Curated playlist
Pseudoscience
- Alternative medicineFour children in Australia died between 2001 and 2003 after their parents skipped conventional therapy.
- ParapsychologyA successor to J. B. Rhine was caught faking psychic data in 1974. Walter J. Levy confessed and resigned.
- ParanormalCharles Fort never ran a lab experiment, yet he shaped the study of the paranormal. He clipped as many as 40,000 notes.
- PseudoscienceKarl Popper said a real scientific idea must risk being proven wrong. He contrasted Einstein with astrology.
- AcupunctureIn trials, sham acupuncture generally works as well as the real thing. Sometimes it does better.
- AstrologyA 1985 Nature study found 28 astrologers matched birth charts no better than chance.
- AyurvedaAyurveda says you should not suppress a sneeze, or your shoulder might hurt. It is more than 2,000 years old.
- HomeopathyHomeopathy was conceived in 1796 by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann, and it is now classed as a pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine. Its remedies are made by diluting a chosen substance again and again. The final product…
- Flat EarthThe idea that medieval Europeans believed in a flat Earth was invented in the 17th century.
- LysenkoismSoviet leaders once declared genetics illegal. Lysenkoism was a political campaign that wrecked biology.
- Energy (esotericism)Ideas of spiritual energy arose independently in cultures that never shared a common ancestor of thought.