Unit 5 - What is Not Science? Flashcards
What are the 6 defining characteristics of pathological science, according to Irving Langmuir?
Pathological science is a term coined by the famous chemist Irving Langmuir to describe the activities of scientists who study nonexistent phenomena by deluding themselves into observing things that aren’t there. It’s 6 defining characteristics are:
- The Effect is Barely Detectable - Experimental effects observed either remain very close to the extreme limits of detectability, or require massive numbers of measurements because of their exceptionally low statistical significance.
- The Magnitude of the Effect Seems Independent of the Postulated Causes - The magnitude of the observed effect seems to be independent of the postulated causes, which are barely detectable.
- Claims of High Accuracy - The accuracy of the experiments is claimed to be exceptionally high.
- Revolutionary Consequences are Implied - The claimed results seem to imply revolutionary theoretical consequences.
- Ad Hoc Excuses Used to Counter Criticism - Ad hoc justifications and excuses are provided to counter all criticism of experimental technique.
- Effect Fades Over Time - The results may initially attract as many supporters as critics, but eventually the excitement dies down when results cannot be reproduced, or when flaws in the experimental techniques are discovered.
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What are the 5 defining characteristics of pseudoscience given in Chapter 12 of What Science Is?
Static or Randomly Changing Ideas - One of the hallmarks of real science is growth and progress in our understanding. In contrast, the ideas in a pseudoscience either remain static or else change randomly. Either way, there’s no discernible progress.
Vague Mechanisms to Acquire Understanding - In genuine science, the goal of the activity is to achieve some coherent understanding of our observations. Understanding in pseudoscience might be based on many different premises, which may be neither coherent nor consistent with observation.
Loosely Connected Thoughts - Rigorous logic, a strict chain of deductive reasoning with no gaps or weak spots, is highly prized in the sciences. In pseudoscience, on the other hand, we often find wide, gaping holes in the logic; indeed, we often find that there is no logic at all, just some loosely connected thoughts.
Lack of Organized Skepticism – A new idea or result in science is usually presumed wrong until it is shown to be right. The norm in science is to subject ideas, experiments, and interpretations to criticism in order to weed out bogus results. The results that survive this process become a well-established consensus, and new results that contradict this consensus are greeted by particularly severe skepticism. On the other hand, even the consensus remains subject to criticism, and that criticism becomes severe if new and contradictory results (having survived their own skeptical scrutiny) start to accumulate. Oddly enough, skepticism keeps open the possibility of change even as it tends at the same time to foster conservatism in science. No such tradition of organized skepticism is found in pseudosciences. The skepticism with which scientists greet pseudoscience is generally unwelcome. This skepticism is interpreted as the close-minded response of someone invested in protecting an orthodox status quo. People who make this interpretation don’t realize the important role of skepticism in scientific thought.
Disregard of Established Results - Well-established results have become so through a long hard process of critical scrutiny, and these results remain established because they continue to explain a wide variety of observations and experiments in a coherent and satisfying manner. For all of these reasons, scientists work from a sturdy foundation of accepted ideas even as they try to extend our knowledge into new and unfamiliar areas. In pseudoscience, on the other hand, we find a rather cavalier disregard for established results. Indeed, contradicting known results is often taken to be a great virtue because it shows how new and exciting the ideas are. Whereas a scientist works to integrate results into a larger framework (which ultimately includes all of the sciences), the pseudoscientist works alone (or in a self-contained group that maintains no intellectual contact with anyone outside the pseudoscience). This isolation is actually yet another criterion by which to identify pseudoscience.
What are the defining characteristics of “crackpot science” and of “cargo cult” science?
Cargo cult science is a type of nonsense science in which the forms of scientific practice are imitated with little understanding of their actual nature and underlying rationale. Cargo cult science often shows up in fields that are only beginning to introduce formal scientific methods, where a basis of solid and reliable practice has yet to be established. As these fields develop, they either become established sciences or decline into pseudoscience. Parapsychology is the best current example of an attempt at science that is still seeking to establish itself as legitimate but remains on the edge of nonsense. The cargo cult phenomenon appears whenever somebody imitates apparently successful behaviour while lacking the understanding and capacity that was behind the actual success.
Crackpot science involve assertions blatantly in contradiction with well-established scientific fact, or at least with all that are currently known to be scientifically valid. Examples would be the beliefs that the Earth is flat, that the Great Pyramid of Egypt encodes accurate predictions about the future of the world, that highly advanced cultures existed on the now sunken continents of Atlantis and Lemuria, or that UFOs are abducting humans and performing medical experiments on them. At the extreme, a single individual claims to have made a revolutionary discovery that violates all current scientific theory. Descriptions of this earth-shaking discovery or new theory are generally vague and incomprehensible. The crackpot may protest that secrecy is necessary because others are trying to steal the ideas, or that the scientific establishment wants to suppress it as a threat to their power.
Consider the various examples of pseudoscience given in Chapter 12 of What Science Is, and classify each as pseudoscience, crackpot science or cargo cult science. Note that some examples may fit more than one category.
The work of Immanuel Velikovsky (pseudoscience, crackpot science) - In 1950, Immanuel Velikovsky published a book called Worlds in Collision. This book was the result of a decade’s research into the myths of many ancient cultures, and the major thesis of the book was extraordinary to say the least: cataclysmic events, found in the myths of almost every culture in the world, had their common origin in real disasters caused by collisions between the earth and other members of the solar system.
This work is pseudoscience – it claims to be scientific, but violates classical mechanics, the law of conservation of motion, etc., doesn’t offer any reasonable explanation, doesn’t offer alternate explanations, lacks skepticism, is based on loosely connected ideas instead of logical deductions….
We’ve seen so far that Velikovsky’s work should be classified as pseudoscience based on several of our criteria: disregard of established results, loosely connected ideas, lack of skeptical scrutiny, and vague methods to acquire understanding. Our other criterion was lack of progress and growth. His work qualifies as pseudoscience based on this criterion also, since his ideas cannot be modified based on testing, or suggest new research directions.
A perpetual motion machine (pseudoscience) is just what it sounds like: a machine that runs forever. More particularly, it’s a machine that runs forever without any fuel or source of energy to keep it going.
What is this new science that has been discovered (so they claim) by the perpetual motion machine inventors? Basically, they are saying that their machine can tap into a vast reservoir of energy that is always present but unnoticed. No violation of the energy conservation principle is involved because a source exists for the energy produced by their machines. However, we are ignoring a key point: the same theory that tells us the vacuum energy exists also tells us that we can’t use it.
Another criterion is the lack of logical connections. To be science, their explanation would need to specify unambiguously the mechanism by which their machine extracts energy from the vacuum.
Creation science (pseudoscience, cargo cult science) proposes that the universe was created, in its present form including all known species of plants and animals, about five thousand years ago; and that this conclusion is defensible on purely scientific grounds.
In the case of creation science, the understanding of its practitioners must remain static by definition because they assume up front that special creation occurred. Looking for evidence is an afterthought, engaged in only for the purpose of supporting their preconceived conclusion. In a way, no mechanisms are used at all to acquire understanding in creation science; there’s no need for them because the answers are already known ahead of time.
Provide examples of how advertisers and other opinion manipulators make use of the cargo cult mentality.
Vitamin and mineral supplements, fat loss techniques,
Explain why astrology and creationism are pseudosciences.
While astrology is a pseudoscience because it has no empirical support or legitimate theoretical foundation to connect planetary motions with human affairs, creationism is a pseudoscience because it flagrantly abuses the rhetoric and practice of science in support of a religious and political agenda based on a belief system that is incompatible with the actual practice of science. There is nothing to prevent a person from believing in creationism as a religious belief. But science requires doubt, even of one’s most firmly held beliefs, so the creationists are caught in a dilemma - either accept skepticism with regard to their basic religious beliefs, or cease to claim that their beliefs are part of a scientific enterprise.
State the difference between “factual understanding” and “functional understanding,” and provide examples of each.
Before continuing, it is necessary to make clear the distinction between “factual understanding” and “functional understanding.” In both cases, understanding arises through explanation in terms of a conceptual framework. In factual understanding, this explanation must be logically coherent, as well as open to confirmation through repeatable observations or experiments. In functional understanding, all that is required is that it leads to appropriate behaviour. Thus, factual understanding is a highly restricted form of functional understanding.
Under the influence of hallucinations produced by this disease, the mathematician John Nash came to believe that a Soviet nuclear weapon was being smuggled into an American city, and that information on the location of this weapon was being transmitted to Soviet agents in encrypted form through American newspapers and magazines. This is an example of understanding (i.e., his interpretation of events within the framework of his delusion) that is neither factual nor functional.
Earlier in his life, while a graduate student at Princeton University, Nash had believed that he had a roommate who was a graduate student in English. This roommate encouraged him, gave social advice, and in general acted as a welcome balance to his extreme shyness and lack of social skills. The only problem was that the roommate was a hallucination. Nevertheless, this imaginary friend provided support and assistance through difficult times. Here is an example of a framework that was functionally effective but not factual.
Finally, after coming to accept that he was sick, Nash was able to come to terms with his illness. He realized that he saw people who were not there, and projected meaning into things that were simply random events. Through great personal effort, he learned to distinguish hallucinations from actual perceptions, to test whether or not new individuals entering his world were real by confirming their existence with other people whose existence he trusted, and to ignore the hallucinations and fantasies, no matter how demanding and insistent they became. This is an example of factual understanding.
State the difference between “open” and “closed” cultures or belief systems.
Horton makes a distinction between open and closed cultures: traditional cultures do not have any real awareness of alternative possibilities to their established theories and beliefs. In scientific cultures, this awareness is highly developed. The awareness of different possibilities and the need to test theories is a basic characteristic of open cultures. In closed cultures, there can be no questioning of basic assumptions. The hallmark of an open mind, or an open culture, is the willingness to question basic assumptions, and to alter these assumptions if there is sufficient reason for doing so.
Give examples (other than that given in Discussion 5.2) of beliefs that are neither factual nor functional, beliefs that are functional but not factual, and beliefs that are both factual and functional.
What is the importance for scientific theories of the distinction between evidence and instances?
The examples presented as “experimental evidence” used by the Azande (the stubbed toe that became infected, the split bowl, the collapsed granary) are neither experimental (because they are single incidents that are non-repeatable) nor evidence. Rather, the Azande take them as instances that validate their beliefs.
The important difference is found in attitude. While the Azande were well aware that the oracle sometimes gave incorrect answers, this fact never led them to question its validity. When the oracle gave accurate answers, they were taken as instances that confirmed the oracle. While scientific methods or theories that give incorrect results or predictions may also be defended by apparently similar arguments (the experimental apparatus was faulty; the procedures were not performed carefully enough; there must have been some external factor that was not taken into account), the methods or theories themselves remain open to question.
Discussion 5.2 presented a distinction between open and closed cultures. In fact, however, it is more realistic to speak of cultures that are relatively open and relatively closed. A similar distinction applies to relatively open-minded and relatively closed-minded individuals. In Discussion 4.1, we encountered the connection between ignorance, fear and belief. Choose two cultural beliefs, one that you accept and the other that you do not, and for each, identify the fear behind the belief and the ignorance that produces that fear. [Notice how much easier this exercise is for the belief that you do not accept.]
