Spotting Pseudoscience

[insane_alien]

Well most researchers are not what you define as 'proper' then.

 

The study quote above is interesting, and may have major impacts

on society. But needs More Study to confirm it's results.

 

you have obviously never read a proper science journal and compared it to the crap that gets published in the media first. there is a very obvious difference in quality and quantity. both are higher in the journals.

[Vexer]

Two peer reviewed articles indicate that 'peer review' is almost no indication of quality.

 

Scientifically, peer-review, according to peer-reviewed articles, has no value. (New thread, if you want to persue this. (I think I've read a whole lot more than you.))

 

Yes, I see the irony.

 

And your rudeness.

[swansont]

There are a number of journals that will not publish if you have pitched it to the media first.

[elas]

no, a proper researcher submits it to a peer reveiw journal which both raises the profile among those people who matter and gains the additional study and determines whether he might be onto something or not.

 

media does none of these things.

 

But what of the quality of peer reviewers? Of my submissions, the first said "it is not science"; Swansont classes it as "speculation" and a third reviewer wrote that I was "not using the commonly accepted terms". When I pointed out that Jain states that the accepted terms apply only to two dimensional experiments and cannot be applied to the natural, three dimensional state, there was no reply. Yet another professional reviewer concluded withe the statement "there is nothing new in your work, you are not stating anything that is not already well known".

How can something that is not science, or is pure speculation be at the same time "something that is already well known?

I am doing another rewrite, but I do not have any great hope of any two reviewers making the same assessments.

[qlue]

Personally, I prefer to call spade a spade. lol

[Kaeroll]

This recent New Scientist article seems relevant, entitled 'how to spot a hidden religious agenda'.

[Klaynos]

This recent New Scientist article seems relevant, entitled 'how to spot a hidden religious agenda'.

 

That is often different to psydoscience though. Although they may involve it.

[Kaeroll]

I assume you mean 'pseudoscience', in which case actually, it is. It's not referring to books about spirituality or religion, but books passing off (for example) ID as science, which falls quite firmly into pseudoscience.

[Klaynos]

I assume you mean 'pseudoscience', in which case actually, it is. It's not referring to books about spirituality or religion, but books passing off (for example) ID as science, which falls quite firmly into pseudoscience.

 

I'd say they employ pseudoscience. Rather than it in itself always being it.

[Kaeroll]

I'd say they employ pseudoscience. Rather than it in itself always being it.

Perhaps. I still think it's a relevant article, in any case.

[YT2095]

LOL at that article, what a Stupid way to end it!

 

with: "t is crucial to the public's intellectual health to know when science really is science. Those with a religious agenda will continue to disguise their true views in their effort to win supporters, so please read between the lines"

 

AKA make shit up to suit your predisposition.

Really Scientific I`m sure!

[iNow]

For context, New Scientist's also had a recent cover, "Darwin was wrong!"

 

This generated a stong response, most suggesting, "How could you be so dumb as to publish a title like that? Don't you know that this will be taken SO out of context by creationists?!?"

 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126960.100-darwin-was-right.html

 

 

 

Despite the questionable ending in this other particular article being discussed here, I suggest readers have grown tired of NSs approach to questionable claims, and are trying to find a way to get them to get their crap in order, and but quick.

 

The "read between the lines" comment is obviously a call to awareness... Basically, the article wouldn't have been published had they ended it the way it should have ended... Like: "pay attention to what is actually being said in the articles submitted for publication, you dumbasses!"

[Ophiolite]

with: "it is crucial to the public's intellectual health to know when science really is science. Those with a religious agenda will continue to disguise their true views in their effort to win supporters, so please read between the lines"

 

AKA make shit up to suit your predisposition.

Really Scientific I`m sure!

YT you seem to have completely missed the point of the NS conclusion. As iNow has pointed out the phrase is a call to readers of religiously oriented material, disguised as science, to read carefully to discover the true agenda of the writer. That seems both a wise and a 'scientific' thing to do.

 

Now, in as much as you did not get this from the writing, maybe their editors need to a better job of getting an important message across.

 

I think the storm over the NS cover article "Darwin was wrong" is relevant here. It generated a joint letter of condemnation from Dennet, Dawkins and others, as I recall.

 

Doing my own reading between the lines I suggest NS may be taking the position that they will not needlessly dumb down any aspect of their treatment of evolution, or any other topic. Any bona fide scientist, or scientifically literate person, would take the title as a reflection of the errors in detail of Darwin's work.

 

The decision with this - and with all pseudoscience - is whether or not to engage in debate over the material and the conclusions. I'm not voting either way (I'm a geologist: how could I be definitive?), but both approaches have pros and cons, so condemnation of either approach is unwarranted.

[YT2095]

the point I saw, was that the article set out to chastise the Editorial use of some words and phrases, and employed (rather unskillfully) the same technique to do so.

 

personally I would think it Far More "Scientific" to read what IS Said, rather than imply or infer meaning, wouldn`t you?

[Kaeroll]

personally I would think it Far More "Scientific" to read what IS Said, rather than imply or infer meaning, wouldn`t you?

I'm not really sure the scientific method is applicible to interpretation of meaning. We routinely infer meaning in the words of others - hence the existence of figures of speech, metaphor, and so on. A literal reading of 'to read between the lines' makes no sense: the meaning of 'to infer meaning beyond what is literally written' is in itself reading between the lines.

[YT2095]

and you can`t see the Irony between what you just said and Defended! with what that article was chastising?

 

Hmmm...

[Mokele]

Why is this even an issue? The New Scientist is a news magazine, not a reliable source. The best it can do is point to interesting recent research.

[Clipper]

Pseudo-science is the word the government give to believers in the truth.

As the Nazis did before with the Jews.

Almost nothing in Pseudo-Science is contested, purely for the fact it doesn't agree with science.

I think that the answer is much closer than you think.

[swansont]

This is a sticky on spotting pseudoscience, not on conspiracy theories

[Clipper]

I apologize. Just 'a conspiracy including pseudo-science' is derivative; so it's semi - ontopic. I wouldn't expect a scientist to agree with me though; as it does go against everything you say.

[the tree]

Pseudo-science is the word the government give to believers in the truth.

If anything, you are severly overestimating the goverment's involvement in the scientific community. Pseudoscience is a word used by scientists and philosophers to describe things that can be mistaken for science, but are not. Occasionally it refers to things maliciously disguised as science, but mostly just to misunderstandings.

[HaydenHatTrick]

I'm going to have to disagree with every single point in the original post. Neglecting the science behind anything just because of those things, is rather silly... Yes people can still make MASSIVE discoveries alone, and come up with very analytical and complex understandings of what ever it is they're working on.

Also, some people don't tell their peers everything because people like to steal idea.

Thirdly, there are powerful people suppressing science. Science is still VERY censored today.

There ARE natural things that occur in the treatment of things such as cancer, that science can't explain. If science could explain everything... Then it would stop. Look a broccoli, I could have told you that it helps prevent and cure cancer to some degree when I was a child, it's only recently science has been able to prove that it dose, now they are researching the function.

Lastly, when someone takes something to the media before running over real scientists, who are these "real scientists". I'm sure the people in the team don't feel the need to be explaining how there new idea works to people they don't know.

Lastly, media exposure could be because people get impatient and want to see the technology grow...

I could go on.

[swansont]

Can you name some examples to support your position?

[7th]

The OP may have been better off just saying "timecube" as it's pretty obvious he was describing Gene Ray in most of the points. I'm pretty sure I can read people, and upon reading the part about 'suppression', then a little piece at the bottom to cover it up to make it look less aimed at Gene Ray -- I immediately knew it was about timecube. You may want to get someone to redo it if you were trying to persuade people not to visit that site. Students are getting wiser, theres no room for mistakes.

Edited September 4, 2010 by 7th

[Just the Facts]

Nice post. I liked the points made.

 

In my own little world of experience, I’d say one good way to spot “pseudoscience” is anything associated with Einstein, Hawking and Kaku.

 

..if a special geometry has to be invented in order to account for a falling apple, even Newton might be appalled at the complications which would ensue when really difficult problems are tackled.” -- Sir Oliver Lodge,

 

　

 

Some other comments I agree with. Various sources.

 

　

 

Gravity is the most familiar force. We are subject to it every day of our lives. Newton gave us his ‘law of gravity,’ which describes its effect but doesn’t explain it. “I frame no hypotheses,” he wrote. Einstein wasn’t so prudent when he introduced his “postulates.” Unfortunately, his unreal geometry doesn’t explain gravity either. The usual demonstration using heavy steel balls on a rubber sheet to represent ‘gravity wells’ relies on gravity as its own explanation!

 

The fact that we do not understand gravity in this space age should cause alarm. Our cosmology — our view of our situation in the universe — is based on a mystery! The ‘big bang’ is a monumentally expensive work of fiction.

 

We missed a chance to include electricity in astronomy in the early 1900s. Birkeland was performing his electrical ‘little Earth,’ or Terrella, experiments in Norway, and Gauss and Weber were discovering the electrical interactions of matter. Today, physicists labour under misconceptions about the nature of matter and space; the relationship between matter, mass and gravity; the electrical nature of stars[2] and galaxies; and the size, history and age of the universe. So when astrophysicists turn to particle physicists to solve their intractable problems and particle physicists use it as an excuse for squandering billions of dollars on futile experiments, neither party recognizes that the other discipline is in a parlous state.

 

“After all, to get the whole universe totally wrong in the face of clear evidence for over 75 years merits monumental embarrassment and should induce a modicum of humility.”

 

“The Standard Model of particle physics would appear to fail in nearly every possible way, and all of its failures seem to stem from the early 1930s. By all indications science seems to have taken a wrong turn about this time. After three hundred years of progressively simplifying the description of the universe, with fewer entities and simpler laws, it suddenly turned the other way, with complexity and entities multiplying like rabbits.”

 

“We are about to enter the 21st century but our understanding of the origin of inertia, mass, and gravitation still remains what has been for centuries - an outstanding puzzle.”[

 

 

 

How has this situation arisen? In the 20th century technology perfected wireless communication and computers and got man into space, while fundamental science fell deeper into a ‘black hole’ of complication, illogicality and metaphysics. I consider the principal cause has been the usurping, since Einstein, of natural philosophy and physics by theoretical mathematicians. Meanwhile Einstein, perhaps to his credit, remained skeptical of his own work.

 

I have always found it instructive to read what past luminaries of science thought of a radically new idea. The free exchange of opposing opinions is later stifled by the bandwagon effect. Science, like all human endeavors, is subject to fads and fallacies.

 

When controversy was still tolerated over Einstein’s theories, Sir Oliver Lodge, a noted Fellow of the Royal Society, wrote in Nature on Feb 17, 1921:

“..what is really wanted for a truly Natural Philosophy is a supplement to Newtonian mechanics, expressed in terms of the medium which he suspected and sought after but could not attain, and introducing the additional facts, chiefly electrical—especially the fact of variable inertia—discovered since his time…

If we could understand the structure of the particle, in terms of the medium of which it is composed, and if we knew the structure of the rest of the medium also, so as to account for the potential stress at every point—that would be a splendid step, beyond anything accomplished yet.”

 

This is precisely the Electric Universe view. Natural Philosophy has withered in its confrontation with the modern fashion of mathematical metaphysics and computer games. Most of the ‘discoveries’ now are merely computer generated ‘virtual reality’ — black holes, dark matter, dark energy, etc. The computer models are constructed upon a shadowy kernel of ignorance. We do not understand gravity!

 

Einstein in his special theory of relativity postulated there was no medium, called the ‘aether.’ But Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism requires it. And Sir Oliver Lodge saw the aether as crucial to our understanding. So Einstein, at a stroke, removed any possibility that he, or his followers, would find a link between electromagnetism and gravity. It served the egos of his followers to consecrate Einstein’s ideas and treat dissent as blasphemy. “Sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it's wrong

 

 

 

 

In another thread I was asked by a MOD a question related to a different thread. When I answered his question, the thread gets locked because he said I opened up the thread topic again… what’s up with that logic. That kind of reaction is questionable.

 

 

 

I’m starting to feel like Galileo, and this place is the catholic church.