[WikiEN-l] Re: A Friendly Challenge to Sheldon Rampton

[Ray Saintonge]

Sheldon Rampton wrote:

> Ed Poor wrote:
>
>> My impression of "pseudoscience", admittedly rather subjective, is 
>> that it doesn't ever bother to cite facts. Its hypotheses simply 
>> *must* be true. "Junk science", by contrast, does cite facts but does 
>> so selectively, deliberately *ignoring* facts which contradict its 
>> hypotheses.
>
> I think Ed is using an entirely personal definition of "pseudoscience" 
> that doesn't have much in common with the term as it is generally 
> used. The Wikipedia article on "pseudoscience" does a good job of 
> explaining it, but if you want some further explanation, here's how I 
> discussed the term in my book, "Trust Us, We're Experts":
>
>> The very prestige that science enjoys, however, has also given rise to
>> a variety of scientific pretenders--disciplines such as phrenology or 
>> eugenics
>> that merely claim to be scientific. The renowned philosopher of science
>> Karl Popper gave a great deal of consideration to this problem and
>> coined the term "pseudoscience" to help separate the wheat from the
>> chaff. The difference between science and pseudoscience, he concluded,
>> is that genuinely scientific theories are "falsifiable"--that is, 
>> they are formulated
>> in such a way that if they are wrong, they can be proven false
>> through experiments. By contrast, pseudosciences are formulated so
>> vaguely that they can never be proven or disproven. "The difference 
>> between
>> a science and a pseudoscience is that scientific statements can be
>> proved wrong and pseudoscientific statements cannot," says Robert 
>> Youngson
>> in his book Scientific Blunders: A Brief History of How Wrong Scientists
>> Can Sometimes Be. "By this criterion you will find that a surprising
>> number of seemingly scientific assertions--perhaps even many in which
>> you devoutly believe--are complete nonsense. Rather surprisingly this is
>> not to assert that all pseudoscientific claims are untrue. Some of 
>> them may
>> be true, but you can never know this, so they are not entitled to 
>> claim the
>> cast-iron assurance and reliance that you can have, and place, in 
>> scientific
>> facts."
>>      Judged by this standard, many of the "social sciences"--including
>> the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Jung, and others--are actually 
>> pseudosciences
>> rather than the real thing. This does not mean that Freud and
>> Jung were charlatans or fools. Both were creative thinkers with 
>> fascinating
>> insights into the human psyche, but a research methodology that derives
>> its data from the dreams of mentally ill patients is a far cry from the
>> orderly system of measurements that we associate with hard sciences like
>> physics and chemistry.
>
> These points, including Popper's criterion of "falsifiability," are 
> already clear in the Wikipedia article as it currently stands. 
> "Falsifiability" is an excellent conceptual tool. It avoids character 
> assassination and sticks strictly to the question of whether a 
> purported "scientific" claim can be tied to the empiricist methodology 
> that we expect from science.

If all people were consistently on the same page in how they defined 
pseudoscience, our problem would not arise, and even I could accept its 
usage.  As much as some of us may accept to use the word "pseudoscience" 
in the non-pejorative Popper sense, it doesn't stop people with strong 
points of view from using it pejoratively.  Add to that that they also 
prefer to look on falsifiability as somehow being directly linked with 
fraud, and we've got a barrom brawl.  

As I see Popper's doctrine of falsifiability, it is enough to be able to 
imagine the experiment that would prove a hypothesis to be false. 
 Nothing is ever proved true, and a hypothesis only develops credibility 
through a series of failed experiments.  Some experiments may even 
require techniques that have not yet been developed or require equipment 
more sensitive than what already exists.  In astrology, for example, a 
conceivable hypothesis might be that Scorpios are more sexually active. 
 It is easy to imagine an experiment to test this.  The hypothesis may 
eventually be proved false, but as long as that process follows 
scientific means, the epithet "pseudoscience" does not apply. -- at 
least in the example.  

And what can be said of acupuncture.  Here is a practice which has 
developed in an entirely different theoretical and cultural context. 
 Must it be subject to and adopt western cultural bias about science?

What I find most irritating is those people who throw around the word 
"pseudoscience" without any regard or even bknowledge of Popper's 
concepts.  It is often applied to any subject with which they disagree. 
 Because of these attitudes, I prefer to avoid using the word at all.

> "Junk science," by contrast, is quite a different beast. 

Oddly enough, I don't find as much controversy in the concept of junk 
science.  Even though there may be some dispute about the specific 
practices to be included under that rubric, there does not tend to be 
the sort of philosophical and definitional problems found with 
pseudoscience.

Eclecticology