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Pseudoscience, Circumstantial Assumptions and Biased Group Thinking.

Native

Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
OP Subject: Pseudoscience, Circumstantial Assumptions and Biased Group Thinking.
In the video below, Sabine Hossenfelder goes through different aspects of the concept of pseudoscience and accepted science.

Sabine Hossenfelder “How I learned to love pseudoscience”.


Sabines Abstract:

As a scientist, I spend a lot of time fighting pseudoscience. But I have come to think that pseudoscience is actually good for science, because it helps us to improve our methods. In this video I explain how pseudoscience led to the development of single-blind trials, double-blind trials, and random controls.

Video Contents:
0:00 Intro
0:24 Pseudoscience as a Byproduct of Science
2:12 From Mesmerism to Single Blind Trials
5:13 From Homeopathy to Double Blind Trials
8:04 Skeptical Societies
9:23 From Telepathy to Random Controls
10:30 The Fight Isn't Over
12:00 Sponsor Message

Besides Sabines examples here, what other modern scientific branches do you think contains pseudoscientific elements and methods?
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
I certainly don't think economics is pseudo-science,
but it does infect economics. I base this upon a friend
who noticed in his PhD program. There was a great
reliance upon mathematic structures without adequate
consideration of the cromulence of the premises.
There appeared a risk that economists could tweak
assumptions to support personal preferences.

I like the podcast, Freakonomics, because they
challenge assumptions. I don't claim that they have
the inerrant truth...but they pursue challenge of
assumptions. This is good.
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member
Well, if any are not sure: :oops:

venn-crap.png
 

PureX

Veteran Member
Besides Sabines examples here, what other modern scientific branches do you think contains pseudoscientific elements and methods?
"Scientism" is a cult-like ideology based on a kind of pseudoscientific worship.
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member
It is diagrams like this that lead to dismissing research onto certain areas such as the large amount of reincarnation research and the actual impact of prayer on those who pray.
Well it at least places most of the things that haven't any substantial proofs into some relationship with others. The two you mention still don't apparently pass muster in the scientific community. And I'm sure when there is sufficient proof for any they will be excised from the diagram.
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
Well it at least places most of the things that haven't any substantial proofs into some relationship with others. The two you mention still don't apparently pass muster in the scientific community. And I'm sure when there is sufficient proof for any they will be excised from the diagram.
The diagram, being expressed in binary fashion, ignores the arena of "data but not sufficient data" and thus fosters automatic rejection of new information.
 

cladking

Well-Known Member
Besides Sabines examples here, what other modern scientific branches do you think contains pseudoscientific elements and methods?

Everything everyone believes is a superstition and this includes the opinions of Peers. Indeed, it is especially the opinion of Peers because by definition they are the group of people who share the same beliefs about a given subject. The only true knowledge is visceral knowledge.

This isn't to say that no scientist knows anything but his beliefs are superstition. Some branches of what people think are science is pure quackery and this even pervades some fields that can make accurate prediction. For instance saying that 80% of people will be helped by a medication and .05% will die is not what I mean by "prediction". If you can't identify to which group an individual belongs then it's not a prediction. If you're among those who die you'll agree.

Some fields are pure quackery because they can make no predictions at all. They can't explain the evidence except for facile and superficial descriptions. They tend to discard evidence as irrelevant over and over.
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member
The diagram, being expressed in binary fashion, ignores the arena of "data but not sufficient data" and thus fosters automatic rejection of new information.
Perhaps it does. Although new information will I hope always be looked at impartially, and there are so many who do have agendas - so as to prove some aspect of their belief system perhaps. Certainly some of these have very little or no evidence against some that might have circumstantial evidence though.
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Besides Sabines examples here, what other modern scientific branches do you think contains pseudoscientific elements and methods?
This is a bit like asking “I know that lots of people cheat at poker and at cards more generally. What other games do you think contain cheating elements or methods?” It’s almost precisely the wrong question. Lots of people play games and lots of games are designed to be fair. But this doesn’t prevent people from playing unfairly (cheating) whilst attempting to make their game or their strategy resemble fair play, nor does it prevent people from making up a game or rules for some game that are inherently unfair but appear fair.
Likewise, pseudoscience is in a very real sense defined by the ways it seems to involve actual elements and methods from genuine scientific inquiry, practice, and principles. In other words, much like games and players as opposed to rigged contests and cheaters, one doesn’t ask what elements of the scientific endeavor contain elements of pseudoscience. Cheaters and rigged games are designed to look like honest players in fair games. Pseudoscience is—and pseudoscientists are—characterized by the ways in which they make what they do resemble what it is that scientists do. So the correct questions involve how actual scientific practice works and how pseudoscientific practice can play on these methods and elements from the scientific endeavor the way cheaters can with games or unfair play.
Another analogy is parody. There are lots of movies and songs that are written in mock imitation of other songs, movies, or more general genres (the Naked Gun series, Weird Al, Mockumentaries, etc.). One doesn’t start with the mockery and then ask what other forms of art or artists contain elements of parody.
Pseudoscience is basically by definition a distortion of good scientific practice and principles. To some extent, basically by this very definition all science must contain “elements” of pseudoscience because that’s how pseudoscience works: twisting good scientific principles and practice so that pseudoscientists appear to be engaging in actual scientific inquiry rather than merely appearing to do so.
 

Native

Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
Likewise, pseudoscience is in a very real sense defined by the ways it seems to involve actual elements and methods from genuine scientific inquiry, practice, and principles. In other words, much like games and players as opposed to rigged contests and cheaters, one doesn’t ask what elements of the scientific endeavor contain elements of pseudoscience.
Well, I certainly do that in order to discern the plausibility of a theory. If scientists uncritically invent add hoc ideas (for instants "dark matter") to former assumptions, all red warning lights are blinking in my mind.
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Well, I certainly do that in order to discern the plausibility of a theory.
One can certainly ask whether a theory is well-supported by evidence (which takes different forms depending upon the field). But the question you asked should be reversed in two ways. First, one is better served asking what ways pseudoscience uses (what appear to be) elements and methods of the scientific endeavor. Second, one asks not so much what elements or methods from the sciences are actually used in pseudoscience, but rather how pseudoscience attempts to appear to use these elements and methods in order to appear scientific whilst actually deliberately misusing established methods and relying upon a variety of other schemes to appear scientific in order to bolster claims and the manner in which they were "established".
There is all the difference in the world between things like bad science or metaphysics masquerading as empirically-grounded theoretical physics on the one hand, and pseudoscience on the other. For example, I regard most of the "research" in so-called string theories at best mathematical research and at worst extremely poor attempts to make leaps from unfounded formal assumptions (that are assumed because of their similarity to a more general framework in more established but still speculative physics, and also assumed rather than postulated because the mathematics that it would take for such postulates to be well-formulated doesn't exist yet) to theories that often cannot even in principle make contact empirical findings (except via the assumption of existing theories to which they add nothing but nonetheless claim to "predict" in the same way that e.g., most string theories "predict" supersymmetry because they depend upon it to work at all).
Likewise, there is outright fraud in the sciences, there are entire fields that rely heavily on a very troublesome statistical inference framework that is in no small part a cause of various replication/reproducibility crises across certain sciences, and more.
Some work in some of these might qualify as pseudoscience, but for the most part this term is better reserved for "research" that attempts to mimic actual scientific practices and principles, usually for the sake of a non-scientific audience who cannot adequately judge the results, in order to lend credence not just to their claimed results but to the nature of their inquiry.
As an example, one need only watch shows about hunting ghosts or paranormal investigations more generally. The general nature of pseudoscience, as opposed to the larger category of bad research, is that the appeal to scientific veneer is generally not much more sincere than a stage magician showing you that that the box is empty and there is no possible means of escape. It is an illusion. So, for example, a common trick is for some alternative hypothesis is proposed in order for it to be rejected an by this sleight-of-hand it is claimed that the only remaining answer must be the "default" hypothesis, i.e., a ghost or spiritual presence.

It is true that the demarcation problem has a lot of gray areas and that the delineation between pseudoscience on the one hand and bad research, research that isn't scientific but philosophical or metaphysical or mathematical or historical, fraud, and so forth on the other hand can be a murky one.
It is also true that looking at pseudoscience in order to understand how it is pseudoscience, as Sabine Hossenfelder does (and many others have as well) is instructive and important- it was a central goal of Popper's notions of falsifiability, for example).
But to ask what scientific fields contain elements of a practice defined in a large part by the use and misuse of scientific methods and elements is a waste of time. Pseudoscience isn't even pseudoscience if it doesn't contain at least some elements and methods from the sciences, and therefore all sciences by definition contain elements in common with pseudosciences (simply because on is an attempt to appear like the other).

If scientists uncritically invent add hoc ideas (for instants "dark matter") to former assumptions, all red warning lights are blinking in my mind.
Yes, but you don't really have much of an understanding of the nature of physics or cosmology or how evidence in either field is tested, but rather prefer to adopt a pseudoscientific approach to a would-be cosmology that uses terms from legitimate physics to appear to be scientific to non-physicists in ways that convince only non-physicists or others who are misled by claims about electromagnetism that don't even begin to address the ways in which E&M breaks down as more than an approximation made by those asserting it to be the explanation behind various phenomena shown in youtube clips.
 

Native

Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
One can certainly ask whether a theory is well-supported by evidence (which takes different forms depending upon the field). But the question you asked should be reversed in two ways.
Which is exactly what I do when I question a method which adds more assumptions to the assumption of a contradicted theory. (Celestial motions in galactic realms where "dark matter" was added, thus taking on a pseudoscientific method instead of revising/skipping the theory).
Second, one asks not so much what elements or methods from the sciences are actually used in pseudoscience, but rather how pseudoscience attempts to appear to use these elements and methods in order to appear scientific whilst actually deliberately misusing established methods and relying upon a variety of other schemes to appear scientific in order to bolster claims and the manner in which they were "established".
As you said above, you have to look at this from both sides. In timestamp 1:27 Sabine talks of historic ideas which have been taken as "pseudoscience" in its own time, but by closer examinations have become consensus science.
For example, I regard most of the "research" in so-called string theories at best mathematical research and at worst extremely poor attempts to make leaps from unfounded formal assumptions (that are assumed because of their similarity to a more general framework in more established but still speculative physics, and also assumed rather than postulated because the mathematics that it would take for such postulates to be well-formulated doesn't exist yet) to theories that often cannot even in principle make contact empirical findings (except via the assumption of existing theories to which they add nothing but nonetheless claim to "predict" in the same way that e.g., most string theories "predict" supersymmetry because they depend upon it to work at all).
Agreed on this.

I said:
If scientists uncritically invent add hoc ideas (for instants "dark matter") to former assumptions, all red warning lights are blinking in my mind.
Yes, but you don't really have much of an understanding of the nature of physics or cosmology or how evidence in either field is tested, . . .
I´m always having a good laugh when some debaters make such statements on behalf of their own consensus biases :)
but rather prefer to adopt a pseudoscientific approach
This is simply called "a person having a different and critical approach to a specific consensus idea"- which I take is alright to have in all scientific branches?
that uses terms from legitimate physics to appear to be scientific to non-physicists in ways that convince only non-physicists or others who are misled by claims about electromagnetism that don't even begin to address the ways in which E&M breaks down
You seem to be an expert in E&M, so please explain how all atoms in the Universe can work in basic elementary stages according to the electromagnetic laws and magnetic motions.
 

tas8831

Well-Known Member
Everything everyone believes is a superstition and this includes the opinions of Peers. Indeed, it is especially the opinion of Peers because by definition they are the group of people who share the same beliefs about a given subject. The only true knowledge is visceral knowledge.

This isn't to say that no scientist knows anything but his beliefs are superstition. Some branches of what people think are science is pure quackery and this even pervades some fields that can make accurate prediction. For instance saying that 80% of people will be helped by a medication and .05% will die is not what I mean by "prediction". If you can't identify to which group an individual belongs then it's not a prediction. If you're among those who die you'll agree.

Some fields are pure quackery because they can make no predictions at all. They can't explain the evidence except for facile and superficial descriptions. They tend to discard evidence as irrelevant over and over.
Like your claims re: "broccas area" [sic] and how we 'decide' to grow one. Pure quackery.

Or your claim that all biological things happen instantaneously - in less than a nanosecond. You actually refuted that claim when you allowed for 'up to 2 generations.'

But even that is stupid nonsense.
 
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