User:PaleoNeonate/Pitfalls: Difference between revisions

Common pitfalls of pseudoscience

This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

There are a number of books dedicated to science, fallacies, pseudoscience, religion, philosophy and the mind. Here are arguments that I thought merited mention considering how commonly they are used on Wikipedia.

• "No more effective than the placebo effect" or "not beyond the placebo effect" - The use of placebo is a system to correct common fallacies and statistical glitches (see blinded experiment). The "effect" terminology is commonly misused to claim that something must necessarily have a small effect. The correct description here is "no evidence of effectiveness" (to conclude that some effect is plausible, a significant enough statistical difference should be observed in those who have received the actual product, versus those who were tricked with placebo). This does not eliminate the possibility that someone may feel some comfort by being taken care of, but that is another topic unrelated to the effectiveness of the molecules being tested.
• "Can neither be proven not disproven" - Science attempts to be practical, its hypotheses attempt to be testable and falsifiable, its theories (models not to confuse with hypotheses) should also be able to make useful predictions. The proper terminology here is "no evidence", "speculative" or "belief" (in a Wikipedia article, it may be best to omit as meaningless, like "more research is needed"). If there was effective evidence of its existence it would not be scientifically controversial. We would move on to its more interesting details. If it cannot be utilized or worked with, it is impractical and scientific resources should not unreasonably be spent on false premises. This does not necessarily obsolete the human experience, the mind with its needs, fantasies and illusions, human and scientific ethics, values, preferences, entertainment, faith and traditions.
• "[...] is only a philosophical position" - Since science must be practical and be about discovery, understanding and application, the
  methodological naturalism. This does not mean that all ideas are practical or equal to increase knowledge and assess reality. Some approaches have been much more successful and some ideas are about attempting to test other ideas. The scientific method attempts to explore beyond idealism and common limitations, to constantly re-test and correct itself, to enhance and develop its "senses", etc. While minds are necessary to develop, direct, improve and run it, the process, path and body of knowledge go beyond every participant and are more than only a product of the mind. The scientific approach has been so successful that despite its autocorrecting nature, major discoveries made about the world and reality are unlikely to suddenly be demonstrated to be false, versus details about their understanding, or the development of even more complete and unifying theories. This includes the discovery of the fact that life has evolved and diversified and how, the scientific estimation of the general age of the earth, how rocky planets like ours formed, how the chemical elements formed, etc. In physics, a large number of particles and phenomena were long predicted before they were observed. In biology, with consilience of other sciences, the location of presumed transitional fossils could be estimated and many were found, despite the rarity of fossils; the discovery of the genetic code supported, corrected and supplemented evolution
  , something not available in Darwin's time. Science is not a religious doctrine, although apologists often attempt to portray it as such with philosophical arguments.
• "Controversy" - Public, political and ideological controversies should clearly be distinguished from scientific ones. The fact that motivated uncertainty and denial propaganda exists on a topic, may or may not, have an effect on the
  WP:MNA should be taken in consideration to avoid presenting a false equivalence
  when describing topics.
• "Materialistic science is human vanity" - This assumes that some positions have a divine origin or rely on a divine authority. Nevertheless, humanity remains divided about it because there is no effective and universal divine guidance or convincing evidence for its existence. Theology documents a number of justifications to explain this lack (including the problem of
  strangely-familiar thinking and behavior
  , playing chess in the sky to determine their destiny.
• "Allopathic and complementary or holistic medicine" - "Allopathic" is the accusation that mainstream or "Western medicine" only cares about symptoms and is very superficial. It is a straw man, because medicine is much more than that and also attempts to discover and treat the causes or even prevent disease when possible. "Complementary" medicine suggests that despite access to mainstream medicine, other treatments are advisable, to increase one's chance of success or to somehow treat at "more levels". "Holistic" is a similar claim that these alternative treatments have a more "integrative" approach, dealing with "facts", "links" and "causes" that mainstream medicine ignores or refuses to acknowledge. Mainstream modern medicine unfortunately not being available to everyone, traditional practices, or even modern quackery, may often be one's main resort. When available but too costly, people also tend to spend some of their few resources on questionable treatments. Some have access to good medicine but distrust it or believe that other treatments are probably helpful. Unfortunately much of those alternative treatments are questionable and some are even harmful. The resort to them when better medicine is available can also prevent proper diagnostic and treatment on time. Since many discomforts and conditions are transient, resolving without treatment, flawed causal relationships are common, attributing something recently done to health improvement.
• Pseudoscientific idalism - Some forms of idealism go so far as to suggest that the universe originates from the mind (or a substitute like universal consciousness, etc). Some modern variants include
  magic thinking, where particular systems and cosmology must hopefully allow the possibility of access to power over matter and supernatural manifestation in the world. Constant self-deception and failure to improve one's situation with ineffective means is not healthy. Sages remind their adepts to not forget about acting and living in the real world to avoid this dangerous pitfall. Lastly, superstition opens the door to unsubstantiated and misplaced fears that often lead to conflict and exploitation. Among the many pseudoscientific claims to justify divination or magic systems, one that I particularly like is that computer science is a rediscovery of the I Ching system and its hexagrams, a superior technology to access the Tao. But interestingly, computers can also be ternary rather than binary, where hexadecimal
  becomes a less useful convention.
• "[...] is not physical" - Much of the human experience undoubtedly happens in the mind. Much of consciousness remains mysterious but a number of windows have been open to assess the relationship between the mind and reality. To communicate, physical medium is necessary. Neuroscience showed many correlates of experience to the physical electrochemical and anatomic structure of the brain. Psychotropics from other, but compatible enough evolved life forms to produce carbon chemistry that can enter the blood-brain barrier and interact with the brain chemistry, can produce altered states of consciousness, including deep impressions with religious implications. Entheogens have been used for millenia. Monitoring methods, diseases and neurosurgery have allowed the discovery of more experience-physical correlates. On the other hand the human experience doesn't lead most people to adhere to strict physicalism. Among reasons, other than indoctrinating propaganda,^[b] is the fear of death and the unknown, the fact that the brain has evolved for other functions and is notoriously unreliable, but also because of strong experiences. Under delirium, the mind tricks itself and the subject is no longer able to distinguish vivid hallucinations and dreams from the awaken state. This is also typical during short sleep paralysis episodes. Some also experience becoming somewhat "free from the physical body", where a vivid "dream", more lucid than usual, appears realistic. "Visited" places may be dream-like realms or more "physical" generated from memory (and sometimes slightly open eyes during sleep) with less discrepancies and more realistic sensorial input (often inducing fear). The impression of being able to obtain remote information or to meet other people in this state occurs. However, noone has ever been able to demonstrate that these are not temporary grandiose delusions. There is no verifiable evidence of actual remote viewing, telepathy or of access to collective universal shared spaces or archives, subtle bodies and energies. When loved ones die, other than the transformation of their physical aspect and the memory we have, including relating to habits, there is no evidence that a "migration" occurs at another level, like the alteration of reality or of collective mind, but in theology many justifications are known to attempt to explain this. Some techniques proposed by idealists to alter reality, like through the transformation of impressions, fail to affect the world and other people in ways that can be detected.
• Pseudoskepticism and scientism - These are commonly used to accuse healthy scientific skepticism of disregarding evidence, but if that evidence was clear, there would be no reason to doubt. Actual pseudoskepticism, if it existed, would be different, disregarding much evidence that can be demonstrated scientifically, a form of denial.
• Religious doctrines - It is fine on Wikipedia to describe religious doctrines and beliefs. Some may include pseudoscientific elements or not. These should not be presented as facts (other than the fact that they are doctrines and practices) and do not belong in unrelated articles. For instance, scientific physical cosmology should not be mixed in with religious cosmologies "for balance" (
  WP:WIKIVOICE
  can be used for consensus positions and the sources should put the speculative claims in context.
• "Science cannot investigate the past" - Common arguments in the creationist literature are that science is mostly for mathematics, with the misconception that unless "theories are upgraded to laws" they are only hypotheses and that scientific theories are also only hypothetical guesses. Other misleading claims are that
  geological time. The alternative proposed by apologetics is a modern literal interpretation of ancient human tradition that should serve as an ultimate authority to determine what science should (or has the right) or not investigate, accompanied by a modern tradition of pseudoscientific arguments.^[c] Some literature even elevates false premises to "laws" and walk the reader through a misleading "court of law" to condemn science.^[d] But science is not limited by taboos or origin myths and can instead use the best estimates possible (or the "most well informed guesses ever", to account for some pragmatism).^[e]