Pseudo-science

Improper use of scientific thinking or practice, false or fake science – and having an implication of ‘false science’ pretending to be the genuine article.

Applying the label ‘pseudo-scientific’ to a claim or subject suggests a misrepresentation of the way in which the claim or subject has or is being handled by practitioners or proponents, or an assumption on the part of adherents that their treatment of the claim is scientific in character, when there are either serious doubts on that score or sceptics or critics have demonstrated (or it is clear that it is) otherwise.

Some commentators condemn the term and assert that it is used pejoratively for claims or subjects which opponents find unacceptable – whether or not such use occurs the term should not be applied in that manner, and is not here applied so.

However, it might be useful to think of terms such as ‘pseudo-science’ as shorthand for what is really at the heart of the matter: whether evidence has been adduced for the particular claim or hypothesis, and if it has, whether this evidence provides good support – and is this support sufficient for verification?† This is the same standard which should be met by any claim promoted as, purporting, or implied to be scientific in nature, standing or falling on the evidence – whether or not the claims seem weird, offbeat, or respectable. In deciding about evidence for and against claims this happens against a background of what is already known. On this basis the examples listed below fail dismally.

As a corollary, critically: if the evidence produced to date for a claim suggests little or no credible support (with little prospect of verification), and that there has been a real opportunity for adequate support to be generated – and especially if contradictory evidence is yielded – an identification of the claim as pseudo-scientific is not unreasonable when the enthusiasts’ for the subject deny or disregard the state of the evidence and the prospects for support, and continue to recklessly ‘push’ the claim or hypothesis under a “scientific guise”. In the event that the interest of supporters were to wane, any particular failed claim would simply be consigned to the dustbin of history with no more than a wimper. If the claim’s supporters are subsequently able to muster genuine and substantial support, we should welcome the claim’s re-admittance into the scientific realm. Remember the ‘junk science’ cold fusion fiasco: the extravagant and failed claims of the early-nineteen nineties would be happily swept aside if compelling, peer-reviewed evidence (and independent replications) were now to be presented showing that the projected room-temperature process is a real-world phenomenon. Note that this has the effect of discriminating pseudo-sciences from newly-formed proto-science fields.