative theories over a long period of time, and its proponents fail to acknowledge or address problems with the theory
      - the categories of "belief fields" and "research fields" to help distinguish between pseudoscience and science, where the former is primarily personal and subjective and the latter involves a certain systematic method
    - - distinction between science and nonscience is neither possible nor desirable. Among the issues which can make the distinction difficult is variable rates of evolution among the theories and methods of science in response to new data.
      - Pseudoscience has no scientific meaning and is mostly used to describe our emotions
      - The term 'pseudoscience' has become little more than an inflammatory buzzword for quickly dismissing one's opponents in media sound-bites
  - - - Common cognitive errors from personal experience
      - Erroneous sensastionalistic mass media coverage
      - Sociocultural factors
      - Poor or erroneous science education
    - - The psychology of pseudoscience attempts to explore and analyze pseudoscientific thinking by means of thorough clarification on making the distinction of what is considered scientific vs. pseudoscientific.
      - The human proclivity for seeking confirmation rather than refutation (confirmation bias), the tendency to hold comforting beliefs, and the tendency to overgeneralize have been proposed as reasons for pseudoscientific thinking.
      - Humans are prone to associations based on resemblances only, and often prone to misattribution in cause-effect thinking
      - Individuals lacking scientific literacy are more susceptible to wishful thinking, since they are likely to turn to immediate gratification powered our default operating system which requires little to no effort. This system encourages one to accept the conclusions they believe, and reject the ones they do not.
  - - - It becomes pseudoscientific when science cannot be separated from ideology, scientists misrepresent scientific findings to promote or draw attention for publicity, when politicians, journalists and a nation's intellectual elite distort the facts of science for short-term political gain, or when powerful individuals of the public conflate causation and cofactors by clever wordplay. These ideas reduce the authority, value, integrity and independence of science in society.
    - - pseudoscience can be a threat to society and considers that scientists have a responsibility to teach how to distinguish science from pseudoscience.
      - Pseudosciences such as homeopathy, even if generally benign, are used by charlatans. This poses a serious issue because it enables incompetent practitioners to administer health care.