Talk:Pseudoscience

Comment

This is potentially a very controversial article, trimmed from a Wikipedia article that has long suffered from disputes, mainly arising from its use as a vehicle to attack particular subjects or fields regarded as discreditable by some, but as respectable by others.

Articles should not seek to promote or to disparage particular beliefs, only to accurately report the opinions of notable authorities when argued carefully in strong, verifiable sources. This article is about the concept of Pseudoscience, and the difficulties of distinguishing pseudoscience from "real" science, and should not get sidetracked into judgements on any area of science or alleged pseudoscience except insofar as is essential to illuminate the problems encountered in trying to make a rigorous distinction. In doing so, the article should not appear either to endorse or to rebutt the proposition that any given area is "pseudoscientific", as a key issue in dispute is whether the term has more than perjorative content. As an on-line encyclopedia, sources should, wherever possible, be verifiable online (e.g. in PubMed abstracts), and some of the present sources could be improved upon in this regard especially. However some major sources are prominent books by Popper, Kuhn and others, and their use is unavoidable; key elements of their content may be available as quotations in secondary sources on-line; if so please add these. The article is still very raw, and I think that neither the views of Popper or those of Kuhn are treated adequately. There should be a section on "popular" conceptions of what constitute pseudoscience; this will be difficult to write neutrally. Gareth Leng 16:20, 28 October 2006 (CDT)

Yes, it is for that reason I was surprised it was selected as one of the pilot articles. Getting hands dirty early I see. :) I'm not sure quoting a dictionary as the first line of an encyclopedia article is something we want to encourage doing either. -- Andrew Lih 04:54, 29 October 2006 (CST)

Good point, and fixed?Gareth Leng 08:33, 29 October 2006 (CST)

What concerns me a little is the relatively detailed discussion of 1 & only 1 subject in the last part, psychology, As the article reads, it could be judged as intended to imply that

this is where most of them are found. It may well be that a great many are to be found there, but a discussion of several fields would seem more reasonable. If there's need for a "pseudoscience in psychology" article, so be it, but that is really going to get controversial, It is not my view, but I've known people to say it includes the entire subject. DavidGoodman 23:01, 1 November 2006 (CST)

I think you're absolutely right, and that section is inappropriate and should just be deleted.Gareth Leng 03:31, 3 November 2006 (CST)

Excellent work! This article has transformed from a wholly pejorative embarrassment to a truly education experience. Makes me proud to be a part of it, but all I could find was a missing period;) Good job Gareth. --D. Matt Innis 07:54, 12 December 2006 (CST)

This article is a little weird. A lot of it really belongs under "philosophy of science." It goes on and on about that, but I saw only a handful of references of well-known pseudo-sciences. Wouldn't the reader be better served by a list of oh, five to ten representative ones, along a description of any debate over them that seems especially noteworthy?

I nominate: astrology (gotta have that one), alternative medicine (maybe with subsidiary examples like chiropractic, prayer healing, or acupuncture), ancient astronauts, and ESP / psychic research. Oh, and please trim down the other stuff, and make it not so preachy. And can we get some kind of timeline showing various skeptical campaigns? I know there were anti-Spiritualism activists in between the World Wars. Bei Dawei

Yes, this article is intended as a serious part of the phlosophy of science, and to address the question of whether the term pseudoscience has any "scientific" content at all. It is not intended to pass judgement on whether any particular subject has valid foundations. The list you give all have problems; astrology is not really capable of being confused with science so is scarcely pseudoscience except as a mere pejorative, it has been used extensively as an example, and analysing it as an example has shown how even in this clear cut case of utter rubbish, it's hard to make an objective case distinguishing it from other areas of legitimate science. Chiropractic is a licensed and regulated profession with in some areas a good record of efficacy, and a basis that is not really pseudoscience more "fuzzy" science; acupuncture theory isn't scientific at all in the conventional sense, but again acupuncture has a good record of efficacy in some conditions; prayer healing and spiritualism as religion are outside the domain of science; astronaut stuff is light popular rubbish, and is not treated seriously enough for any authoratative criticism to be citable. The main skeptical campaign that I know of was the AMA crusade against chiropractic which ended in the Wilk case, where the Supreme Court ruled that the AMA had operated a dishonest campaign in defense of its members interests that involved suppressing evidence of the effectiveness of chiropractic. This is covered in the chiropractic article in detail, but is not really relevant here as the issues in the end were about anti competitive selective use of evidence by the AMA, not about weaknesses in the foundations of chiropractic.

Overt debates about the pseudoscientific nature of particular areas don't really feature much in the serious literature except in the context of the demarkation problem (within philosophy), except in some areas of psychology, where these are largely internal debates. Partly, this is because many critics of particular areas simply do not use the term pseudoscience, partly because of the lack of an effective operational definition of pseudoscience, and partly because the pejorative overtones detract from objectivity.

The areas where there has been a lot of serious debate about the pseudoscientific status of a field are 1) intelligent design 2) psychoanalysis and psychotherapies 3) IQ science

Other areas include the social sciences, and nutritional science. I think though that serious critiques belong in their respective articles, not here, which is about the concept of pseudoscience Gareth Leng 06:22, 17 January 2007 (CST)