Curated category
Pseudoscience
- Alternative medicineAlternative medicine is the name given to practices that aim for the healing effects of medicine but that, by definition, lack biological plausibility…
- ParapsychologyParapsychology is the scientific study of phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, and near-death experiences.
- ParanormalParanormal phenomena sit at the edge of what science can explain, drawing in millions of people worldwide who believe they have encountered something that…
- PseudosciencePseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be scientific yet are inherently incompatible with the scientific method.
- AcupunctureAcupuncture has been called a theatrical placebo. Thin metal needles slide into the skin, and for centuries practitioners have insisted those needles…
- AstrologyAstrology is a practice old enough that its origins predate written history. Markings on bones and cave walls show that human beings were tracking lunar…
- AyurvedaAyurveda holds that sneezing should not be suppressed, because to do so might give rise to shoulder pain. That one idea, precise and strange in equal…
- Flat EarthFlat Earth is a conception of our planet as a plane or disk, and for most of human history it was simply how the world worked.
- LysenkoismIn 1923, Ivan Pavlov announced that conditioned reflexes could be inherited in mice. Soviet ideologists ignored his later withdrawal of this claim and used…
- Energy (esotericism)Energy (esotericism) sits at an uncomfortable crossroads: a word borrowed from physics, stripped of its scientific meaning, and placed at the center of…