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What is Pseudoscience?

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Chris OConnor

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Re: What is Pseudoscience?

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What are you guys talking about?? Chicken article? Can you link to it so I can laugh too?
youkrst

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Re: What is Pseudoscience?

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http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org/story.php

it's from the do you believe in ghosts thread

oh god, the laughter, it hurts
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geo

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Re: What is Pseudoscience?

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Chris OConnor wrote:
The candle that just jumps into a vat of acid wearing a tinfoil hat and screaming obscenities, is probably best forgotten.
I was just about to say that exactly.
LOL
Last edited by geo on Thu Jun 21, 2012 7:23 am, edited 2 times in total.
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geo

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Re: What is Pseudoscience?

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Our recent visitor took the story of the headless chicken as evidence that the mind does not reside in the brain. I was laughing mostly at the article he posted which said that after the chicken had its head cut off, "the determined bird shook off the traumatic event and never looked back. Mike returned to his job of being a chicken. He pecked for food and preened his feathers just like the rest of his barnyard buddies."

But apparently there really was a chicken named Mike that lived for 18 months after having its head mostly cut off. I doubt it did much pecking or preening though.

This from Life Magazine.

"What Mrs. Olson’s ax had done was to clip off most of the skull but leave intact one ear, the jugular vein and the base of the brain, which controls motor function.”

http://life.time.com/curiosities/mike-t ... chicken/#1
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viajesen1
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Re: What is Pseudoscience?

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Climate deniers are accused of practicing pseudoscience, as are intelligent design creationists, astrologers, UFOlogists, parapsychologists, practitioners of alternative medicine, and often anyone who strays far from the scientific mainstream. The boundary problem between science and pseudoscience, in fact, is notoriously fraught with definitional disagreements because the categories are too broad and fuzzy on the edges, and the term “pseudoscience” is subject to adjectival abuse against any claim one happens to dislike for any reason. In his 2010 book Nonsense on Stilts (University of Chicago Press), philosopher of science Massimo Pigliucci concedes that there is “no litmus test,” because “the boundaries separating science, nonscience, and pseudoscience are much fuzzier and more permeable than Popper (or, for that matter, most scientists) would have us believe.”
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Robert Tulip

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Re: What is Pseudoscience?

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Hi viajesen, thanks and welcome.

The boundary between science and pseudoscience rests on the quality of evidence. There are claims in pseudoscience that might be true, but the evidence is not strong enough to meet scientific standards. Some of these claims may become science in the future if they are able to provide persuasive rigorous arguments, others are just wrong.

For example there are numerous claims of UFO sightings, but none of them are sufficiently credible or corroborated to be classed as scientific, so sit outside the boundary of the set of facts that all rational people should accept as credible. UFOs remain in the category of pseudoscience. One person seeing a moving light in the sky is not evidence, no matter how honest and convinced the person is that they saw an alien spacecraft. Until the evidence is much stronger, scientists will properly reject such claims as unproven.
Last edited by Robert Tulip on Mon Aug 06, 2012 12:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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DWill

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Re: What is Pseudoscience?

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It seems, though, that one could look at least at the attempts to verify a phenomenon and judge pretty accurately whether the work is scientific or not. It's not that a claim isn't accepted by a science establishment that makes it pseudoscience. I think it's more about procedures used and being rigorous that tells us whether we have real science or pseudo.
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Re: What is Pseudoscience?

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I think DWill's got it right, you get pseudoscience when someone follows an unscientific method to reach a conclusion which is then termed scientific.

But there are scientific studies around the paranormal, extraterrestrials, etc. Should these studies be termed as unscientific because their hypotheses (that aliens exist, or that the stars affect our daily lives) are far-flung and hard to prove?
Last edited by VMLM on Tue Aug 07, 2012 5:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: What is Pseudoscience?

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There's nothing unscientific about investigating UFOs, or bigfoot, or even plain old magic.

All of these can be addressed scientifically in finding ways to test their existence with evidence. When it becomes unscientific is when the results are ignored, or falsified, or evidence that one thing happened is used as evidence for another unconnected thing happened.

In this way, people who work for Heinz can practice psuedoscience in their efforts to make claims about how smooth their ketchup is.

Any topic, no matter how whacky it sounds, can be the subject of honest scientific study. Some studies may end very soon after they are begun when evidence never manifests, or when the thing studied is almost immediately disproved. That is fine, and part of science. What is NOT part of science is ignoring or distorting data in order to put forward some pre-conceived agenda and instead using official sounding words to deceive the layman into thinking you are really on to something.
In the absence of God, I found Man.
-Guillermo Del Torro

Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?

Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?

Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
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Re: What is Pseudoscience?

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See my post dated 8-6-12 under the topic "A Voice for Reason." I think it is the most recent post under that topic.
Love what you do, and do what you love. Don't listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it. -Ray Bradbury

Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it. -Robert A. Heinlein
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