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