The "10 red flag warnings for pseudoscience" put together by skeptic Brian Dunning:

1. Appeal to Authority - Celebrity endorsements, lab coats, fancy degrees or certifications... all distractions that point to the impressiveness of the claimant, not the truth of the claim.

2. Ancient Wisdom - Commonly seen attached to "alternative" medical therapies, and a pet peeve of mine – lots of "ancient wisdom" will get you killed! As Brian points out: all that matters is not the age of the "wisdom", but simply this: Does it work?

3. Confirmation Bias - The tendency to remember events that coincide with beliefs, and ignore or forget those that don't. Confirmation bias is one of the worst sloppy-thinking offenders, in my opinion - and one of the hardest for us to overcome.

4. Confusion of Correlation with Causation - Another common sticking point for many people. Brian's example: You'll find correlation between rice consumption and black hair, but not causation.

5. Red Herrings - Irrelevant information that distracts without addressing facts.

6. Proof by Verbosity - Information overload to create the appearance of comprehensiveness and thorough research. It's quantity over quality.

7. Mystical Energy - "Chi", "negative energy", "positive energy"... Brian suggests that you replace any mention of "energy" with the word's actual meaning - "measurable work capability" - and ask whether the claim still makes sense.

8. Suppressed by Authorities - Conspiracy! Beware! Yet... Why would pharmaceutical giants suppress miracle cures... or automakers squelch super-efficient engines... instead of embracing and profiting wildly from those discoveries?

9. All Natural - Yes, a pseudoscience health supplement may be "all natural"... but so are poison oak, scorpion venom, lead, mercury, bubonic plague, black holes... Natural doesn't mean safe!

10. Ideological Support - Causes that use courts, marches, campaigns, and so on to push a belief may be fueled more by indeology than by science.

See this video (beginning about 6:26).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=752V173e31o

As for numbers 6 and 7, see the Deepak Chopra wisdom generator.

http://www.wisdomofchopra.com/


"Culture grows through Karmic Chaos" was the one I got just now. Good stuff, eternal wisdom for everyone's subconscious.

3. Confirmation Bias - The tendency to remember events that coincide with beliefs, and ignore or forget those that don't. Confirmation bias is one of the worst sloppy-thinking offenders, in my opinion - and one of the hardest for us to overcome

.

The guy in the video forgot to mention that science itself is not immune and perhaps riddled with a similar problem due to pressures and influences within the scientific community, motivated by many things besides "truth"

http://www.nature.com/news/beware-the-c ... as-1.10600


We need to avoid Science as Ideology and the Religion of Science.

Here are some portions of the article worth noting:

How can we explain such pervasive bias? Like a magnetic field that pulls iron filings into alignment, a powerful cultural belief is aligning multiple sources of scientific bias in the same direction. The belief is that progress in science means the continual production of positive findings. All involved benefit from positive results, and from the appearance of progress. Scientists are rewarded both intellectually and professionally, science administrators are empowered and the public desire for a better world is answered. The lack of incentives to report negative results, replicate experiments or recognize inconsistencies, ambiguities and uncertainties is widely appreciated — but the necessary cultural change is incredibly difficult to achieve.

Striking!

Researchers seek to reduce bias through tightly controlled experimental investigations. In doing so, however, they are also moving farther away from the real-world complexity in which scientific results must be applied to solve problems.

Scientists rightly extol the capacity of research to self-correct. But the lesson coming from biomedicine is that this self-correction depends not just on competition between researchers, but also on the close ties between science and its application that allow society to push back against biased and useless results.

One thing is and has always been a certainty about Nature: it never fails to surprise, often leads us in an entirely different direction, and never fails to surprise (yeah, I repeated that for all the epistemological know-it-alls)

Beware of puffy people that make definitive claims. Claiming the sun will rise tomorrow with certainty is one thing. Claiming Nature is "dumb" is something else.

Thanks

That was an amazing video, geo. Thanks for posting.

ant, while I respect your right to your opinion, your anti-science bias seems to color everything you post. Some questions... Do you drive an automobile? Do you live in a house with electricity? Do you have a phone (cell, tele or smart)? You obviously have a computer. (If you do not, please tell me how you access the internet). All these things were made possible by (gasp ) science.

No true scientist believes he or she has all the answes. True, some scientists have been corrupted by politics, money, power, even religion. Just remember what the late Isaac Asimov said: "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny..."

People who constantly denigrate science while enjoying its benefits give me indisgestion.

We need to avoid Science as Ideology and the Religion of Science.

I feel like playing devil's advocate for conversation sake.

Why would we need to avoid this so-called Religion of Science? No facet of our lives is without bias. Sometimes, bias refers to little more than the way our brains are wired. Natural side-effects of a physical information processor. Or remnants of predispositions that helped us survive in the distant past. Avoiding any religion of science because bias is found in the system is not a good reason. Bias is in every system.

In fact, only in science do you see a scalding distaste of bias. The scientific process is designed to minimize bias. It does a good job, but it's my opinion that bias will never be eliminated. It's one thing to minimize bias in the experimentation phase, but what about the selection of experiments, or the publishing of those experiment's results? Everything the author of the article you linked is referring to. A lack of any published articles regarding bias would be even better ammunition for your agenda.

You'd need philosophy to guide this religion of science, just as theology and hermeneutics guides religion. In both cases, that's a process of selection. You discard failed philosophies and keep the ones that work. Eugenics is an example of what to discard, just as we no longer burn witches at the stake.

Here's an example. For the purposes of his blog, he called it Moral Reasonism, which is a generic name, with the actual philosophies in a follow-up blog.

http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/ ... ophys.html

* Moral absolutism: X is universally right / wrong.
Indefensible because one cannot make coherent sense of what “universally” may possibly mean in this context.
* Moral relativism: X is acceptable / non-acceptable practice within a particular culture at a particular historical moment.
Inevitably leads to either sterile nihilism or to some sort of hidden absolutism.
* Moral reasonism (for lack of a better term): If assumptions {W,Z} are accepted, then X is right / wrong.
Where the assumptions are provided by our best (and changing) understanding of human nature, and the rest is done via rational thinking.

The assumptions provided by our best understanding of human nature will necessarily use scientific information. Informed by science and guided by philosophy, the Religion of Science. Hey, why not?

I echo the sentiment that the most rational people realize that such expressions as "science good, religion bad" and "science versus religion," usually indicate a superficial view that "mainline science" is something more than another world view that is counched in scientific-sounding rhetoric. Really, it is amusing to read (or watch documentaries, etc.) perspectives that assume the validity of the so-called scientific world view, when it is every bit as much top-heavy with philosophical assumption, but which is associated in an unbalanced way with "religious" views. Yes, "question everything!"--including smoke-screen pseudo-science that is usually NOT recognized as belonging to pseudo-science. There; I feel better now; thank you. r-Oz

r-Oz wrote:I echo the sentiment that the most rational people realize that such expressions as "science good, religion bad" and "science versus religion," usually indicate a superficial view that "mainline science" is something more than another world view that is counched in scientific-sounding rhetoric. Really, it is amusing to read (or watch documentaries, etc.) perspectives that assume the validity of the so-called scientific world view, when it is every bit as much top-heavy with philosophical assumption, but which is associated in an unbalanced way with "religious" views. Yes, "question everything!"--including smoke-screen pseudo-science that is usually NOT recognized as belonging to pseudo-science. There; I feel better now; thank you. r-Oz

Finally.., a reasonable and balanced intellectual posture.

Really, it is amusing to read (or watch documentaries, etc.) perspectives that assume the validity of the so-called scientific world view

I know what philosophies I ascribe to, but I'm at a loss as to what my beliefs would look like as a scientific world view. Do you have examples? Not of the people, but of the views that are held. What is a 'scientific worldview'?

Finally.., a reasonable and balanced intellectual posture.

Yeah, r-Oz appears to have some good opinions for discussion. I'm glad to see someone posting with similar views to your own ant.

r-Oz wrote:I echo the sentiment that the most rational people realize that such expressions as "science good, religion bad" and "science versus religion," usually indicate a superficial view that "mainline science" is something more than another world view that is counched in scientific-sounding rhetoric. Really, it is amusing to read (or watch documentaries, etc.) perspectives that assume the validity of the so-called scientific world view, when it is every bit as much top-heavy with philosophical assumption, but which is associated in an unbalanced way with "religious" views. Yes, "question everything!"--including smoke-screen pseudo-science that is usually NOT recognized as belonging to pseudo-science. There; I feel better now; thank you. r-Oz

Examples?

Interbane wrote:What is a 'scientific worldview'?

The assumption that we should not accept as true any claims that lack strong evidence and logic.