The Controversy Between Science And Pseudoscience

After reading Feder’s “Quick Start Guide” and chapter on “Science and Pseudoscience”, my impression of the difference between a “pseudo” archaeological theory and scientific archaeological theory is opinion and fact. First of all, it is important to know that archaeologists study about human cultures in the past by understanding and interpreting the remains and artifacts found in archaeological sites. When artifacts are discovered and proven to be false, it is a hoax. On the other hand, scientific archaeological theory occurs when archaeologists use evidence to support and show that the information they gathered is true.

In his argument, Michael Ruse defended the science communities’ position that creation-science was not a science. He claims that it is a pseudo-science. His main argument against creationism was based on the lack of support from the established view of real science. Ruse laid out what he believed the criteria for real science should look like. He then, expanded on several parts of scientific activity which included the role of prediction, explanation, testability, confirmation, falsifiability, tentativeness, and integrity. Ruse presents these as the absolute necessary empirical and social fundamentals for determining whether observable theories are scientific.

In Medieval science lab, everything was about what people believed was not always right by science. Many historical movements such as alchemic rituals performed by old scientist, crude surgeries performed by plague doctors and many of the other cases were considered primitive, which was against what we believe because of science today. However, some of these primitive sciences, called “pseudoscience” (Molumby and Murray, 2007, p.28), have persisted the scientific method, in other words people still believe in false happenings in society even though they are scientifically wrong.

Pseudoscience is a belief based on science without supporting scientific evidence. For example, in the book, The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, the Mozart effect is the pseudoscientific belief that symphony music makes people smarter (198). The effect became popular in the media when a researcher wrote a scholarly article about it. However, when others attempted to replicate the study they received different results (Chabris and Simons 203). The basis for scientific research is consistency and the ability to replicate studies. When a study is unable to be replicated then it loses its scientific credibility. Pseudoscience

The Faustian Bargain That Made Us Rethink Pseudoscience: Alchemical Attributes in Faust and Aspects of Life

Scientists try to find the answers to the mysteries, like climate change, that people constantly question about. So they use their equipment and a team of researchers to conduct experiments to make new discoveries that would benefit people’s lives. But even when new theories are formed by scientists with the support of evidence, people still hesitate to believe in the theories’ validity because of seven reasons mentioned by Joel Achenbach in “Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science.” The reasons include people’s common sense, personal experiences, vulnerability to confirmation bias, political arguments, the media, peer pressure, and the internet. Even though all seven reasons cause people to doubts science, the two that most affect their

The Scientific American™ defines pseudoscience as “a practice or belief that is known as scientific, but otherwise does not follow an acceptable scientific method, lacks subsidiary evidence or credibility, cannot be consistently tested, or lacks scientific standing.” When studying science, a key to finding “good” science is to make sure it is logical, based on facts and data, not opinions. Pseudoscience tends to appear more in the movie Sherlock Holmes by showcasing the unusual scientific theories used in the film by Holmes and Watson. Many evolutionary biologists and creationists argue over the facts displayed in the movie in order to prove both of their beliefs.

In this key examples pseudoscience is proved to have adverse effect to human kind by making them act irrationally and sometimes lead to dangerous results such as death. This proves that this bad science should not be advocated for human beings rather should be discredited as an illegal practise for the pioneers to face the law and stop deceiving

Karl Popper argues that theories cannot be considered scientific if they do not leave any room for the possibility of being false (P.O.S. 473-474). He argues that scientists must strive to prove themselves wrong rather than right, because while there may be a hundred pieces of ‘evidence’ to support a theory, it only takes one to knock the entire idea to the ground. Thomas Kuhn disagrees with this generalization based on the argument that how science should be done is very different than how it is done and that scientists very rarely try to prove their theories false. Instead, Kuhn presents science not linear or cumulative as Popper suggests, but rather

Philosophy of Science by Samir Okasha is trying to answer the infamous question, what is science? This question has been tempted to be answered by so many people in the past and present. Her take is breaking each section into separate chapters. The first chapter is explaining how we could possibly answer. She makes a reference to changing the question into “what it is that makes it a science” (pg. 1). Okasha gives a brief history of the origins of science from the age of Copernicus all the way to James Watson and Francis Crick. After the brief history, she goes into the fact that science could be tied to philosophy. The philosophy of science “is to analyze the methods of enquiry used in the various sciences” (pg. 12). This definition allows us to look deeper into the experiments and ask questions to the reason why does the experiment keep reoccurring with the same results and how are the results possible. She gives example of how scientists don’t just accept the theories that have been founded in the past, but they will gladly test them to try to find them falsifiable. At the end of chapter one, Okasha hits the main point of the book, which is the distinguishing between of science and pseudo-science. She looks at the difference stand points of the scientific philosophers. This portrayal of how each of the scientist in a way biggie-back off each other. For example, Popper critiqued Freud’s theory and explained how Freud’s theory could be “reconciled with any

The scientific method is not new to any of us. We learn about it in the 3rd grade and go over it every year in class from that point. The scientific method is the base of all science experiments that take place. We use the scientific method to better understand the test that we perform in order to prove if something is right or wrong in science.

Science is characterised by distinctive methods of enquiry and construction of theories (2). Philosophy of science is tasked with analysing the processes employed by scientists and uncovering the assumptions implicit in scientific practice (2, 12). According to Karl Popper a scientific theory ought to be falsifiable; otherwise it is merely pseudo-science (13). Scientists arrive at a set of beliefs by a process of inference (which is more often than not influenced by researcher bias). That is, deductive and inductive patterns of reasoning are used to provide a defensible explanation of the process generating the observed pattern of interest (18-23). Thomas Kuhn suggested that scientific concepts are largely influenced by the paradigms (set of

In the effort to delineate between science and pseudoscience, a necessary set of factors by which to differentiate between the two, a set of “criteria of demarcation” becomes necessary. In the 20th century, several modern philosophers made attempts to outline criteria of demarcation, with differing results and reasoning, but several important similarities. Both Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos argued against the paradigm (no Kuhnian pun intended) of verificationism, which asserted that positive proof in favor of a scientific hypothesis adds credence to that hypothesis, and that a sufficient body of empirically supporting observations can indeed “prove” a theory. Popper fervently rejects the notion of verificationism as a criterion of demarcation in his creation and support of falsificationism, wherein only one refuting instance may condemn a theory, and only by a failure to disprove a theory can it be supported, not proven. As a modification of falsificationism, Imre Lakatos’ more relaxed definition of the criteria of demarcation between science and pseudoscience still supports the view that a sufficient number of refutations may constitute rejection of a theory, but argues for a more lenient treatment of fledgling scientific theories

There are some demarcations to science from pseudo-science and non-science (Hansson, 2008). Science aims to unravel the way the natural world is and explain how it is and why it works in a particular manner (Hobson, 2001 & Bunge, 1982). It answers few of these questions by demonstrating the cause and the effects of various actions by presenting in descriptive and explanatory claims (Parse, 1995). Scientists prove their findings by explaining

One of the famous, influential philosophers in the 20th century, Karl Popper, includes striking ideas of his scientific view. His aim was to understand science. Popper called the problem of distinguishing science from non-science the “problem of demarcation” (Smith, 58). Popper proposed a solution to the problem, and it was the “Falsificationism”. He described endorsing a view of scientific validity based on a conception of “falsifiability.” Falsifiability is an ability to prove that hypothesis or a theory is proven false. If the theory was falsified, then it is scientific, and if it is not, then it is unscientific. Falsifiability was claimed that a hypothesis is scientific if and only if it has the potential to be refuted by some possible observation, and to be scientific, a hypothesis has to take a risk, has to “stick its neck out” (Smith, 58). If the theory has no risk, it can’t be proven but can be falsified, and therefore it is not scientific. Popper developed the theory of falsification that some theories are never going around. He claimed that all testing in science has the form of attempting to refute theories by means of observation (Smith, 58) The purpose of Popper’s use of falsifiability was to distinguish scientific from non-scientific theories, and Popper included his ideas of science and pseudo-science. Popper wanted to distinguish science from “pseudo-science”. According to Popper’s idea of falsification, the observable evidence can disprove scientific