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Both the hard and soft sciences have problems with pseudoscience

Forgive me if I have missed coverage of this in the article, but the strong opposition to adding Holocaust denial to this article/subject leads me to think we need to deal with this topic in this article. I suspect that we tend to think of pseudoscience only from the background of denial of the facts in the hard sciences.

Because "Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge" (Sagan), we need to get away from focusing on the "denial of facts" common to all pseudoscientific claims. It's more about "wrong thinking" (logical fallacies) than "wrong facts". The wrong facts of pseudohistory (as in holocaust denial) are often completely different than the wrong facts of pseudoscience (like homeopathy and chiropractic "vertebral subluxation"), but the logical fallacies are the same, ergo both types are pseudoscientific.

I think much of the problem is related to various demarcation issues, differing terminologies, and the confluence and similarities of the logical fallacies that occur in both pseudohistory and pseudoscience. Also, how does one define science? There are several types: hard, soft, natural, social, etc. I am not a good person to do this, as I am not an expert at discussing all the epistemological angles of this stuff. My background is in the hard sciences, specifically medical science, not the soft/social sciences.

So we need coverage (maybe one good paragraph would be enough) of pseudoscience as wrong thinking, per Sagan. If something involves wrong thinking, it might be categorized as pseudoscience. That should be our inclusion criteria. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:15, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes I would agree. The demarcation problem is a central thing here, and I think we should provide several different methods of it from the most salient thinkers on the subject.Good sources for such a paragraph would include:

• Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World
• Michael Shermer's Science and Pseudoscience: Revisiting the Demarcation Problem and The Skeptic encyclopedia of pseudoscience
• Brian Regal's Pseudoscience : a critical encyclopedia
• Massimo Pigliucci's Philosophy of pseudoscience : reconsidering the demarcation problem
• Martin Gardner's Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science
• Scott Lilienfeld's Science and pseudoscience in clinical psychology
• William Williams' Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience : From Alien Abductions to Zone Therapy
• Ben Goldacre's Bad Science

— Shibbolethink 18:50, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

It seems to me that the way to mention these subjects would be to take Pseudo-scholarship out of the ==See also== section and explain its relationship to this narrower subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:47, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

External links

There are ten entries in the "External links". Three seems to be an acceptable number and of course, everyone has their favorite to add for four. The problem is that none is needed for article promotion.

• ELpoints #3) states: Links in the "External links" section should be kept to a minimum. A lack of external links or a small number of external links is not a reason to add external links.
• LINKFARM states: There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to the external links section of an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Misplaced Pages. On articles about topics with many fansites, for example, including a link to one major fansite may be appropriate.
• WP:ELMIN: Minimize the number of links.

The "External links" section needs trimming. -- Otr500 (talk) 08:45, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

We're not in linkfarm territory as the links obviously don't dwarf the article. Which links are you proposing to remove and why? VQuakr (talk) 17:18, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Reply: I apologize for any sarcasm that might seem evident, and I mean this in the nicest of ways, but I cannot (or will not) discuss or debate with someone that would argue that blue is not really blue. Your reply causes me to be flabbergasted. Nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links, unequivocally doesn't mean 6, 8, or 10. See: ELNO #1 Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article. In other words, the site should not merely repeat information that is already or should be in the article. Links that may be used to improve the page in the future can be placed on the article's talk page. As an afterthought; everything looks great. -- Otr500 (talk) 02:10, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Not what I said but ok. VQuakr (talk) 21:14, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Three or four may be a typical number, but there is no rule saying that 10 can't be offered. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:49, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Reverts

Hi. I tried to add relevant information to the topic of pseudoscience but I have been reverted a couple of times. Said info is about a case where mainstream experts ridicule someone for advocating handwashing. For some reason I keep getting reverted. The latest revert has an edit summary with a completely distorted interpretation of the proper part of the reference (maybe User:Black Kite only read the title of the citation). Even though the main topic of the reference is about masks, in its body of text the situation of Dr. Semmelweis is narrated. For example it states, "But fate did not reward Semmelweis for his intelligent and humane work. He was harassed and despised by his peers, professionally destroyed by office politics, ignored by the medical community and ultimately driven insane."

The relevance of this regarding the topic of pseudoscience is clear and illustrates that sometimes the community of experts at large is driven by pseudoscientific beliefs and not by science. According to the current lead of this Pseudoscience page, "Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method.". The WP:NPOV policy states, "All encyclopedic content on Misplaced Pages must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic."

I request that the content be reinstated. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 21:27, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

@Thinker78: Semmelweis had a genial intuition. But that belongs in the context of discovery. In the context of justification, no, he wasn't persuasive, so what he posited did not count as as science, simply because he failed to convince the scientific community, aka organized skepticism.

You should know that science is never about WP:THETRUTH, but about epistemologically responsible knowledge.

While there is a Romantic opinion that adversities and strenuous opposition drive one insane, I don't think that's how psychosis works. tgeorgescu (talk) 04:38, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Thinker78, what happened in prescientific days should not be conflated with what happens now. Accusations of "pseudoscience" in old times are misplaced and somewhat off-topic here. Anti-maskers are not like Semmelweis in any sense. They don't understand the basics of science, pathology, or medicine. If you want to be classified in the same category as Semmelweis, you must understand ALL of that BETTER than the best scientists and physicians. Only then do you have the right to a place in the pantheon of great minds.

This discussion reminds me of this Sagan quote: "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." Anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, and anti-climate changers are Bozos. They are ignoramuses. If they want to convince us or other scientists, they must be able to prove they understand and explain ALL of the current evidence, and then intelligently prove it is deficient and their explanations are better. Do they ever do that? Never. They just display their ignorance every single time they open their mouths. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:09, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

@Valjean, you stated, "Anti-maskers are not like Semmelweis in any sense". I think you epically misinterpreted the referenced article. I mean its title is self-evident for goodness sake, "Today's anti-mask activists have much in common with anti-handwashing doctors of the 1840s". Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 01:06, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

User:Thinker78, sorry for creating confusion. I wasn't directly addressing the article. I haven't read it and only saw what was mentioned in this thread. I was discussing more about the principles involved and the "reasoning" we frequently encounter with believers in pseudoscience. They think the PS ideas pushed by their favorite guru or alt med therapist will be proven true, and that the mainstream medical community is like those who rejected Semmelweis. Read in that context, maybe my comment will make more sense to you. Anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, and anti-climate changers think their POV will win out, and that all the mainstream scientific and medical world are like those who opposed Semmelweis. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:00, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Delayed acceptance of a new belief until the underlying mechanism is understood isn't pseudoscience. See also plate tectonics and paradigm shift. VQuakr (talk) 18:45, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

It was not just delayed acceptance. It was actually as I pointed out, "statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method". Dr. Semmelweis was "harassed and despised by his peers, professionally destroyed by office politics, ignored by the medical community". Thinker78 (talk) 01:09, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

That's a pretty crappy source; it only mentions Semmelweis as an analogy, only mentions pseudoscience in the byline, and is Salon.com. Yes it sucks that Semmelweis was maltreated but bullying isn't pseudoscience either. VQuakr (talk) 03:02, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Unwarranted faith in empiricism can amount to little more than dogma. It must be acknowledged that here is little in the way of evidence to date that demonstrates that an empirical approach can eliminate the dangers inherent in human interpretation and subjectivity. The pervasiveness of medical denialism, and well-known historical cases, such as the rejection of Semmelweiss's empirical evidence of how to reduce infections in surgicalprocedures, seem to highlight this problem. Thinker78 (talk) 05:57, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

@Thinker78: African Health Sciences: Makerere Medical School seems like a borderline source indeed. Compare with the perspective in PMC1743827: Semmelweis made salient observations and identified a significant need for improvement in the process of patient care. There can be no doubt about that. However, he lacked change agent skills. First of all, and even though it proved to be one of the great medical publications of the 19th century, he did not publish his findings until 14 years after his observations. Without this evidence, his arrogance and dogmatism were not sufficiently convincing to overshadow the other competing theories of puerperal fever at that time. Failure to provide empirical support for a surprising finding isn't pseudoscience. VQuakr (talk) 20:26, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

@VQuakr, you stated, "Failure to provide empirical support for a surprising finding isn't pseudoscience". Re-analyze your statement, I am not sure if you meant that. You are directly implying that failure to provide empirical support for a surprising finding is pseudoscience. I would think the opposite is true. Cheers! Thinker78 (talk) 20:39, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

To rephrase/better phrase: rejection of claims that are unupported by empirical data is not pseudoscience. Semmelweiss made important observations but did not effectively communicate those observations, and conjoined his findings on handwashing with other theories regarding cadaverous tissue, (Medical History, which doesn't refer to the slow acceptance of Semmelweiss as pseudoscience). These facts are often overlooked in popular science articles about him because it isn't aligned with the "one genius against the establishment" trope. Which is why we use high-quality sources. VQuakr (talk) 21:09, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

The medical establishment at large of the time wasn't very much into the scientific method though. A claim was made with positive results as backing, they chose to ridicule and attack the notion they needed to wash their hands to perform medical procedures. They should have instead make scientific studies about the hypothesis.

Per the article Ignaz Semmelweis, "Toward the end of 1847, accounts of the work of Semmelweis (as well as the similar conclusions of Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., working in America) began to spread around Europe. Semmelweis and his students wrote letters to the directors of several prominent maternity clinics describing their recent observations."

"The rejection of Semmelweis's empirical observations is often traced to belief perseverance, the psychological tendency of clinging to discredited beliefs. Also, some historians of science argue that resistance to path-breaking contributions of obscure scientists is common and "constitutes the single most formidable block to scientific advances."" Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 03:38, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Also from Ignaz Semmelweis: In fact, Semmelweis was warning against all decaying organic matter, not just against a specific contagion that originated from victims of childbed fever themselves. This misunderstanding, and others like it, occurred partly because Semmelweis's work was known only through secondhand reports written by his colleagues and students. At this crucial stage, Semmelweis himself had published nothing. Takeaways: the actual story of what happened isn't simple, and isn't a good candidate for inclusion in this article as an example of pseudoscience. VQuakr (talk) 09:36, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

I agreed previously to add info on History of Pseudoscience, but my focus when I first added the text here is on the behavior of the medical community at the time, which was not scientific and there are sources stating it was thus pseudoscience. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 21:22, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, we can't really talk about pseudoscience when dealing with the prescientific era. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:02, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

According to the article History of science, Science's earliest roots can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 05:35, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Of course. The exceptional people who really moved knowledge forward understood certain aspects of what we now call the scientific method. I was thinking of the full implementation of the scientific method in all the scientific disciplines, especially medicine, which is a relatively recent phenomenon. Some elements have been used by certain people since ancient times.

Experimentation is an ancient concept, but alone often proves nothing related to the wider population. The conflation of association and causation has always created problems, and modern scientists have developed better ways to screen for those problems. In alternative medicine and other pseudoscientific areas, they still conflate those matters. To them, anecdotes and popularity are proof. They don't realize that "The plural of anecdote is not data." (Roger Brinner) or that "Humans have brains that are built to work on anecdote rather than real data." (Jeffrey P. Utz, MD) or that "Anecdotes are useless precisely because they may point to idiosyncratic responses." (Pediatric Allergy & Immunology, 1999 Nov;10(4) 226-234) -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:26, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

The article History of pseudoscience starts in the 19th century. Semmelweis has a dedicated paragraph in History of medicine. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 21:06, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, he's an important figure in medical history. If RS describe his critics as pseudoscientists, then those sources could be used to mention his critics in the first article. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:28, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 21:51, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

References

1. Rozsa, Matthew (1 Oct 2021). "Today's anti-mask activists have much in common with anti-handwashing doctors of the 1840s". Salon. Retrieved 19 Apr 2023.
2. Callaghan, Chris (Dec 2019). "Pseudoscience in medicine: cautionary recommendations". PubMed. Retrieved 22 Apr 2023.

why is the image of the history of the universe?

I had thought that it was generally accepted and had some pretty good real science backing it, or maybe its not of the history of the universe in which case could someone tell me what it's supposed to be? Caucasianhamburger (talk) 12:15, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

That image is part of the science infobox, which points to a lot more than just pseudoscience. Just plain Bill (talk) 12:36, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Feyerabend

I have removed the line about Paul Feyerabend under ===Criticism of the term===, because the cited source does not criticize the term, or even say anything about it. A quick search indicates that the entire book contains exactly one instance of the word pseudoscience, in the preface, when he says that Kuhn's terminology has "turned up in various forms of pseudoscience". Feyerabend using the term without comment does not make sense as a source to support a claim that he criticized the term, and the question of the dividing line between Science (e.g., physics) and Non-science (e.g., theology) does not make really sense for an article that is neither about science nor about non-science nor about the dividing line between the two. I have wondered whether it might have been added primarily as a coatrack for the quotation in the note, which is about a different source. If someone feels strongly about Misplaced Pages including that information, I suggest that you move it to an article like Demarcation problem instead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:00, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Should UFO still be categorized as Pseudoscience and fringe science?

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