| From: Greg L. ® | 09/11/2000
2:43:54 |
| Subject: re: out of body experiments | post id:
166228 |
| Now lets move on to
pseudoscience. Psuedoscience in short is the attempt to present a
non-scientific idea or collection of ideas as science. Most scientists
work on two main ideas-that theories must be falsifiable or backed up by
evidence, and that the simplest explanation must be the most correct one
(except if it fails the ideas of falsifiability). This allows science to
evaluate, analyse, and decide on the validity of ideas and theories for
the various phenomena we observe in nature. This basic methodology has
been highly successful since it was founded by great thinkers such as
Galileo and Newton. Once science is divorced from rigid thinking, faith,
and dogmatic belief systems and is tested according to what we see in the
real world, we have a tremendously powerful way for understanding
the amazingly diverse array of phenomena that occur in the real world. But
when we turn our backs on this methodology, it is no longer science. So
why then, do scientists hate pseudoscience? The simple reason is that pseudoscience attempts to base its theories or findings on empirical evidence or scientific evidence, when the proper experimental controls or the idea of falisifiability is not applied. In other words, pseudoscientists attempt to use the methods of science to support their ideas, when they in fact misuse or abuse the methods of science to support their findings. Such actions represent not only a abuse and an undermining of the scientific process, but in some ways constitute a deception. Such activities undermine the credibility of both science and scientists as seekers of well-founded and well-verified knowledge, and downgrade the scientific way of thinking and of discovering truths ( I define this term to mean how it works) about our world. Pseudoscience, on the other hand, distorts the truth as it does not admit falsifiability or experimental disproof in the 'proper' scientific way, yet it tries to use the methods of science to support it. Some typical properties of pseudoscientific arguments include: 1) The tendency to put forward theories that are claimed to be scientific, but cannot be falsified or tested in any meaningful way. 2) The dogmatic refusal to give up an idea in the face of overwhelming evidence against it, or the use of 'ad-hoc' hypothesis to 'explain away' contrary evidence. 3) The selective use of data that only supports the theory and to ignore evidence that disproves it. 4) The use of 'anecdotal' (i.e. unverified accounts) evidence to support the theory. 5) The use of ancient myths, legends or mysteries to support theories. 6) Ignoring a strong lack of evidence to support the theory but advocating it nevertheless. (Adapted from Skepdic article, 2000). There are some classic examples of this, such as creationism or the idea of UFO visits and abductions, in which the proponents of these theories engage in exactly such behaviour (I will put links the the pertinent sites at the end of this post). Whilst science is not perfect, and fradulent or deceitful behaviour does occur in science, the strict conditions placed on scientists means it is hard to get away with such actions without the flaws in your ideas being discovered. They will then be necessarily rejected, or tested further to understand their validity. A counter argument may well be that 'Well (insert well-accepted scientific theory here) is believed in scientists just like religion or pseudoscience.' This argument is completely fallacious, as the well-accepted theories of science are accepted because they have a large amount of experimental and observational tests to support them and they pass the test for falsifiability. Whilst proving a theory true is obviously impossible, we can say with confidence that if the theory is strongly supported by experiments and observations then it is a very good and accurate explanation for those experiments and observations. We can never get a perfect scientific theory, but we can always get more accurate scientific theories, and this is why the current theories are tested (i.e. see the vast arrays of experiments underway to confirm the prediction of gravity waves by GR) and they will continue to be tested so long as science continues. Parapsychology experiments like the one you mentioned are a notorious example of pseudoscience. I won't outline the criticisms here (see the Skepdic site for good debunkings of this field of endeavour) but I think I've made clear why any of the scientists here are not likely to take this topic very seriously. References and suggested reading: http://www.skepdic.com/pseudosc.html Skepdic.com Sagan, Carl, 1995, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark , Random House Books, New York Gould, Stephen J, 1979, Ever Since | |