Pseudoscientific thinking has been explained in terms of psychology and social psychology. 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 the common adherence to pseudoscientific thinking. According to Beyerstein (1991) humans are prone to associations based on resemblances only, and often prone to misattribution in cause-effect thinking.

(Source: Wikipedia) 

Popularity: 18%

Neurologists and clinical psychologists are concerned about the increasing amount of what they consider pseudoscience promoted in psychotherapy and popular psychology, and also about what they see as pseudoscientific therapies such as Neuro-linguistic programming, EMDR, Rebirthing, Reparenting, and Primal Therapy being adopted by government and professional bodies and by the public. They state that scientifically unsupported therapies used by popular or folk psychology might harm vulnerable members of the public, undermine legitimate therapies, and tend to spread misconceptions about the nature of the mind and brain to society at large. Norcross et al. have approached the science/pseudoscience issue by conducting a survey of experts that seeks to specify which theory or therapy is considered to be definitely discredited, and they outline 14 fields that have been definitely discredited.

After over a century of dialogue among philosophers of science and scientists in varied fields, and despite broad agreement on the basics of scientific method, the boundaries between science and non-science continue to be debated. This is known as the problem of demarcation.

Many commentators and practitioners of science, as well as supporters of fields of inquiry and practices labeled as pseudoscience, question the rigor of the demarcation, as some disciplines now accepted as science previously had features cited as those of pseudoscience, such as lack of reproducibility, or the inability to create falsifiable experiments.

A field, practice, or body of knowledge might reasonably be called pseudoscientific when (1) it is presented as consistent with the accepted norms of scientific research; but (2) it demonstrably fails to meet these norms, most importantly, in misuse of scientific method.

Subjects may be considered pseudoscientific for various reasons; Popper considered astrology to be pseudoscientific simply because astrologers keep their claims so vague that they could never be refuted, whereas Thagard considers astrology pseudoscientific because its practitioners make little effort to develop the theory, show no concern for attempts to critically evaluate the theory in relation to others, and are selective in considering evidence. More generally, Thagard stated that pseudoscience tends to focus on resemblances rather than cause-effect relations.

The standards for determining whether a body of knowledge, methodology, or practice is scientific can vary from field to field, but involve agreed principles including reproducibility and intersubjective verifiability. Such principles aim to ensure that relevant evidence can be reproduced and/or measured given the same conditions, which allows further investigation to determine whether a hypothesis or theory related to given phenomena is both valid and reliable for use by others, including other scientists and researchers. It is expected that the scientific method will be applied throughout, and that bias will be controlled or eliminated, by double-blind studies, or statistically through fair sampling procedures. All gathered data, including experimental/environmental conditions, are expected to be documented for scrutiny and made available for peer review, thereby allowing further experiments or studies to be conducted to confirm or falsify results, as well as to determine other important factors such as statistical significance, confidence intervals, and margins of error. Fulfillment of these requirements allows others a reasonable opportunity to assess whether to rely upon the reported results in their own scientific work or in a particular field of applied science, technology, therapy, or other form of practice.

The National Science Foundation stated that, in the USA, “pseudoscientific” beliefs became more widespread during the 1990s, peaked near 2001 and mildly declined since; nevertheless, pseudoscientific beliefs remain common in the USA. As a result, according to the NSF report, there is a lack of knowledge of pseudoscientific issues in society and pseudoscientific practices are commonly followed. Bunge (1999) states that “A survey on public knowledge of science in the United States showed that in 1988 50% of American adults [rejected] evolution, and 88% [believed] astrology is a science’”.

Author: Abhishek Lodha

It has been estimated that approximately 75% of the population in the world today, follow astrology and listens to what it has to say. Since the ancient ages, humans have looked to the heavens for guidance. Astrology is nothing but the study of the correlation between the positions and the movements of the planets, the stars and other celestial bodies and events on earth. It is the firm belief of the astrologers that the placement and the movements of the heavenly bodies - the Sun, Moon, and the nine planets of the galaxy, at the time of birth of an individual have a direct influence on his/her character.

Shark cartilage is falsely promoted as a cancer cure on the basis of an alleged lack of cancer in sharks. According to Ostrander et al (2004) this practice has led to a continuing decline in shark populations, and, perhaps more importantly, patients have been diverted from otherwise effective cancer treatment. They suggest that “the evidence-based mechanisms of evaluation used daily by the formal scientific community should be added to the training of media and governmental professionals”.

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Some criticisms that lead to the accusation of pseudoscience are also true to some extent of some new genuinely scientific work. These include:
claims or theories unconnected to previous experimental results
claims which contradict experimentally established results
work failing to operate on standard definitions of concepts
emotion-based resistance, by the scientific community, to new claims or theories

Protoscience is a term sometimes used to describe a hypothesis that has not yet been adequately tested by the scientific method, but which is otherwise consistent with existing science or which, where inconsistent, offers reasonable account of the inconsistency. It may also describe the transition from a body of practical knowledge into a scientific field. By contrast, “pseudoscience” is reserved to describe theories which are either untestable in practice or in principle, or which are maintained even when tests appear to have refuted them.

There are examples of presently accepted scientific theories that were once criticised by some as being pseudoscientific. The transition is marked by increasingly scientific scrutiny and specificity within the field and an increased level of evidence to support the theory. Continental drift theory was once considered pseudoscientific (Williams 2000:58), but is now part of mainstream science especially since the paleomagnetic evidence was discovered that supported plate tectonics.

Fields can also repudiate notions that some consider to be pseudoscientific in favour of more conventional element(s) of their field. For example, Atwood (2004) suggested that “osteopathy has, for the most part, repudiated its pseudoscientific beginnings and joined the world of rational healthcare.”