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This chapter argues that the encroachment of advocacy in certain disciplines has undermined their credibility, and that this trend is largely due to uncritical acceptance of relativist epistemologies such as social constructivism. Examples are cited from anthropology, educational theory, law, the sociology of science, and women’s studies. It is suggested that practices in the natural and historical sciences, as contrasted to the attributes of pseudoscience, provide guidelines for both university scholarship and the public debate essential to democracy.

Years of public attacks on astrology by eminent scientists seem to have created the presumption that no scientist can address the subject in any context without deploring and condemning. This chapter criticizes that astrology provided a bad textbook illustration of an area that might shift across the boundary scientists draw between science and pseudoscience, because far too much scientific knowledge would have to be thrown out to accommodate astrology with any plausibility. This same disposition appeared in David Bloor's reply to a review of Scientific Knowledge. In criticizing their choice of astrology as an example the review emphasized that there was a difference between drawing sharp, precisely defined boundaries between science and nonscience and distinguishing between extreme cases.

This chapter talks about evolution and its existence, although evolutionary theorizing didn't really rise above the status of a pseudoscience. People could see only too clearly that evolution existed on the back of what many considered the very iffy ideology of cultural progress. One mark was the way in which non-professionals like Robert Chambers felt free to plunge right in with their ideas, as though they had spent their lives working in the laboratory or out in the field. It also discusses the leading professional biologist to get tangled up with ideas of evolution, French naturalist Jean Baptiste de Lamarck, who published his speculations in his Philosophie Zoologique in 1809. That he was an enthusiast for cultural progress is shown if only by the fact that, although a minor aristocrat, it was during the revolution that his career really took off. He became a world-leading invertebrate taxonomist, a scientist of deserved respect, and as such was brought right up against the issue of the end-directed nature of the features of organisms.

This chapter demonstrates how arguments against abortion are often based on pseudoscience. Twenty-nine states, home to 88 million women, have implemented at least two state-wide abortion restrictions not backed by scientific evidence. For example, Texas’s “A Woman’s Right to Know” booklet, offered to patients before having an abortion, uses deceptive language to lead readers to believe that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released a statement in 2009 concluding that there is “no association between induced abortion and breast cancer.” Meanwhile, Kentucky’s Senate Bill 5, passed in 2017, made it illegal to have an abortion after the twentieth week of pregnancy. The sponsor of the bill cited fetal pain as justification for the law, calling abortion after 20 weeks an “awful painful experience” for the fetus. However, a review of fetal pain evidence found that fetuses are unlikely to feel pain before the third trimester (around 29 weeks). Overall, Kansas, Texas, and South Dakota have the highest number of these types of pseudoscientific information policies in place.

To combat pseudoscience, students must first understand that science is not just a collection of facts but it is a way of discovering the nature of the physical world. The way that scientists go about their business is best learned by active learning strategies such as studying case studies of famous discoveries, rather than hearing about them via lecture as revealed wisdom. Equally, the follies of pseudoscience are best exposed when students discuss how extraordinary claims fail to live up to the canons of science where evidence is the final arbiter of truth.

A message of alarm arrives from your cousins: What do you know about the science of “fracking”? Fracking is a way to extract oil and gas. It could potentially generate lots of welcome income in their impoverished rural community—while supplying energy domestically. But possibly dangerous chemicals are injected into the earth and collect in waste ponds. Some residents are worrying about contaminated groundwater. It’s potentially quite frightening. But also confusing. Your cousins seek your perspective. Such a scenario seems to epitomize what “scientific literacy” is all about: being able to interpret scientific claims that inform personal and social decision-making (Figure 13.1). How would a typical citizen or consumer approach this case? Probably search online. Wikipedia. Google. Quick, informative, apparently authoritative answers. Maybe worth investing a half hour of effort, at most. Delving into the Internet, one can easily find many specialized websites describing how fracking works (energytomorrow.org; fracfocus.org; hydraulic­fracturing.com). They are apparently quite frank about safety issues, which they seem to address fully, including with an impressive quote from a former head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Yet from a more informed perspective, one may find that the genuine facts are also mixed with a lot of questionable claims and spurious “evidence.” A lot is left out. The incompleteness betrays bias. The take- home lesson? What the average citizen or consumer likely interprets as sound science, may not be. Ultimately, good science diverges from what counts as good science in the public realm. Here, the challenge is being able to distinguish trustworthy science from junk and industry propaganda. Ironically, knowledge of scientific concepts—the primary stuff one learns in school science classes—is of marginal value. One might thus doubt a pervasive principle (the sacred bovine on this occasion) that in fostering scientific literacy, one should focus primarily on the “raw” science itself, while remaining aloof to the cultural politics of science. Functional scientific literacy includes understanding the media contexts through which science is conveyed—and sometimes misconveyed.

We review findings from the psychology of science that are relevant to understanding or explaining peoples’ tendencies to believe both scientific and pseudoscientific claims. We discuss relevant theoretical frameworks and empirical findings to support the proposal that pseudoscientific beliefs arise in much the same way as other scientific and non-scientific beliefs do. In particular, we focus on (a) cognitive and metacognitive factors at the individual level; (b) trust in testimony and judgments of expertise at the social level; and (c) personal identity and the public’s relationship with the scientific community at a cultural level.

The American public is vulnerable to pseudoscience due to 1) a general lack of science literacy (e.g., not knowing how to distinguish science from pseudoscience 2) pedagogy that emphasizes memorization of facts over critical thinking (e.g., knowing how to ask questions), 3) insufficient epistemological development (e.g., not knowing how to evaluate truth claims), and 4) media distortions of science. This chapter will review these causes and explore a case example of the science claims made by the mindfulness movement that is currently popular in America.

Scientists and science communicators often lament high-profile public failures as "hurting science" by sowing doubt that can be exploited by purveyors of pseudo-science. I will argue that, on the contrary, these public failures can play a useful role in public discourse, by illustrating the proper process of science. Failures of genuine science are characterized by engagement with the research community, debate conducted via appropriate professional channels, and self-correction by the original researchers. Pseudoscience, on the other hand, is generally produced by individuals from outside the community, is promoted via mass-media channels, and involves stubborn refusal to shift conclusions in the face of criticism from the mainstream scientific community. I illustrate this contrast with three examples: the 2011 superluminal neutrino anomaly reported by the OPERA collaboration, the 2014 claim of primordial gravitational waves by the BICEP2 collaboration, and the pseudoscientific field of “hydrino” physics. The stark contrast between the process of genuine science and the behavior of pseudoscientists provides an educational opportunity that public advocates of science can use to bolster public confidence in the integrity of science.

Many of the subject matters discussed under the topic of pseudoscience can be readily distinguished from science proper, and there are few individuals with any serious scientific training who would mistake these for science-based disciplines.  Harder to identify and distinguish are those disciplines that may have begun as a genuine science but have transformed into pseudosciences primarily through their pursuit of positive results. This chapter discusses one such example, drug prevention research, and contends that the adoption of so-called “evidence-based practice” by this field of study has been a key driver of its decent into pseudoscience. It discusses this process using a systems approach and focusses specifically on two negative feedback loops, one entailing flexible data analysis and selective reporting and one entailing minimal adherence to study design criteria. These lops are illustrated using examples of prevention and treatment programs that have been deemed “model” intervention by the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP).

Although the term IQ is widely used in popular culture, the true definition of intelligence and how it is measured is misunderstood. We provide an overview of how the construct of intelligence and its measurement have evolved over the past century. Several of the most popular theories of intelligence as well as the controversy over the genetic basis of intelligence are reviewed. We also discuss some of the historical and contemporary misuses of intelligence test scores including some pseudoscientific applications of those scores. Some of the claims of brain training companies are debunked as are the validity of online IQ tests.

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to offer a lively and constructive discussion about demarcationism among philosophers, sociologists, historians, and professional skeptics. By proposing something of a new philosophical subdiscipline, the Philosophy of Pseudoscience, it attempts to convince those following in Larry Laudan's footsteps that the term “pseudoscience” does single out something real that merits attention. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter explores a cluster approach to demarcation. The first step toward a feasible demarcation is choosing the most comprehensive unit of analysis: entire fields of knowledge, or epistemic fields. Choosing fields of knowledge as a starting point allows us to consider the many facets of science, namely that it is at the same time a body of knowledge and a social system of people including their collective activities. It allows us to consider not just the philosophy of science, but also the history, sociology, and psychology of science. However, one consequence of a cluster approach is that we must do with a reasonable profile of any given field rather than with a clear-cut assessment. A cluster demarcation also entails that the reasons we give for classifying a given field as a pseudoscience may vary from field to field.

This chapter first distinguishes between the concepts of pseudoscience, nonscience, bad science, and science fraud. It then considers why we need the concept of pseudoscience. Next, it deploys Harry Frankfurt's famous analysis of “bullshit” to highlight the difference between pseudoscience and straightforward scientific fraud.

This chapter recasts the demarcation problem in terms of epistemic warrant. It proposes a definition of pseudoscience that differs from most previous proposals by operating on a higher level of epistemic generality. It defends that feature of the definition and explains how it contributes to avoiding some of the problems besetting previously proposed definitions.