15.7: Detecting Pseudoscience

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Bradley H. Dowden
California State University Sacramento

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The word science has positive connotations, the word pseudoscience has negative connotations. Science gets the grant money; pseudoscience doesn't. Calling some statement, theory, or research program "pseudoscientific" suggests that it is silly or a waste of time. It is pseudoscientific to claim that the position of the planets at the time a person is born determines the person's personality and major life experiences. It is also pseudoscientific to claim that spirits of the dead can be contacted by mediums at seances. Astrology and spiritualism may be useful social lubricants, but they aren't scientific.

Despite a few easily agreed-upon examples such as these two, defining pseudoscience is difficult. One could try to define science and then use that to say pseudoscience is not science, or one could try to define pseudoscience directly. A better approach is to try to find many of the key features of pseudosciences. A great many of the scientific experts will agree that pseudoscience can be detected by getting a “no” answer to the first two questions or a “yes” answer to any of the remaining three:

Do the "scientists" have a theory to test ?
Do the "scientists" have reproducible data that their theory explains better than the alternatives?
Do the "scientists" seem content to search around for phenomena that are hard to explain by means of current science; that is, do the scientists engage in mystery mongering ?
Are the "scientists" quick to recommend supernatural explanations rather than natural explanations?
Do the "scientists" use the method of ad hoc rescue while treating their own views as unfalsifiable?

The research program that investigates paranormal phenomena is called parapsychology. What are the paranormal phenomena we are talking about here? They include astral travel, auras, psychokinesis (moving something without touching it physically), plant consciousness, psychic healing, speaking with the spirits, witchcraft, and ESP—that is telepathy (mind reading), clairvoyance (viewing things at a distance), and precognition (knowing the future).

None of the parapsychologists' claims to have found cases of cancer cures, mind reading, or foretelling the future by psychic powers have ever stood up to a good test. Parapsychologists cannot convincingly reproduce any of these phenomena on demand; they can only produce isolated instances in which something surprising happened. Parapsychologists definitely haven't produced repeatable phenomena that they can show need to be explained in some revolutionary way.

Rarely do parapsychologists engage in building up their own theories of parapsychology and testing them. Instead, nearly all are engaged in attempts to tear down current science by searching for mysterious phenomena that appear to defy explanation by current science. Perhaps this data gathering is the proper practice for the prescientific stage of some enterprise that hopes to revolutionize science, but the practice does show that the enterprise of parapsychology is not yet a science.

Regarding point 1, scientists attack parapsychologists for not having a theory-guided research program. Even if there were repeatable paranormal phenomena, and even if parapsychologists were to quit engaging in mystery mongering, they have no even moderately detailed theory of how the paranormal phenomena occur. They have only simplistic theories such as that a mysterious mind power caused the phenomenon or that the subject tapped a reserve of demonic forces or that the mind is like a radio that can send and receive signals over an undiscovered channel. Parapsychologists have no more-detailed theory that permits testable predictions. Yet, if there is no theory specific enough to make a testable prediction, there is no science.