Pseudoscience

• 1. Introduction

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  Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be scientific yet are inherently incompatible with the scientific method. That gap between the appearance of science and its reality has consequences that reach far beyond philosophy classrooms. Anti-vaccine campaigns grounded in pseudoscientific claims have persuaded large numbers of parents not to vaccinate their children. Pseudoscientific theories about racial and ethnic classifications have contributed to racism and genocide. And according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a list of pseudosciences today includes creationism, astrology, homeopathy, Kirlian photography, dowsing, ufology, ancient astronaut theory, Holocaust denialism, Velikovskian catastrophism, and climate change denialism. What makes something pseudoscientific rather than merely wrong? Who first drew that line, and why is the word itself still contested? And how does a belief system convince so many intelligent people that it is science when it is not?

• 2. Naming a Problem

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  James Pettit Andrews used the term in 1796 in reference to alchemy, making that one of the earliest recorded appearances of the word. The French physiologist Francois Magendie applied it in 1843, calling phrenology "a pseudo-science of the present day." A year later, in 1844, an article in the Northern Journal of Medicine offered a more formal gloss: that kind of innovation which pronounces what has been recognised as a branch of science to have been a pseudo-science, composed merely of so-called facts connected together by misapprehensions under the disguise of principles. By the 20th century the label was used pejoratively to describe explanations claimed as scientific but lacking reliable experimental support. The word derives from the Greek root pseudo, meaning false, joined to the English word science, which traces to the Latin scientia, meaning knowledge. That etymology captures the core complaint precisely: not ignorance, but false knowing, which is a different and more dangerous thing.

• 3. Drawing the Line

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  Karl Popper, writing in the mid-20th century, placed falsifiability at the centre of the debate. A statement has falsifiability if there is some possible observation that could prove it wrong. Popper used astrology and psychoanalysis as his examples of pseudoscience, and he used Einstein's theory of relativity as his example of genuine science. The relativity case was vivid: Einstein's gravitational theory predicted that light must be attracted by heavy bodies such as the Sun, precisely as material bodies were attracted. Because the brightness of the Sun prevented direct observation, photographs had to be taken during an eclipse and compared with photographs taken at night. Popper noted that if the predicted effect were definitively absent, the theory would simply be refuted. That risk is what made it scientific. Adler's and Freud's theories, by contrast, could absorb any human behaviour as confirmation. Popper judged that the observation always fitting the theory was not a strength but a weakness. Carl Sagan illustrated the same point in The Demon-Haunted World with the image of an invisible dragon in a garage: whatever test one might devise, a reason could always be given for why it did not apply, leaving the claim permanently beyond refutation.

• 4. Philosophers in Disagreement

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  Imre Lakatos argued that scientists regard the successful theoretical prediction of stunning novel facts, such as the return of Halley's comet or the gravitational bending of light rays, as what separates good scientific theories from pseudoscientific ones. He tried to reconcile Karl Popper's falsificationism with what he saw as its own refutation by history, noting that all important theories have been surrounded by an ocean of anomalies which, on a strict falsificationist view, would require the theory's outright rejection. Paul R. Thagard used astrology as a case study and proposed a different marker: astrology has not been updated or added any explanatory power since Ptolemy, has ignored the precession of equinoxes in astronomy, and its practitioners have remained uninterested in critically evaluating the theory against alternatives. Thagard intended his criteria to also identify witchcraft and pyramidology as pseudoscientific while leaving physics, chemistry, biology, and archaeology on the scientific side. Not everyone accepted that the demarcation problem had a clean solution. Larry Laudan argued the term has no scientific meaning and functions mainly to do emotive work. Richard McNally characterised it as an inflammatory buzzword and proposed a more practical question: how do you know your intervention works, and what is your evidence?

• 5. Warning Signs

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  Robert K. Merton, writing in 1942, identified five norms that characterise real science: originality, detachment, universality, scepticism, and public accessibility. Any enterprise that violates these norms he considered non-science. Across subsequent decades researchers compiled a longer checklist of red flags. Terence Hines identified astrology as a subject that has changed very little in the past two millennia, an example of the failure to progress. The Woozle effect names a specific trap: an accumulation of uncritical secondary reports that repeat excessive or untested claims from earlier publications without contributing new empirical investigation, each citation lending the original claim an unearned authority. The Galileo gambit describes a rhetorical move in which pseudoscientific proponents compare themselves to Galileo and his persecution by the Roman Catholic Church. The reversed burden of proof places the obligation to disprove a claim on the sceptic rather than on the person making the assertion, which is essentially impossible given that it is nearly impossible to prove a universal negative. In 1978, Paul Thagard added that pseudoscience is primarily distinguishable from science when it is less progressive than alternative theories over a long period of time and its proponents fail to acknowledge or address problems. The 2018 book The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe by Steven Novella and colleagues listed hostility to criticism as one of pseudoscience's major features.

• 6. Why People Believe

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  A 1981 report by Singer and Benassi traced pseudoscientific beliefs to at least four sources: common cognitive errors from personal experience, erroneous sensationalistic media coverage, sociocultural factors, and poor or erroneous science education. A 1990 study by Eve and Dunn found pseudoscientific belief being promoted by high school life science and biology teachers. Michael Shermer's theory of belief-dependent realism holds that the brain functions as a belief engine, scanning sensory data for patterns and meaning, and generating cognitive biases through inferences made without logic and based on instinct. Lindeman notes that social motives, including the need to comprehend self and world, to have a sense of control, to belong, and to maintain self-esteem, are often more easily fulfilled by pseudoscience than by scientific information. Pseudoscientific explanations are generally processed experientially rather than rationally, and experiential thinking regards an explanation as valid if it is personally functional, satisfying, and sufficient. Recent empirical research has shown that individuals who hold pseudoscientific beliefs generally show lower evidential criteria, requiring significantly less evidence before reaching conclusions. The U.S. National Science Foundation reported that pseudoscientific beliefs in the United States became more widespread during the 1990s, peaked around 2001, and decreased only slightly thereafter, with surveys indicating about a third of adult Americans consider astrology to be scientific.

• 7. Real-World Costs

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  Andrew Wakefield published a study claiming that a combination of gastrointestinal disease and developmental regression, often seen in children with autism spectrum disorder, occurred within two weeks of receiving vaccines. The study was eventually retracted by its publisher, and Wakefield was stripped of his licence to practice medicine. Yet the anti-vaccine movement it helped fuel had already persuaded large numbers of parents not to vaccinate their children, with ongoing public health consequences. The Ministry of AYUSH in the Government of India has faced significant criticism for funding systems that lack biological plausibility and are either untested or proven ineffective, with drugs launched without rigorous pharmacological studies or meaningful clinical trials. Robert O. Young, a practitioner who promoted alkaline water and an alkaline diet despite no empirical backing, was sentenced to three years in jail in 2017 for practicing medicine without a licence. On the 8th of December 2016, journalist Michael V. LeVine described how websites like Natural News flood social media with dangerous anti-pharmaceutical, anti-vaccination, and anti-GMO pseudoscience that puts millions at risk of contracting preventable illnesses. In Russia in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the government spent significant budgetary funds on programs studying torsion fields, the extraction of energy from granite, cold nuclear fusion, and astrological and extrasensory research across multiple ministries. The Clean Water project adopted as a United Russia party project included a program budget for 2010-2017 that exceeded $14 billion, with energy extraction from a vacuum listed among priority areas by a senior member of the Security Council.

• 8. Racism as Pseudoscience

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  Frank Collin, a self-proclaimed Nazi who publishes under the name Frank Joseph, is described as one of the most predominant pseudoscientific writers, with works covering Atlantis, extraterrestrial encounters, and Lemuria, and frequent white supremacist undertones. He posited that European peoples migrated to North America before Columbus and that all Native American civilisations were initiated by descendants of white people. Sander Gilman, writing in Newsweek, described the pseudoscience community's anti-Semitic worldview this way: Jews as they appear in this world of pseudoscience are an invented group of ill, stupid or stupidly smart people who use science to their own nefarious ends. Other groups are painted similarly in race science, as it used to call itself: African-Americans, the Irish, the Chinese and any and all groups that you want to prove inferior to yourself. Early-twentieth-century eugenic pseudoscience went on to influence public policy directly, including the Immigration Act of 1924 in the United States, which sought to prevent immigration from Asia and parts of Europe. The journal Nature has published multiple editorials in recent years warning researchers that extremists are looking to abuse their work, particularly population geneticists and those working with ancient DNA. An article in Nature titled Racism in Science: The Taint That Lingers traces how that history of abuse continues to shadow the field.