In the information age, misinformation spreads and pseudoscience is often mistaken for science. We’ll explain what pseudoscience is, what the problem is, and why we need to recognize and eliminate it.
We live in the information age. There is an endless amount of information available on the internet, and everyone has access to it. However, the sheer volume of information can be both an advantage and a disadvantage. When misinformation is mixed in, it can be difficult to distinguish between right and wrong, and the public accepts it as fact. This drawback is common to many fields and causes many problems, especially in science. Information in science needs to be delivered by more specialized and trustworthy people than in other fields, and the nature of the internet means that anyone can write and deliver information, which is often not the case. For this reason, pseudoscience, which is not science, is spread on the Internet, but people believe it to be science, which causes serious problems. Therefore, I believe that pseudoscience should disappear. But how is pseudoscience defined and why should it disappear?
To understand and define pseudoscience, let’s first understand what science is and how theories are formed in science. Science is a discipline that emerged independently from philosophy and refers to the practice of theoretical and empirical investigation of the laws and knowledge of the human and natural world and the system of methodology. To establish this system of practices and methodologies, modern science uses a method of accumulating or modifying knowledge by observing numerous variables in reality, including natural laws, and discovering causal relationships between them through experiments, which is called the scientific method. This scientific methodology is considered to be the most rational way to prove the principles and reasoning behind natural phenomena to date. To make it easier to understand, one example of a scientific methodology is the hypothesis-deduction model, which involves building a theory through the steps of observation-hypothesis-experimentation-theory. The first step is observation, where scientists look for patterns through repeated, objective observation of a specific object based on their motivation or prior research. In other words, it is the process of observing something and asking questions such as “Why?” and “How?”. The next step is to create a hypothesis based on these observations and predict the target based on the hypothesis, which is called the hypothesis stage, and to create an experiment to verify or disprove the hypothesis is called the experiment stage. The experiment involves setting up an experimental and control group to test for cause and effect, and blocking out all other variables. If the results of the experiment support the hypothesis, the hypothesis is proven; if not (disproved), a new hypothesis is created and the experiment is repeated. Finally, once the hypothesis is sufficiently proven by repeating the experiments to prove the hypothesis, we enter the theory phase, which provides a perspective on other problems from that perspective. This is called a theoretical perspective, but it’s not really relevant to the topic of this article, so I’ll leave it at that. The key to scientific methodology, such as this hypothetic-deductive model, is that for a new theory to displace an existing theory and take its place, it must demonstrate that it can explain the phenomenon equally or better than the existing theory. In other words, a new explanation for a phenomenon must be better than the existing explanation to be able to push it out, or at least not worse, to become the new mainstream theory. If there is no reason to believe that an alternative explanation is better, then it is the scientific method, or mainstream theory. The question of what exactly the scientific method is, and how it achieves objectivity and rationality, is often seen as a question of philosophy of science. In particular, the question of “which theories follow the scientific method and which do not?” is debated, which leads to an important current issue in the philosophy of science: the distinction between science and pseudoscience.
So what is the exact definition of pseudoscience? Unfortunately, the answer to this question does not yet exist, because the compartmentalization problem has not yet been solved, and it is common for the definition of the scientific method to vary in detail from one scientific discipline to another and from one individual’s interpretation to another. For example, if theory A wishes to defeat theory B, it must be demonstrated that theory A’s explanation of a natural phenomenon has advantages over theory B’s explanation, since the advantages are open to subjective interpretation. Therefore, philosophers of science have proposed various theories to define pseudoscience in the past, but logical problems have been found, and pseudoscience is still not clearly defined. The rough meaning of pseudo-science can be interpreted as pseudo-science. Pseudo means similar, pseudo, and pseudoscience means “something that is not science but pretends to be science,” or more precisely, “a theory that claims to be scientific without having been subjected to scientific research or proof. It’s easier to understand if you think of it as a theory that claims to be scientific without going through the scientific methodology described above. Examples of pseudoscience include blood type personality theories, constellation personality theories, the golden ratio, biorhythms, claustrophobia, and the quadrangle. For example, consider the Golden Ratio, also known as 1:1.618. The Statue of Venus, the Statue of David, and the Parthenon, which are known to be buildings with the golden ratio, are actually 1:1.555, 1:1.535, and 4:9, respectively, and none of them match the golden ratio. Similarly, parrot shells, national ID cards, and iPhones have ratios that are not related to the golden ratio. In terms of scientific methodology, it is a theory that omits the steps of hypothesizing and conducting experiments, i.e., it claims to be true without proving it through experiments. Therefore, it is categorized as a pseudoscience.
From the point of view of philosophy of science, pseudoscience is still not precisely defined. However, from the point of view of scientific methodology, the part of a theory is that in the absence of an exact theory, it is better to use the most reasonable theory, so we use the views proposed by many philosophers in the past to determine whether something is a pseudoscience. In this article, I’m going to focus on Karl Popper’s view, which has a strong connection to scientific methodology and is still considered valid today, except in certain cases. In his book Conjecture and Refutation, Karl Popper distinguishes between science and pseudoscience based on the presence or absence of disprovability: science is defined as a theory that can explain the relationships between empirical cases revealed to date by induction, and that can be wrong with a high probability, i.e., disprovable. This is very similar to the scientific method: imagine two competing theories, A and B. If a newly discovered phenomenon disproves theory A, then in terms of the scientific method, B is more plausible to explain the phenomenon and is therefore accepted as the correct theory. However, this does not mean that A is not a scientific claim, because A is also a theory that has been derived by the scientific method. For example, consider the theory of celestial motion and the theory of geodynamics. The former was disproved by Galileo Galilei and other scientists who made observations that negated the latter. However, this doesn’t mean that it’s not a scientific claim, because it was only disproved, but there was evidence in favor of it. In this sense, Karl Popper defined science as a theory that is subject to disprovability, which means that it can be disproven, and pseudoscience as a theory that is not subject to disprovability. To borrow a phrase from one wiki, for Karl Popper, a pseudoscience is not a theory that is wrong, but a theory that is not even wrong. Although Popper’s view has been challenged by the Duane-Quine Thesis, which shows that the indeterminacy of propositions or theories that contain probabilities that make it difficult to prove their disprovability makes perfect disprovability impossible, it is still a good way to understand pseudoscience in general.
Now, let’s borrow Popper’s perspective to analyze pseudoscience in the real world. The most obvious example is creationism. The opposite of creationism is evolution, and let’s compare the two. First, evolutionary theory starts with Darwin. It was established as a theory by faithfully following the “hypothetical-deductive model.” Before Darwin, there was Lamarck’s theory of virgin birth, but Darwin’s theory of natural selection proved to be more suitable to explain natural phenomena and became the mainstream theory. Darwin’s theory of evolution is disprovable, and later theories developed by other scientists emerge, and the process continues to evolve. Creationism is categorized as a pseudoscience because it is difficult to find evidence for it according to the scientific method, and its theories are not disprovable according to the scientific method. Another famous example is Masaru Emoto’s book “Water Knows the Answer”. The book claims that water responds to human speech and writing, forming beautiful crystals when it hears good words and bad words, and attaches pictures of water crystals that are the result of experiments, claiming that water has the ability to understand and remember. If you read it without thinking about it, it seems very convincing because it shows pictures of crystals that are the result of experiments. However, if you read it carefully and think about it, you can see that the author chose only the best crystals out of the 20 results and did not follow the proper experimental process. Although it is possible to disprove this claim with a proper experiment, Masaru Emoto’s claim is categorized as pseudoscience because it has not been proven as a theory with proper experimental results.
In this way, biorhythms, the four cardinal directions, astrology, and many other things are defined as pseudoscience. So, what’s the problem with pseudoscience? The problem is that unscientific claims are considered true by the general public. Something that has no scientific basis and is not recognized as science is deceived and spread on the Internet as if it were science, and the public believes it. The pseudoscience books described above, such as “Water Knows the Answer” and “The Dreaming Attic,” were actually recommended books for teenagers, and teenagers who do not have much discernment may believe them. In a similar vein, pseudoscience will be posted on various internet sites and spread to the public and accepted as truth. The problem of public misinformation is not uncommon. It’s not unthinkable that some people will believe in pseudoscience and get into trouble for it, as in the recent case where people believed in misinformation and criticized a target and drove him to suicide. Pseudoscience also affects the progress of science. Science in the broadest sense is meant to improve the quality of human life, and pseudoscience sets it back. Creationists dismiss the theory of evolution, a theory that has been tested and disproven by scientists for centuries, and insult those scientists by engaging in debates that are destructive and contribute to division and conflict in society. In addition, some people who believe in pseudoscience, such as folk medicine, choose to raise their children without vaccines, called “anaki”. A vaccine aims to create antibodies in all members of society to eliminate the disease itself, so that the next generation will not need the vaccine, but because people who practice anaki do not vaccinate, progress toward that goal is slowing down, and they are spreading infectious diseases around. Not only that, but by allowing children to contract the disease, they are disrespecting their human rights, disrespecting those who have fallen victim to the disease and disrespecting the hard work of the scientists who invented the vaccine to treat it. This is true outside of healthcare as well.
Science doesn’t fall from the sky. It is the result of endless hard work through the stages of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, theory, and testing. Imagine you’re a scientist and you’ve spent your life creating a drug that could eliminate the common cold from the face of the earth. But how would you feel if people refused to take it because they believed in a pseudoscience that had no scientific basis and was just one man’s ramblings? This is a bit of a stretch, but keep in mind that as long as pseudoscience exists, it’s a real possibility. Pseudoscience is something that needs to be properly promoted and eliminated.
