PSEUDOSCIENCE

We list below a few qualities of, or symptoms of, pseudoscience.

This is also a catalog of the many things that can cause mistakes and

error in science. The history of science itself provides examples of

some of these, but we hope that we have learned from the mistakes

of our past history. Few pseudosciences exhibit all of these

characteristics.

1. Pseudoscientists have deficient or superficial knowledge and

understanding of well-established science.

2. Their proposals are therefore based on faulty understanding of

very basic and well established principles of physics and

engineering.

3. The inventors may not be at all aware of these flaws in their

reasoning.

4. They feel that physics is unnecessarily complicated because

physicists are 'blind' to simpler explanations.

5. Some complain that physics is "too mathematical" while others

dazzle the innocent with mathematical gymnastics, mistakenly

thinking that mathematics is physics, not understanding that it

is only a modeling tool.

6. They obsessively focus on a narrow problem without grasping

the powerful interconnectedness of physical theory. Therefore

they may not be aware of the broader implications and

consequences of their ideas.

7. They have inordinate confidence in themselves, plus an almost

religious faith that their feelings, intuitions and hunches

provide a reliable guide to scientific truth.

8. Anyone who fails to see their genius is labeled 'blind'. They

love to compare themselves to innovators of the past whose

ideas were initially rejected. "They laughed at Galileo, didn't

they?"

9. Pseudoscientists are angry that their ideas are ignored by the

scientific community. They behave as if scientists should drop

whatever else it is they are doing to investigate speculative

proposals, even though these proposals are not motivated by

established scientific knowledge, and may be scientifically

implausible..

10. Pseudoscientists have over-reliance on personal testimony of

individuals, and other anecdotal evidence.

11. Pseudoscientists have an obsession with anomalous

observations that seem not to fit established science theory.

12. Pseudoscientists often display an attitude of "If it feels right to

me, it must be right."

13. Pseudoscientists feel that "Nothing is a coincidence."

14. Pseudoscientists have an obsession with finding "patterns" in

data. Scientists must be pattern-seekers too, but it's a mistake

to seek significance in patterns of things that have no possible

connection or relation, such as patterns of stars in the sky

(constellations), tea leaves, or ink blots.

15. Pseudoscientists often commit various abuses and misuses of

statistics.

16. Pseudoscientists are motivated by considerations that lie

outside the scope of science, or have already been thoroughly

discredited. Example, the acupuncturists' acceptance of the

reality of specific "energy pathways" in the human body.

Another example: the creationists' view that science must be in

harmony with their particular interpretation of the King James

translation of the Bible.