Hello, welcome to my pseudoscience page. The existence of this page in no way means that I am a proponent of pseudoscientific theories and principles. In fact I am a proponent of scientific principles and the scientific method. It is my opinion that the large amount of pseudoscience material that exists and the misunderstanding of basic scientific principles that seems prevalent in our society has potentially dangerous implications.

Not too many years ago two scientists broke a story to the press about how they had achieved "cold-fusion". Professor Martin Fleischmann of Southampton University and Professor Stanley Pons of the University of Utah held a press conferance where they announced the discovery of 'cold fusion'. The scientific community learned about the "breakthrough" soon after the press-conferance along with the rest of the world. Over the years the scientific community has developed a very effective peer-review process to ensure that breakthroughs are the result of sound experimental procedure before it is published. Once a breakthrough experiment has been repeated successfully several times the general public is alerted through the popular press or occasionally a press release. They didn't feel that they had any adequately knowledgable peers to review thier work, so they went directly to the public. It took months to sort out the noise that ensued... the result? 'Cold fusion' teaches more lessons about tho social context of science than it does about fusion or any other aspect of science.

Another situation that I can recall from recent years had more serious potential. The exact details of where and when the story happens aren't needed for the message to be clear. The story could even be entirely apocryphal and still be meaningful.

The tale involves a single scientist and a congressional subcommittee. The one scientist was backing one view on a topic and he was the only accredited scientist supporting the view that could be found. He said something along the lines of, "Just because I am the only one who thinks this way does not mean I am wrong," to the subcommittee. Yes, his the statement was technically correct, but if he could not convince a significant percentage of the scientific community of his viewpoint then he either was badly communicating his ideas or his ideas were flawed in someway.

The problem with this situation was that a dramatically small percentage of the scientific community was getting a much larger proportional amount of consideration by the congressional subcommittee than would be expected, leading to potential legal developments based on this bias.

These cases don't illustrate pseudoscience, but they do show the problems that misunderstanding the scientific processes can lead to.

Definition of Pseudoscience

What I am defining as pseudoscience is 'theories' and/or concepts that give the impression of scientific methodologies but are really based on:

1. personal incredularity
2. common sense logic
3. False probabilistic logic
4. corrolational theories
5. missing evidence
6. occam's twineball

Personal Incredularity:

The argument of personal incredularity is essentually the speaker admitting they don't know how something happened nor are they creative enough to think of a possible realistic manner in which it could have happened. The conclusion that will be given instead is that the process is unexplainable.

This is simpler strategy than using common sense logic becuase it doesn't play on the listener's uncertainty about their own thinking and their personal belief of correctness.

Common Sense Logic:

Using statements of common-sense to explain the world. "Everybody knows there is no swamp on Earth that footprints could be preserved in," is an example of one such statement found in some creationist propaganda or other. The statement was referring to the existence of dinosaur footprints in coal seams. Coal formed from swampy forests in the Carboniferous Period, a time span named due to the large beds of coal laid down at the time.

This argumentative tactic is meant to convince the listener that the speaker is the authoritative source of information on the matter. This also can suggest to a listener that they just don't have the knowledge that 'everybody' has and therefor they should accept it.

Unfortunately, the speaker often will have little to no authoritativeness on the matter. Someone working from a scientific perspective would attempt to convince you of some fact, not bludgeon it into your mind. Another note is that a speaker such as this has no way of knowing what 'everybody' knows to begin with.

False Probabilistic Logic:

Probabilistic logic is a way of applying uncertainties to logical operations. This can be very useful in working out what the chances of an event happening are. With this form of logic, an event is only certain if it's probability is equal to one. Anything less than one indicates a degree of uncertainty to an outcome.

The false form of this that often comes up in pseudoscientific literature is characterized by determining an event as certain if it's probability is greater than zero.

This is used to draw listeners/readers along a chain of argument that can't really be disagreed with, because each step along the way is accurate. It is the result of the argument which is wrong. After several steps of 'probable' truthfulness the resulting probability of the statement is very low, but the speaker will state it as being of certain truth.

Corrolational Theories:

A corrolational theory attempts to argue that since A behaves in some way, that B (which is similer to A) must also behave in that way. An example would be to argue that gravity and pressure are manifistations of the same thing because spiral galaxies look superficially like hurricanes.

The problem with this sort of theory is that it fails to take into account the information known of how the different systems behave.

Missing Evidence:

The definition of missing evidence is straightforward, evidence crucial to the argument is lacking.

The lack of evidence by itself does not suggest that something deserves to be called pseudoscience. The lack of evidence is, after all, once of the driving forces behind science itself.

The distinction lies in how the lack of evidence is dealt with. Someone working from a scientific perspective would seek out the evidence they need. A practitioner of pseudoscience would ignore the lack of evidence and spend considerable effort developing an entire theory of how something works based on the 'evidence'.

Sometimes the evidence they claim would be easily provided by a simple experiment, sometimes it has already been falsified. In either case, the evidence is not sought out be the pseudoscience practitioner.

Occam's Twineball:

This will require some explanation. Occam's Razor is a generally well known principle in science. It has taken several forms, a useful one is "when you have two competing theories which make exactly the same predictions, the one that is simpler is the better." A twineball is a ball built up from layers upon layers of twine wrapped around a near-round center.

I call the propensity of pseudoscience materials to consist of layers and layers of complex theory to account for some observed facts, "Occam's Twineball". This helps the practitioner of pseudoscience to build up from their basic theory to account for almost everything.

Pseudoscience on the Web

Here are some pages that I have found which I classify as having a significant pseudoscience content:

CAN GRAVITY be INDUCED?

Are Pressure and Gravity manifestations of the same phenomenon?

COSMIC ANCESTRY: The modern version of panspermia. by Brig Klyce

The Revolution Against Evolution

If you disagree with my judgment of these pages, feel free to send me an e-mail with your arguments about it. I might even respond if it seems you have something interesting to say. If you find any pages you think that should be included here, send me an e-mail with the the page URL and a short description.