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Pseudoscientific Beliefs

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Pseudoscience could be beliefs, theories, or practices that have been or are considered scientific, but have no basis in scientific fact. This could mean they were disproved scientifically, can't be tested or there is a lack of evidence to support them. Usually, a pseudoscientist would reverse the scientific process by thinking of their desired conclusion in the beginning and then searching for evidence that supports their desired conclusion while ignoring evidence and arguments to the contrary. Using such a biased and backwards approach, it makes it possible to prove anything, including some of the most absurd nonsense imaginable. These beliefs are considered to lie outside of science because they have not received support from the scientific …show more content…

There were a couple ideas that UFOs are visitations by contemporary aliens; the second is that aliens visited Earth in the past. The problem is in the nonscientific way these beliefs are supported. Upon investigation, these reports fall into three categories. Most have normal explanations: automobile headlights reflected off high-altitude clouds, a flight of luminescent insects, unconventional atmospheric effects, unconventional aircraft, aircrafts using searchlights for meteorological observations, aerial refueling operations, orbiting satelites, sunlight reflecting from objects that are dropped from aircrafts, or the setting planet Venus distorted by the atmosphere. Finally, a few UFO reports cannot be explained. In any investigation of unusual phenomena, there will always be cases that remain unexplained because of lack of data, false reporting, self-deception, and so forth. The unexplained UFO reports offer no positive evidence, such as unambiguous photographs or unambiguous sightings by many observers or an artifact left behind by “aliens”. The second UFO belief, that we have been visited in the past, has even less supporting evidence. Popular UFO mythology illustrates several common features of pseudoscience: mistaken observations attributed to exotic causes when simpler explanations suffice, deliberate fraud, using a small number of unexplained cases as proof of an exotic hypothesis, and self-dception caused by a desire to

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