Main Features of Pseudo-Science

Yesterday I confessed my addictions to woo and how I realized it was all a pack of lies and nonsense. It's been hard to learn to think more critically and skeptically about pseudo-science (the fancy grownup term for woo). Unless someone teaches you how to think critically, there's really no way to easily pick out the slick pack of lies and shiny bullshit for what it is.

For instance, I just found out last month that Airborne is not only pseudo-scientific and completely useless, but can also be harmful. And here I was, just the day before, trying to get my husband to take it for an oncoming cold. Sigh.... The battle never ends.

For me, my bullshit radar with religion is very sensitive. Then again, if it's about an invisible man in the sky, it's complete nonsense, so that's pretty easy. But when it comes to products on the market, any kind of scientific sounding news or claim, I am less sure about what to accept or what to reject.

A couple of days ago, I was listening to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast and they took the time to talk about how to spot pseudo-science for what it is. Since the list is so important and helpful, I took the time to write it down for all of us. Hopefully this will make it much easier:

Some Main Features of Pseudo-Science by Dr. Steven Novella on the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. Episode 164, September 10, 2008.

• Hostility towards scientific criticism. So if you make a scientific claim and the scientific community calls you out on it, you complain that you’re being picked on, or that there’s a conspiracy against you. In fact, that’s just how good science is done, under scrutiny and criticism.


• Making a virtue out of ignorance. Someone with no background in science says that’s a good thing.  In fact, the best science is the most creative, and the way to get creative is to be well educated and knowledgeable about what you’re investigating.


• Heavy reliance on testimony and anecdotal evidence rather than specifically referenced research. Very applicable in the medical realm.


• Fundamental principles are often based on a single case. For example the founder of chiropractic thought he healed someone of deafness by manipulating a man’s neck, when in fact the hearing pathway never goes anywhere near the neck.


• Claims often promise simplistic solutions to often complex problems or questions. The ”theory of everything” is a huge red flag here. There is no one simple scheme or answer to explain all that there is. So the more someone tries to explain with less, the more skeptical you should be of it.


• Starting with the conclusion and working backwards. So if you have a fixed conclusion already, then you can just retrofit the information to suit your conclusion. So then you can cherry-pick all the information that supports your conclusion while ignoring all the information that refutes it. This is the heart and soul of pseudo-science. The key to science is that you have to move forward. You start with a hypothesis and you revise your predictions based on observations of your testing and experiments. If you start with the answer, you are not doing science.


• Having a fixed belief. Never changing a hypothesis. So for example, straight chiropractic is saying the same thing they were saying a hundred years ago. Homeopathy has never changed what it says, never takes in new information and modifies how it works. Creationism is a fixed belief. Fixed beliefs are not science.


• Techno-Babble. Using scientific language but ultimately meaningless jargon. Language is used properly when it increases the precision and makes things less ambiguous. If you listen to a pseudo-scientist, they use big words to add complexity without increasing precision is a red flag. Or using words that are made to confuse or impress.


• Using bold or absolute statements rather than conservative qualifying statements that a careful scientist uses.


• You can’t prove me wrong. Attempting to shift the burden of proof away from the claimant. This is backwards. If it’s your theory the burden of proof is on you to prove it correct.


• Overturning established science left and right for your one theory. This is just incredibly implausible.


• Making vague references to data. Scientists have shown, there is data etc, but nothing people can check up on or look at themselves.


• Failure to consider all hypotheses. Cherry-picking the information again. Limiting the hypotheses to the one they want and a few token supporting ones, so that it looks like it’s well received. But when the list is prematurely or falsely limited, they’ve rigged the game.