Pseudosciences are practises that masquerade themselves as science but have little or no scientific rigour or cohesion to them. They claim to be factual and scientific, yet do not adhere to scientific methodology and principles; notably the scientific principle of falsifiability.
It can be difficult for the non-scientist to discern whether something being claimed as scientific actually is or not. Fortunately pseudoscience has many recognisable features that are distinct from genuine science. These features are outlined below. Whilst not every feature will be common to every form of pseudoscience, any claimed scientific practise that displays at least some of these features is increasingly likely to be pseudoscientific.
Features of pseudoscience:
One reason that theories from pseudoscience are vague and untestable is
that the language used by the proponents is far too vacuous itself. This
often results in a ‘theory’ that is so conceptually slippery
it becomes difficult to identify what is actually being argued – or
how one might test it. Due to their nebulous content, such practices also
nearly always hide all sorts of circular reasoning errors. Over-complex
words, phrases and over-long sentences are employed in an attempt to ‘look’
scientific and intelligent.
Indeed, in pseudoscience the more scientific-type language employed, the
more ‘plausible’ it appears to be. However, all this really
accomplishes is confusion. Poorly defined terms like ‘energy’
‘resonance’ ‘quantum’ ‘nano’ ‘dimensions’
are all used with no useful explicit definitions provided. They are meant
to look scientific, to look respectable in order to add weight to an idea
which is in reality both implausible and improbable. Poor writing often
reflects poor thought and poor understanding. Whenever one encounters flowery
and verbose language it is likely the authors / speakers do not fully understand
what they are talking about. Verbose language is used to fill-in the gaps
of knowledge by making it sound as if something profound and insightful
is being said, when in fact the sentence rarely goes anywhere!
An increasing trend in contemporary pseudoscience is to hijack aspects from mainstream science in an attempt to appear more scientific. This is usually done with very new areas of science where the public's understanding (and that of scientists themselves), is low. Recent examples include areas like quantum mechanics and string theory from the field of Physics. Paranormal theories that hijack these areas (in an attempt to make their poor ideas look more plausible) are riddled with huge misunderstandings over these concepts. Conceptual hijacking plays on the public’s lack of understanding and presents a twisted version of science that bares little reality to the truth.
Many people report a common perception of thinking about someone, when
the phone then rings and the caller is the person they were thinking of.
Is this strong evidence for a psychic ability between these people? The
answer is no. It reflects a selective bias in memory and reason. Although
we can remember the instances when this does happen (as they can be striking)
we rarely remember the instances when it is not the person we were thinking
of. Our memory is biased to place an emphasis on the ‘hits’
and ignore the ‘misses’.
In a similar manner, researchers can sometimes concentrate only on that
evidence that is consistent with the argument being developed (the hits)
and ignore other evidence which contradicts it (the misses). This is known
as the confirmation bias (where we are biased to only notice observations
that confirm our assumptions). The confirmation bias relies on a positive
biased focus and weighting towards only that evidence which is consistent
with the current belief or world-view, and a negative bias to ignore results
that challenge the view. It may be impressive to see a dowser find water
in a single trial, but this on its own does not mean dowsing works. When
we run tests and see that on many trials the dowser failed to locate water
the scant and periodic instances when they are successful no longer looks
impressive.
Metaphors and analogies are essential to science and theory. Complex and more abstract areas of science rely particularly on metaphor and analogy to add clarity to knowledge and to communicate that knowledge. This is perfectly legitimate and indeed, to some extent, unavoidable. In science, analogies and metaphors may emerge as useful ways to think about, describe, and explain objective facts and evidence. For example, psychologists have employed the metaphor of visual selective attention being like a ‘spotlight’ illuminating the relevant information out there in the world from the surrounding darkness of all that we ignore. In many respects this has proved a very fruitful metaphor guiding thinking in this area of study. The problem here is not the use of analogies or metaphor in scientific thinking, but the clear abuse of them.
The problem with pseudoscience is its use and over-reliance on metaphor as an argument in and of itself. Rather than employ metaphors and analogies as illustrations of scientific knowledge, pseudoscience employs analogies to deduce new conclusions and propose alternative truths. At this point it no longer becomes a mere illustration; it becomes an argument by analogy (or metaphor; Thouless, 1968).
Quite often, the richer and more intuitively appealing the analogy, the more true the claim being made appears to be. This can occur to such an extent that the analogy becomes a potent mind-trap and dominates all thinking on this issue. This is an error. Scientific arguments should be based on evidence, not analogy. The role of analogy in science is for illustration and communication – it is not for basing a claim of provisional truth. All analogies provide a degree of similarity to that which it is being applied to – this is why they are recruited as an illustration. However, there is also much dissimilarity as well and this is often missed (again another form of selection-bias). Ultimately, every analogy and metaphor will cease to work so it is crucial that any argument is not solely dependent on the analogy for its claim as a truth. As Thouless (1968) goes on to point out:
“Even the most successful analogies in the history
of science breakdown at some point. Analogies are a valuable guide as to
what facts we may expect, but are never final evidence as to what we shall
discover. A guide whose reliability is certain to give out at some point
must obviously be accepted with caution. We can never feel certain of a
conclusion which rests only on analogy and we must always look for more
direct proof”
(Thouless, 1968; pp142-143)
In some cases the analogy has no direct relevance or implication for the case being argued (the fallacy of the argument by irrelevant analogy; a special case of the non-sequitur type of fallacy). For example, modern creationists and advocates of intelligent design use analogies drawn from human design and engineering to argue for similar patterns in nature. The implication by such a comparison is that a designer must have been involved in the creation of the universe. Here the fallacy is to use a metaphor and analogy of a ‘known’ designer (i.e., something humans have designed and built) to prove the case of a divine designer. This type of comparison is an irrelevance. In addition, a closer examination often reveals that most pseudoscientific ideas are almost totally purely metaphorical in nature, form and content. That is to say, there are no reliable data, no firm facts, or evidence – just metaphor. This basically amounts to little more than a nice story – though not necessarily a correct or true one.
A good example of an over-reliance on metaphor and analogy is the ‘stone-tape’ metaphor that parapsychologists have used to explain ghostly sightings. According to the stone-tape account, human ‘energies’ and actions are somehow recorded in the immediate atmosphere and stored in the stone of a building or room, which can then be played back ‘somehow’ in ‘someway’ as a ghostly manifestation at a later date. The metaphor here is the notion of the making and playing back of recordings. However, despite its popularity, there is no scientific evidence to support this idea – and there never has been. Indeed, it is not at all clear as to how such recordings could be made by stone, and how they could be played back. All we are told is that it can occur ‘somehow’ in ‘someway’ - even though no plausible physical mechanism exists. This is an example of an over-reliance on a metaphor to support a non-scientific idea. The problem here is the analogy and metaphor itself can blind the untrained mind to the lack of actual facts and evidence present in the argument.
“The mere fact that the argument is in the form
of an analogy is often enough to force the immediate irrational acceptance.
There seems to be no other explanation of the extraordinary extent to which
otherwise intelligent people become convinced of highly improbable things
because they have heard them supported by an analogy whose unsoundness should
be apparent to an imbecile”
(Thouless, 1968; pp146)
Anecdotes as evidence.
Although anecdotal evidence has its place in scientific theory: no theory should be solely dependent on anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence is a poor and unreliable source of evidence. For example, it is important that any theory of memory can explain the anecdotal experience of forgetting, but this should not just be based on anecdotes of forgetting, but on empirical demonstrations of the failure to retain information under controlled conditions. This leads to reliable and valid data on which to build a scientific account for the object of study. Similarly, theories of language need to be able to explain tip-of-the-tongue experiences (where we feel as if what we want to say is just failing to reach our ability to actually say it), slips of the tongue experiences (where we say a related word instead of the one we meant). However, the anecdotal experience of these instances does nothing to explain why and how they actually occur. These experiences are the products of psychological processes; however these products do nothing to explain the underlying processes themselves. Knowing that we have the phenomenal experience of consciousness, does not explain what consciousness is, or how it occurs.
One major problem with pseudoscience is that it places a strong and selective emphasis on anecdotes, and anecdotes alone, as support for its claims and theories. In reality, personal anecdotes alone are not a viable argument against data, facts, theory, empirical observation, and objective measurement. Lots of anecdotes do not support a case any more than a few anecdotes do. This is because all anecdotes are provided via a process which is itself fallible and prone to many sources of error. Anecdotal evidence has its place in scientific theory - but it is no contender for a source of information which can provide a mechanistic understanding the mental universe. Contrary to the popular saying, data is not the plural of anecdote.
Pseudoscience is characterised by a complete lack of viable explicit mechanisms of action for the object being studied. Even if we were to accept some instances as fact, there is still no clear idea how these phenomena would work or how they could work. There is no clear and plausible proposed mechanism for how apparitions are supposed to be recorded in stone, no clear mechanism for how astrology is supposed to influence human behaviour, no clear mechanism for how the mind could survive bodily death or how liquids can hold a memory (as is claimed in homeopathy).
This lack of explicitness is related to some of the other characteristics
listed above. For example, the fact that an idea is nebulous in turn makes
it difficult to test such ideas (i.e., cannot be falsified). Furthermore,
an idea can be nebulous due to verbose language (see above). However, even
when these factors are not a major concern there is still a lack of a workable
explicit mechanism. Even the best and clearest explanations of homeopathy,
apparitions, alternative health, and psychic phenomena still fail badly
at outlining a specific mechanism for how they are supposed to work. Although
the lack of any mechanism is not, in itself, evidence against the existence
of such phenomena occurring, the lack of any plausible mechanism waiting
verification is not particularly convincing evidence for it being genuine
either.
There are many areas of experimental science where mechanisms of action
are not well understood – however, under these circumstances there
will be some factual and accepted knowledge that provides a framework for
thinking. In addition, although a mechanism may not be known, candidate
mechanisms will be well specified to a level that guides future experimentation
and thinking. What counts in science is the ability for a provisional explanation
to feasibly account for the phenomena via a proposed mechanism that is more
explicit than any other. An explicit mechanism should also generate clear
predictions and these predictions should be testable (and falsifiable).
The mechanism should say why the phenomenon occurs, what the principal components
are, how it works, and what it does.
In contrast to scientific mechanisms and models, Parapsychology has been actively investigating paranormal and psychic phenomena since the 1940s – and yet despite the decades that have passed, no reliable evidence, or explicit and plausible mechanism has ever been proposed that suggests paranormal phenomena are a real veridical objective event.
Summary.
The defining feature of science is that hypotheses and theories that are put
forward must be capable of being tested and shown to be false should they actually
be so - this is the scientific criterion of falsifiability. As our examples
above show, the tell-tale signs of pseudoscience are ploys that lead their claims
away from being falsifiable.
Pseudoscience then, can be described as theories, methodologies or practises that claim to be scientific but which are presented in such a manner that they can not be falsified by empirical testing.