In this sense, pseudoscience is assumed to include not only doctrines contrary to science proclaimed to be scientific but doctrines contrary to science tout court, whether or not they are put forward in the name of science. The following examples serve to illustrate the difference between the two definitions and also to clarify why clause 1 is needed:.
As the last two examples illustrate, pseudoscience and anti-science are sometimes difficult to distinguish. Promoters of some pseudosciences notably homeopathy tend to be ambiguous between opposition to science and claims that they themselves represent the best science. Various proposals have been put forward on exactly what elements in science or pseudoscience criteria of demarcation should be applied to.
Proposals include that the demarcation should refer to a research program Lakatos a, — , an epistemic field or cognitive discipline, i. It is probably fair to say that demarcation criteria can be meaningfully applied on each of these levels of description. A much more difficult problem is whether one of these levels is the fundamental level to which assessments on the other levels are reducible. However, it should be noted that appraisals on different levels may be interdefinable.
For instance, it is not an unreasonable assumption that a pseudoscientific doctrine is one that contains pseudoscientific statements as its core or defining claims. Conversely, a pseudoscientific statement may be characterized in terms of being endorsed by a pseudoscientific doctrine but not by legitimate scientific accounts of the same subject area. Derksen differs from most other writers on the subject in placing the emphasis in demarcation on the pseudoscientist, i. His major argument for this is that pseudoscience has scientific pretensions, and such pretensions are associated with a person, not a theory, practice or entire field.
However, as was noted by Settle , it is the rationality and critical attitude built into institutions, rather than the personal intellectual traits of individuals, that distinguishes science from non-scientific practices such as magic. The individual practitioner of magic in a pre-literate society is not necessarily less rational than the individual scientist in modern Western society. What she lacks is an intellectual environment of collective rationality and mutual criticism.
Some authors have maintained that the demarcation between science and pseudoscience must be timeless. If this were true, then it would be contradictory to label something as pseudoscience at one but not another point in time. This argument is based on a fundamental misconception of science. It is an essential feature of science that it methodically strives for improvement through empirical testing, intellectual criticism, and the exploration of new terrain.
A standpoint or theory cannot be scientific unless it relates adequately to this process of improvement, which means as a minimum that well-founded rejections of previous scientific standpoints are accepted. The practical demarcation of science cannot be timeless, for the simple reason that science itself is not timeless. Nevertheless, the mutability of science is one of the factors that renders the demarcation between science and pseudoscience difficult.
Derksen , 19 rightly pointed out three major reasons why demarcation is sometimes difficult: science changes over time, science is heterogenous, and established science itself is not free of the defects characteristic of pseudoscience. Philosophical discussions on the demarcation of pseudoscience have usually focused on the normative issue, i. One option is to base the demarcation on the fundamental function that science shares with other fact-finding processes, namely to provide us with the most reliable information about its subject-matter that is currently available.
This could lead to the specification of critierion 1 from Section 3. This definition has the advantages of i being applicable across disciplines with highly different methodologies and ii allowing for a statement to be pseudoscientific at present although it was not so in an earlier period or, although less commonly, the other way around.
Hansson At the same time it removes the practical determination whether a statement or doctrine is pseudoscientific from the purview of armchair philosophy to that of scientists specialized in the subject-matter that the statement or doctrine relates to. Philosophers have usually opted for demarcation criteria that appear not to require specialized knowledge in the pertinent subject area.
Around , the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle developed various verificationist approaches to science. The basic idea was that a scientific statement could be distinguished from a metaphysical statement by being at least in principle possible to verify.
This standpoint was associated with the view that the meaning of a proposition is its method of verification see the section on Verificationism in the entry on the Vienna Circle. This proposal has often been included in accounts of the demarcation between science and pseudoscience. However, this is not historically quite accurate since the verificationist proposals had the aim of solving a distinctly different demarcation problem, namely that between science and metaphysics.
He rejected verifiability as a criterion for a scientific theory or hypothesis to be scientific, rather than pseudoscientific or metaphysical. Popper , Although Popper did not emphasize the distinction, these are of course two different issues Bartley Strictly speaking, his criterion excludes the possibility that there can be a pseudoscientific claim that is refutable.
Astrology, rightly taken by Popper as an unusually clear example of a pseudoscience, has in fact been tested and thoroughly refuted Culver and Ianna ; Carlson Similarly, the major threats to the scientific status of psychoanalysis, another of his major targets, do not come from claims that it is untestable but from claims that it has been tested and failed the tests. Defenders of Popper have claimed that this criticism relies on an uncharitable interpretation of his ideas.
They claim that he should not be interpreted as meaning that falsifiability is a sufficient condition for demarcating science. Some passages seem to suggest that he takes it as only a necessary condition Feleppa , Other passages suggest that for a theory to be scientific, Popper requires in addition to falsifiability that energetic attempts are made to put the theory to test and that negative outcomes of the tests are accepted Cioffi , 14— A falsification-based demarcation criterion that includes these elements will avoid the most obvious counter-arguments to a criterion based on falsifiability alone.
However, in what seems to be his last statement of his position, Popper declared that falsifiability is a both necessary and a sufficient criterion. A theoretical sentence, he says, is falsifiable if and only if it logically contradicts some empirical sentence that describes a logically possible event that it would be logically possible to observe Popper [] , A statement can be falsifiable in this sense although it is not in practice possible to falsify it.
Logical falsifiability is a much weaker criterion than practical falsifiability. However, even logical falsifiability can create problems in practical demarcations. This statement has been criticized by evolutionary scientists who pointed out that it misrepresents evolution. The theory of natural selection has given rise to many predictions that have withstood tests both in field studies and in laboratory settings Ruse ; In a lecture in Darwin College in , Popper retracted his previous view that the theory of natural selection is tautological.
However, in spite of his well-argued recantation, his previous standpoint continues to be propagated in defiance of the accumulating evidence from empirical tests of natural selection. According to Kuhn, the way in which science works on such occasions cannot be used to characterize the entire scientific enterprise. In puzzle-solving, current theory is accepted, and the puzzle is indeed defined in its terms. Since antiquity, astronomy has been a puzzle-solving activity and therefore a science.
Therefore, according to Kuhn, astrology has never been a science. A theory may be scientific even if there is not a shred of evidence in its favour, and it may be pseudoscientific even if all the available evidence is in its favour. On this view, the demarcation criterion should not be applied to an isolated hypothesis or theory, but rather to a whole research program that is characterized by a series of theories successively replacing each other.
In his view, a research program is progressive if the new theories make surprising predictions that are confirmed. In contrast, a degenerating research programme is characterized by theories being fabricated only in order to accommodate known facts. Progress in science is only possible if a research program satisfies the minimum requirement that each new theory that is developed in the program has a larger empirical content than its predecessor.
If a research program does not satisfy this requirement, then it is pseudoscientific. According to Paul Thagard , , a theory or discipline is pseudoscientific if it satisfies two criteria. A major difference between this approach and that of Lakatos is that Lakatos would classify a nonprogressive discipline as pseudoscientific even if its practitioners work hard to improve it and turn it into a progressive discipline. In later work, Thagard has abandoned this approach and instead promoted a form of multi-criterial demarcation Thagard , In a somewhat similar vein, Daniel Rothbart emphasized the distinction between the standards to be used when testing a theory and those to be used when determining whether a theory should at all be tested.
The latter, the eligibility criteria, include that the theory should encapsulate the explanatory success of its rival, and that it should yield testable implications that are inconsistent with those of the rival. According to Rothbart, a theory is unscientific if it is not testworthy in this sense. George Reisch proposed that demarcation could be based on the requirement that a scientific discipline be adequately integrated into the other sciences.
The various scientific disciplines have strong interconnections that are based on methodology, theory, similarity of models etc.
Creationism, for instance, is not scientific because its basic principles and beliefs are incompatible with those that connect and unify the sciences.
More generally speaking, says Reisch, an epistemic field is pseudoscientific if it cannot be incorporated into the existing network of established sciences Reisch ; cf. Bunge , Paul Hoyninengen-Huene identifies science with systematic knowledge, and proposes that systematicity can be used as a demarcation criterion.
However as shown by Naomi Oreskes, this is a problematic criterion, not least since some pseudosciences seem to satisfy it Oreskes A different approach, namely to base demarcation criteria on the value base of science, was proposed by sociologist Robert K.
Merton [] The first of these, universalism , asserts that whatever their origins, truth claims should be subjected to preestablished, impersonal criteria. This implies that the acceptance or rejection of claims should not depend on the personal or social qualities of their protagonists.
The second imperative, communism , says that the substantive findings of science are the products of social collaboration and therefore belong to the community, rather than being owned by individuals or groups. This is, as Merton pointed out, incompatible with patents that reserve exclusive rights of use to inventors and discoverers. His third imperative, disinterestedness , imposes a pattern of institutional control that is intended to curb the effects of personal or ideological motives that individual scientists may have.
The fourth imperative, organized scepticism , implies that science allows detached scrutiny of beliefs that are dearly held by other institutions. This is what sometimes brings science into conflicts with religions and ideologies. Merton described these criteria as belonging to the sociology of science, and thus as empirical statements about norms in actual science rather than normative statements about how science should be conducted Merton [] , His criteria have often been dismissed by sociologists as oversimplified, and they have only had limited influence in philosophical discussions on the demarcation issue Dolby ; Ruse Their potential in the latter context does not seem to have been sufficiently explored.
Most authors who have proposed demarcation criteria have instead put forward a list of such criteria. A large number of lists have been published that consist of usually 5—10 criteria that can be used in combination to identify a pseudoscience or pseudoscientific practice. This includes lists by Langmuir [] , Gruenberger , Dutch , Bunge , Radner and Radner , Kitcher , 30—54 , Grove , Thagard , — , Glymour and Stalker , Derksen , , Vollmer , Ruse , — and Mahner Many of the criteria that appear on such lists relate closely to criteria discussed above in Sections 4.
One such list reads as follows:. Some of the authors who have proposed multicriterial demarcations have defended this approach as being superior to any mono-criterial demarcation.
Hence, Bunge , asserted that many philosophers have failed to provide an adequate definition of science since they have presupposed that a single attribute will do; in his view the combination of several criteria is needed. This would mean that there is a set of features that are characteristic of science, but although every part of science will have some of these features, we should not expect any part of science to have all of them. Irzik and Nola proposed the use of this approach in science education.
However, a multicriterial definition of science is not needed to justify a multicriterial account of how pseudoscience deviates from science. Even if science can be characterized by a single defining characteristic, different pseudoscientific practices may deviate from science in widely divergent ways. Some forms of pseudoscience have as their main objective the promotion of a particular theory of their own, whereas others are driven by a desire to fight down some scientific theory or branch of science.
The former type of pseudoscience has been called pseudo-theory promotion , and the latter science denial ism Hansson Pseudo-theory promotion is exemplified by homeopathy, astrology, and ancient astronaut theories. Williams Other forms of science denial are relativity theory denial, tobacco disease denial, hiv denialism, and vaccination denialism. Many forms of pseudoscience combine pseudo-theory promotion with science denialism.
However, as practiced today, creationism has a strong focus on the repudiation of evolution, and it is therefore predominantly a form of science denialism. The most prominent difference between pseudo-theory promotion and science denial is their different attitudes to conflicts with established science. Science denialism usually proceeds by producing false controversies with legitimate science, i. This is an old strategy, applied already in the s by relativity theory deniers Wazeck , — It has been much used by tobacco disease deniers sponsored by the tobacco industry Oreskes and Conway ; Dunlap and Jacques , and it is currently employed by climate science denialists Boykoff and Boykoff ; Boykoff However, whereas the fabrication of fake controversies is a standard tool in science denial, it is seldom if ever used in pseudo-theory promotion.
To the contrary, advocates of pseudosciences such as astrology and homeopathy tend to describe their theories as conformable to mainstream science. The term scepticism skepticism has at least three distinct usages that are relevant for the discussion on pseudoscience. First, scepticism is a philosophical method that proceeds by casting doubt on claims usually taken to be trivially true, such as the existence of the external world.
This has been, and still is, a highly useful method for investigating the justification of what we in practice consider to be certain beliefs. Secondly, criticism of pseudoscience is often called scepticism. This is the term most commonly used by organisations devoted to the disclosure of pseudoscience.
Thirdly, opposition to the scientific consensus in specific areas is sometimes called scepticism. Unwillingness to accept strongly supported factual statements is a traditional criterion of pseudoscience.
See for instance item 5 on the list of seven criteria cited in Section 4. It is particularly useful in relation to fact-finding practices that are not parts of science. Section 2. Generally speaking, conspiracy theories are theories according to which there exists some type of secret collusion for any type of purpose.
In practice, the term mostly refers to implausible such theories, used to explain social facts that have other, considerably more plausible explanations. Many pseudosciences are connected with conspiracy theories. For instance, one of the difficulties facing anti-vaccinationists is that they have to explain the overwhelming consensus among medical experts that vaccines are efficient.
This is often done by claims of a conspiracy:. Conspiracy theories have peculiar epistemic characteristics that contribute to their pervasiveness. Keeley In particular, they are often associated with a type of circular reasoning that allows evidence against the conspiracy to be interpreted as evidence for it.
Frankfurt used the term to describe a type of falsehood that does not amount to lying. Astronomers Arthur Eddington and Frank Dyson organized two groups to measure the deflection of starlight around the sun in order to test a prediction from general relativity, recently formulated by Albert Einstein. The news made an immediate international sensation, catapulting Einstein to his global celebrity. He first presented it at a lecture sponsored by the British Council at Peterhouse at the University of Cambridge in , and it was later published in Conjectures and Refutations.
This post—World War II articulation of his demarcation criterion has often obscured its Austrian origins, though Popper in the lecture stressed its historical roots in post—World War I Vienna.
According to the logical empiricists of the Vienna Circle, a theory is scientific if it is verified by empirical data. For Popper, this condition was grossly insufficient. According to this view, a theory is scientific if it is verified by empirical data. There was plenty of data that apparently confirmed psychoanalysis, he claimed. Every piece of data about personalities might be another brick in the confirmatory edifice for Freud, just as every event in politics or economics seemingly further confirmed Marxist theories such as the centrality of class conflict in history or the surplus value of labor.
What this meant for Popper is that logical empiricists were looking at things the wrong way around. The issue was not whether a theory was confirmed—anything might be interpreted as confirming if you formulated the theory flexibly enough. The point was whether it was possible to falsify the theory. Was there any imaginable observation such that, should it be found, Freudians or Marxists would concede that their theories were false?
If the answer was no, these were not sciences. The appeal of falsificationism is obvious. It provides a bright line, and it rewards the boldness that we often like to see exemplified in science. How well does it work? The short answer is: not very.
Philosophers of science recognized this almost immediately, for two main reasons. First, it is difficult to determine whether you have actually falsified a theory. How do you determine that an observation actually constitutes a confirmation of a theory?
Well, you interpret it within its framework, and sometimes those interpretations produce the lamentable distortions that Popper decried. But the same holds true for falsifying a theory, too. Suppose you did an experiment in your laboratory to test a theory, which predicts that under certain conditions your fact-o-meter should register a value of What do you do?
Should you run to the journals and proclaim the death of that theory? For Popper, the logical empiricists were looking at things the wrong way around. The issue was not whether a theory could be confirmed, but whether it could be falsified. Not so fast. How do you know that your experimental result was accurate? Maybe the reason you did not get the value of As a matter of fact, the results of that expedition were more equivocal than Eddington made them seem. It was several years before absolutely incontrovertible results in support of general relativity were obtained, largely by observatories in California.
If any disconfirming result stood to invalidate a theory, then every tenet of modern science would have already been falsified by middle school science students failing to replicate utterly uncontroversial standard experiments.
This is clearly nonsense. While it sounds like a good idea to insist on falsifying observations, it is far from straightforward to determine when precisely this has been done—and that defeats the purpose of having a bright-line standard.
The very minimum we should expect from a demarcation criterion is that it slices the sciences in the right places. We want our criterion to recognize as scientific those theories that are very generally accepted as hallmarks of contemporary science, such as quantum physics, natural selection, and plate tectonics. At the same time, we want our criterion to rule out doctrines such as astrology and dowsing.
Those sciences provide persuasive explanations of nature through the totality of a narrative chain of causal inference rather than a series of empirical yes-no votes. Popper thus inadvertently excludes important domains of contemporary science. The appeal of falsificationism is obvious, and it provides a bright line. But how well does it work? The situation with inclusion is even worse. The difficulty was sharply expressed by philosopher of science Larry Laudan in an influential article from On the contrary, creationists and UFOlogists often quote Popper to assert that their own positions are scientific and those of their opponents are pseudoscientific.
In his original demarcation article, as well as his monumental Logic of Scientific Discovery , Popper was explicit that his framework demands that we give up the possibility of ever attaining the truth about nature or anything else.
According to Popper, no scientific theory can, strictly speaking, ever be true. There was no possible objection that could be raised which would show the theory to be wrong. Pseudosciences cannot and do not do this—they are not strong enough to hold up. I may illustrate this by two very different examples of human behaviour: that of a man who pushes a child into the water with the intention of drowning it; and that of a man who sacrifices his life in an attempt to save the child.
Each of these two cases can be explained with equal ease in Freudian and in Adlerian terms. According to Freud the first man suffered from repression say, of some component of his Oedipus complex , while the second man had achieved sublimation. According to Adler the first man suffered from feelings of inferiority producing perhaps the need to prove to himself that he dared to commit some crime , and so did the second man whose need was to prove to himself that he dared to rescue the child.
I could not think of any human behaviour which could not be interpreted in terms of either theory. It was precisely this fact—that they always fitted, that they were always confirmed—which in the eyes of their admirers constituted the strongest argument in favour of these theories. It began to dawn on me that this apparent strength was in fact their weakness. Popper contrasted these theories against Relativity, which made specific, verifiable predictions, giving the conditions under which the predictions could be shown false.
But the essential nature of the theory gave grounds under which it could have been wrong. To this day, physicists seek to figure out where Relativity breaks down in order to come to a more fundamental understanding of physical reality. And while the theory may eventually be proven incomplete or a special case of a more general phenomenon, it has still made accurate, testable predictions that have led to practical breakthroughs.
It must be able to be proven wrong under stated conditions. From there, Popper laid out his essential conclusions , which are useful to any thinker trying to figure out if a theory they hold dear is something that can be put in the scientific realm:. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory—if we look for confirmations.
Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory—an event which would have refuted the theory. The more a theory forbids, the better it is. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is nonscientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory as people often think but a vice.
Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.
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