Posted on 03/16/2019 6:52:06 PM PDT by Simon Green
Most people do not have a good understanding of real science, and can therefore be taken in if a claim is presented in science-y language. Thus purveyors of medical pseudoscience will freely use terms like energy, vibrations, frequencies, resonance and so on in describing their interventions but none of these terms are being used in the precise way that a physicist would use them.
Many pseudoscientists will also refer to the latest ideas in real science to imply that their claims are derived from the latest cutting-edge theories. One example would be claiming that homeopathy is consistent with quantum mechanics despite the fact that, in reality, homeopathy is not consistent with any accepted scientific theory and, furthermore, there is no convincing evidence that it has any therapeutic value over and above that of a placebo.
This highlights another feature of pseudoscience: its supporters choose to completely ignore all evidence which undermines their claims, often providing spurious reasons for doing so. These reasons often include the following: (a) your so-called science is too crude to measure the effects involved, (b) your test was based upon a flawed understanding of the pseudoscientific theory, and (c) you have to get the conditions just right for the effects to occur and you failed to do so. In fact these reasons are simply in-built loopholes that allow the pseudoscientist to avoid any possibility of claims being falsified.
Some pseudosciences are inherently non-falsifiable. A good example would be so-called Scientific Creationism. To allow the dismissal of all scientific evidence suggesting that the earth is much older than the few thousand years that Young Earth Creationists believe, the claim is made that God created the earth with that evidence of a prior existence already in place (e.g., fossils in rocks, light in transit from distant stars, rings in trees in the Garden of Eden). Such inherent non-falsifiability is a guarantee that one is dealing with a pseudoscience.
Finally, pseudosciences are popular so because they often provide people with beliefs that they would like to be trueanything from miracle cures to the existence of a benevolent God to life after death and much else besides. Confirmation bias, the most ubiquitous and powerful of all cognitive biases, combined with poor critical thinking skills does the rest.
I only pseudobelieve in pseudoscience.
Because the media says it’s settled.
Because they are looking for truth and they think that science gives it to them.
Science doesn’t look for “truth”. Science looks for verifiable and falsifiable empirical results. Truth is left for the mystics and the priests. — Captain Compassion
Because they can’t fit in with anybody else. I watched a documentary (OK, I could only stomach half of it) about the Flat-Earthers. Ever seen footage of their conference? It’s like the bar scene from Star Wars. They’re 40 year olds that live in their mothers’ basements and have odd-sided dice rolling around on the floorboards of their cars. I’m sure a good percentage of them have asked a girl to marry them on the jumbo-tron at a sporting event and got rejected.
There’s always that 5% that will believe anything. 5% of everything is huge and it’s the same 5% that are VERY vocal, low-IQ people typically are. That’s why YouTube is so infected with 9-11 truther and contrail BS.
Indiana Jones: "If it's truth you're interested in, Dr. Tyree's Philosophy class is right down the hall."
On what basis does any sentient being accept a given proposition as true?
I don’t believe in anything having to do with a flat earth,I only believe that our earth may have considerably less mass and less gravity at some points.
Most of my bs theories have to do with the very distant past,not the present state of the world.
Also I do believe in Underground Oceans at the Center of the Earth,but it is stuff we can’t really measure or observe.
**Because the media says its settled.***
What was “settled” 100 years ago was thrown out fifty years ago and replaced with a new “settled science”.
What was settled fifty years ago is now “Outdated” and a new “settled science” has replaced it, and you MUST believe it!
Problem is, many of the oldsters never got the word their “settled science” was no longer valid. Same for the not-so-old of fifty years ago.
Wonder what new thing will they come up with in the next twenty five years that will be absolute in the minds of science, till replaced again.
I still remember the scientific claim there were CANALS on Mars, and submerged cities off the coast of Peru.
How things suddenly change and the old claims are covered up so fast you now have to dig to find them, and even then, people will not believe such claims were ever made in the first place.
Conservation of Energy
Conservation of Momentum
Laws of Thermodynamics
Laws of Logic
If A implies B, not B implies not A
I find Quantum Mechanics weird, but a useful construct
Ive placed myself in the Hands of Jesus
I must attend to His Word
Almost everything else comes under useful approximations,
awaiting further confirmatory data, or not
Well, considering that the author can’t even accurately describe creationism I suspect the remainder of the article is equally farcical so I shan’t bother to read it.
No creationist scientist that I know of claims that God created the world with pre-existing fossils. The existence of fossils in and of themselves is not evidence for evolution or an old earth. I have no idea what "rings in trees" refers to. Does he mean that is evidence for millions of years?
Some people do think that God created "light on the way" from distant stars, but they aren't necessarily scientists. Evos tend not to distinguish creationist scientists from creationists with no scientific background (wonder why that is). Creationist scientists generally reject "light on the way".
Speaking of theories that are non-falsifiable, the theory of evolution is exhibit A for that. It has lots of ad hoc modifications needed to explain all sorts of unexpected things. A defining characteristic of pseudo science is ad hoc modifications.
People believe in whatever reinforces their already-held concepts. That’s why the Left desperately wants to continue to control education.
You see, you are in disharmony.
The throat is the gateway to the lung.
Tonsillitis, adenoiditis, is, in Chinese medical
terms, an invasion of heat and wind.
How know? It all hangs together in a beautiful, logical poem of the real.
It produces the ultimate ah ha experience because our beings are made for truth.
Good courses in, and close reading of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, geology and the Bible.
“Some pseudosciences are inherently non-falsifiable. A good example would be so-called Scientific Creationism.”
Or evolution, for that matter.
There is a huge market for pseudoscience and woo.
That ostensibly legitimate science is now pseudoscientific is not a good thing.
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