# 23. Media-Techno manipulation ## 23.5. Methodology/Refinements/Sub-species ### 23.5.7. Pseudoscience A pseudoscience is a set of ideas put forth as scientific when they are not scientific. The media has never been more replete with pseudoscience than it is these days. Real science itself has retreated into a very small group of professional periodicals which are normally unheard of and unread by the general public. It's a dangerous phenomenon because it allows a perpetrator to wrap up any number of hidden messages in a scientific sounding package which seems eminently credible but may be entirely fallacious. There is a good chance that the listener has no idea either way. #### 23.5.7.1. Pseudoscience - Uninformed victims The proliferation of pseudoscience has happened because the teaching of real science in schools has been progressively "dumbed down". Also, fewer and fewer children pursue science subjects at school because these subjects are perceived to be "too hard". The effect of these trends is that we have a society which has a very poor grasp on any of the core science subjects. This knowledge vacuum provides an opportunity for the media to peddle their pseudoscience stories to us. We know so little about real science that we are incapable of challenging a lot of junk science we are being fed. #### 23.5.7.2. Pseudoscience - Contemporary Examples Anti-abortion: The anti abortion lobby are masters at selling all kinds of absurd contentions wrapped up in a sufficiently impressive sounding language. The unsuspecting victim is unable to check the facts - because they have no scientific training - so they simply accept the conclusions as truths: For instance, the anti-abortion lobby has long claimed that having an abortion may increase the risks of breast cancer. They surround the assertion will much pseudoscience but no studies to back it up. In fact, in 1997, the New England Journal of Medicine published the largest-scale study ever on this subject--with 1.5 million participants--which concluded that there is no independent link between abortion and breast cancer. Clearly if abortion does increase the risk of breast cancer, it does so by an undetectable margin. **GM Pseudoscience:** The GM industry in its war with the anti-GM lobby reverts to pseudoscience constantly to demonstrate the value and safety of GM crops. For example, until recently the GM industry, via its lobbyists, was claiming that GM crops were the sole method by which we could feed the world's population in 2020. This "fact" was disputed and then roundly disproved by some large international organisations like the United Nations' FAO and many academic specialists in agro-economics.23.1 In a similar way, the GM industry carries out short feeding trials on laboratory animals to prove the safety of a new GM crop. When the animals survive the trials, the product is declared safe. This is despite the very limited range of tests and very short duration of the trials. When longer feeding trials of GM corn were conducted by the researcher Seralini, during which the laboratory rats developed tumours, the GM industry cried "foul" because Seralini's trials were apparently "too long" (Monsanto trials being only 90 days). Such a statement of statistical nonsense is another example of pseudoscience. How can a safety trial conducted on live laboratory animals be considered "too long" when surely more data is better than less data. In fact, the reaction from the GM industry was more of an emotional than a scientific reaction but it had to be wrapped up in appropriate pseudoscientific language. Seralini later roundly rebuffed the GM industry sound bites in a detailed 300 page scientific defence of his trials and the original paper. #### 23.5.7.3. Pseudoscience tactics Here is a list of the different tactics used in pseudoscience: - Use of Referenced Text: Some pseudoscientific claims are based on an authoritative text rather than observation or empirical investigation. Creationists, for example, make observations only to confirm their dogmas, not to discover the truth of the natural world. Their dogmas are static and their observation can lead to no new scientific discoveries of the natural world. The main purpose of research in creationism and "intelligent design" is to defend a set of religious beliefs not to promote scientific knowledge. - Vague and unspecific: Some pseudoscientific ideas can't be tested because they are so vague and conceptually malleable that anything relevant can be shoehorned to fit their claims, like the ideas behind many New Age psychotherapies, and reflexology etc. Protagonists make statements like "these stones will help increase your 'life' energy and dispel negative energies". Such statements are so vague and fluffy that they cannot even be evaluated. - Tautology: Pseudoscience manipulators, like the "creationists", often mistake the fact that discoveries in real science continue to confirm evolutionary hypotheses as evidence that evolutionists just won't give up their theory, no matter what. This outrageous idea puts the tautology of the manipulators into clear perspective. The arguments of the creationists work something like this "What we believe (Genesis) is true, anything which contradicts this is a deceit, whether it is scientifically demonstrable or not, whether it is repeatable or not. Our beliefs are based on something higher than science and cannot therefore be challenged by science". This type of circular argument is completely contrary to all norms of logical, scientific method, which requires that a hypothesis be demonstrated by experiment, correlation and repeatability not just by repeating a personal or religious belief again and again. The unconscious tautology makes creationism more of a psychological disorder than an alternative scientific explanation for our existence or evolution. - Anecdotes and intuition as "science": Some pseudoscientific ideas are supported mainly by selective use of anecdotes, intuition, and cases of confirming instances, e.g. in aromatherapy, graphology, personology, and physiognomy etc. These anecdotal origins give pseudoscience manipulation a stronghold in the popular mind because, even if the victim doesn't understand "the scientific stuff", they can at least confirm the anecdotal or intuitive content. For instance, aromatherapy adherents will tell you that lavender will help you sleep, basil can clear headaches and lemon can be an antidepressant and such ideas have now become widely accepted. However, researchers at Ohio State University have recently found that lemon and lavender oil had no physiological effect on study subjects, despite lemon's reputation as a stimulant and lavender's as a sleep aid. But, despite the absence of any real scientific studies to prove the claims of aromatherapy, the unsubstantiated pseudoscience continues to be believed by large parts of the general public and the cash keeps flowing. - Metaphysical-Empirical conflation: Some pseudoscientific ideas deliberately confuse metaphysical claims with empirical claims, e.g., acupuncture, alchemy, etc. By definition, a supernatural claim is non-empirical unless it also delivers evidence, which it doesn't. Science maintains that all hypotheses about the causes it studies refer to natural causes that have empirical manifestations and may be supported or refuted by empirical facts. For example, coming back to creationism again, it is essentially a metaphysical notion about the origins of the universe and of life. This is because it asserts the cause of life on Earth to be supernatural. Creationism asserts that no empirical fact could ever refute it because it is known a priori to be absolutely true. - The theory of pseudo-proofs: Many pseudo-scientists relish being able to point out the consistency of their ideas with known facts or with predicted consequences. However, they do not recognise that consistency does not prove anything. It is a necessary but not a sufficient condition that a good scientific theory be consistent with the facts. A theory which is contradicted by the facts is obviously not a very good scientific theory, but a theory or hypothesis that is consistent with the facts is not necessarily a good theory. For example, the truth of the hypothesis that "plague is due to evil spirits" is not established by the correctness of the deduction that "you can avoid the plague by keeping out of the reach of the evil spirits". Real science demands a bit more external proof. - Everyone makes mistakes: Pseudoscience manipulators often point to errors made in real science, to defend their own notions arguing that their scientist gainsayers are also capable of error and fallibility and that they "don't know it all". This is a fairly cheap attempt to undermine the (normally) rational behaviour of the scientific community because occasionally they also make mistakes. But comparing occasional errors in scientific method with some of the more bizarre claims of the pseudoscience manipulators is just another demonstration of the underlying denial of reality from which many pseudoscience victims and manipulators suffer. After all what rational person would either suggest or actually accept that the Grand Canyon was formed by the "Great Flood" which caused Noah's ark to finally land in Turkey?! It is self-evident isn't it? ### 23.6.7. Avoidance of Pseudoscience There is really only one sure way to recognise and avoid manipulation using pseudoscience, and that is to get a decent understanding of real scientific methodologies. The problem with pseudoscientific assertions is that even researching them may give rise to a lot of material which seems to support the assertions, especially on the internet. Therefore, you really just need to understand how well-designed scientific tests are developed and executed, how basic statistical analysis works etc. You can start by looking at "Scientific Method" in Wikipedia.