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Post #2 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Website 1 

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Post #2 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Website 1 

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There are many dangers of believing in pseudoscience some examples are you may be wrongly informed on a subject matter, it may cause you to lose money in investing in something that really doesn't exists, and sometimes it may even cause death. I think pseudosciences are a very bad thing in my opinion not only because they can hurt people but because they slow us down from furthering other research more valuable. For example we could use the money being pushed into pseudoscience into actual medical diseases that can scientifically help someone.

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Philosophers of science have been preoccupied for a while with what they call the " demarcation problem," the issue of what separates good science from bad science and pseudoscience (and everything in between). The problem is relevant for at least three reasons.

What happens when a theory adopts the external trappings of science, but without the substance?

The first is philosophical: Demarcation is crucial to our pursuit of knowledge; its issues go to the core of debates on epistemology and of the nature of truth and discovery. The second reason is civic: our society spends billions of tax dollars on scientific research, so it is important that we also have a good grasp of what constitutes money well spent in this regard. Should the National Institutes of Health finance research on "alternative medicine"? Should the Department of Defense fund studies on telepathy? Third, as an ethical matter, pseudoscience is not - contrary to popular belief - merely a harmless pastime of the gullible; it often threatens people's welfare, sometimes fatally so. For instance, millions of people worldwide have died of AIDS because they (or, in some cases, their governments) refuse to accept basic scientific findings about the disease, entrusting their fates to folk remedies and "snake oil" therapies.

It is precisely in the area of medical treatments that the science-pseudoscience divide is most critical, and where the role of philosophers in clarifying things may be most relevant. Our colleague Stephen T. Asma raised the issue in a recent Stone column (" The Enigma of Chinese Medicine "), pointing out that some traditional Chinese remedies (like drinking fresh turtle blood to alleviate cold symptoms) may in fact work, and therefore should not be dismissed as pseudoscience.

This, however, risks confusing the possible effectiveness of folk remedies with the arbitrary theoretical-metaphysical baggage attached to it. There is no question that some folk remedies do work. The active ingredient of aspirin, for example, is derived from willow bark, which had been known to have beneficial effects since the time of Hippocrates. There is also no mystery about how this happens: people have more or less randomly tried solutions to their health problems for millennia, sometimes stumbling upon something useful. What makes the use of aspirin "scientific," however, is that we have validated its effectiveness through properly controlled trials, isolated the active ingredient, and understood the biochemical pathways through which it has its effects (it suppresses the production of prostaglandins and thromboxanes by way of interference with the enzyme cyclooxygenase, just in case you were curious).

Asma's example of Chinese medicine's claims about the existence of "Qi" energy, channeled through the human body by way of "meridians," though, is a different matter. This sounds scientific, because it uses arcane jargon that gives the impression of articulating explanatory principles. But there is no way to test the existence of Qi and associated meridians, or to establish a viable research program based on those concepts, for the simple reason that talk of Qi and meridians only looks substantive, but it isn't even in the ballpark of an empirically verifiable theory.

In terms of empirical results, there are strong indications that acupuncture is effective for reducing chronic pain and nausea, but sham therapy, where needles are applied at random places, or are not even pierced through the skin, turn out to be equally effective (see for instance this recent study on the effect of acupuncture on post-chemotherapy chronic fatigue), thus seriously undermining talk of meridians and Qi lines. In other words, the notion of Qi only mimics scientific notions such as enzyme actions on lipid compounds. This is a standard modus operandi of pseudoscience: it adopts the external trappings of science, but without the substance.

Asma at one point compares the current inaccessibility of Qi energy to the previous (until this year) inaccessibility of the famous Higgs boson, a sub-atomic particle postulated by physicists to play a crucial role in literally holding the universe together (it provides mass to all other particles). But the analogy does not hold. The existence of the Higgs had been predicted on the basis of a very successful physical theory known as the Standard Model. This theory is not only exceedingly mathematically sophisticated, but it has been verified experimentally over and over again. The notion of Qi, again, is not really a theory in any meaningful sense of the word. It is just an evocative word to label a mysterious force of which we do not know and we are not told how to find out anything at all.

Philosophers of science have long recognized that there is nothing wrong with positing unobservable entities per se, it's a question of what work such entities actually do within a given theoretical-empirical framework. Qi and meridians don't seem to do any, and that doesn't seem to bother supporters and practitioners of Chinese medicine. But it ought to.

Still, one may reasonably object, what's the harm in believing in Qi and related notions, if in fact the proposed remedies seem to help? Well, setting aside the obvious objections that the slaughtering of turtles might raise on ethical grounds, there are several issues to consider. To begin with, we can incorporate whatever serendipitous discoveries from folk medicine into modern scientific practice, as in the case of the willow bark turned aspirin. In this sense, there is no such thing as "alternative" medicine, there's only stuff that works and stuff that doesn't.

Second, if we are positing Qi and similar concepts, we are attempting to provide explanations for why some things work and others don't. If these explanations are wrong, or unfounded as in the case of vacuous concepts like Qi, then we ought to correct or abandon them. Most importantly, pseudo-medical treatments often do not work, or are even positively harmful. If you take folk herbal "remedies," for instance, while your body is fighting a serious infection, you may suffer severe, even fatal, consequences.

That is precisely what happens worldwide to people who deny the connection between H.I.V. and AIDS, as superbly documented by the journalist Michael Specter. Indulging in a bit of pseudoscience in some instances may be relatively innocuous, but the problem is that doing so lowers your defenses against more dangerous delusions that are based on similar confusions and fallacies. For instance, you may expose yourself and your loved ones to harm because your pseudoscientific proclivities lead you to accept notions that have been scientifically disproved, like the increasingly (and worryingly) popular idea that vaccines cause autism.

Philosophers nowadays recognize that there is no sharp line dividing sense from nonsense, and moreover that doctrines starting out in one camp may over time evolve into the other. For example, alchemy was a (somewhat) legitimate science in the times of Newton and Boyle, but it is now firmly pseudoscientific (movements in the opposite direction, from full-blown pseudoscience to genuine science, are notably rare). The verdict by philosopher Larry Laudan, echoed by Asma, that the demarcation problem is dead and buried, is not shared by most contemporary philosophers who have studied the subject.

Even the criterion of falsifiability, for example, is still a useful benchmark for distinguishing science and pseudoscience, as a first approximation. Asma's own counterexample inadvertently shows this: the "cleverness" of astrologers in cherry-picking what counts as a confirmation of their theory, is hardly a problem for the criterion of falsifiability, but rather a nice illustration of Popper's basic insight: the bad habit of creative fudging and finagling with empirical data ultimately makes a theory impervious to refutation. And all pseudoscientists do it, from parapsychologists to creationists and 9/11 Truthers.

Asma's equating of Qi energy with the "sacrosanct scientific method," as if both are on the same par, is especially worrisome. Aside from comparing a doctrine about how the world works (Qi) with an open-ended method for obtaining knowledge, what exactly is "sacrosanct" about a method that readily allows for the integration of willow bark and turtle blood, provided that they hold up to scrutiny? The open-ended nature of science means that there is nothing sacrosanct in either its results or its methods.

The borderlines between genuine science and pseudoscience may be fuzzy, but this should be even more of a call for careful distinctions, based on systematic facts and sound reasoning. To try a modicum of turtle blood here and a little aspirin there is not the hallmark of wisdom and even-mindedness. It is a dangerous gateway to superstition and irrationality.

Massimo Pigliucci is a professor of philosophy at the City University of New York. Maarten Boudry is a postdoctoral fellow at Ghent University and the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Vienna. They are co-editors of "Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem."

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Philosophers of science have been preoccupied for a while with what they call the " demarcation problem," the issue of what separates good science from bad science and pseudoscience (and everything in between). The problem is relevant for at least three reasons. What happens when a theory adopts the external trappings of science, but without the substance?

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Post #3 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Website 2

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Post #3 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Website 2

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After reading this article it was my first encounter with the idea that vaccines and autism were talked about together, I had no knowledge that this was even a thing. I truly don't think there is any correlation at all between the two and I think in my opinion it is bad not to get your kid vaccinated but I could be wrong too. Looking at facts and how young children have a undeveloped immune system and are more vulnerable to catch diseases I feel as though this pseudoscience "fact" is a fraud and can cause serious health issues to many children. The huge red flag here is obviously confusion of correlation with causation, because they try to correlate two topics with no hard proof.

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Do Vaccines Cause Autism? | History of Vaccines

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Autism rates in developing countries have risen remarkably in the past 20 years. For children born in 1992, according to the U.S. CDC, about 1 in 150 would be diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). For children born in 2004,…

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Post #4 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Website 3

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Post #4 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Website 3

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I think going through all the lists of dangerous pseudosciences I found this article illustrates the number one reason why pseudoscience is dangerous. There are people who strongly believe in faith healing and will not allow medical help which I find totally wrong especially when it isn't your choice like in this article. This mindset is horrible in my opinion because if you pray and pray that your child gets better, you must use the help that God has given you and that is medicine. The red flag in this article is ancient wisdom because although you might get lucky with your "remedy" you should never take a chance with someones life.

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Two members of an Oregon sect that believes in faith healing have been charged with murder in the death of their premature infant daughter. Sarah and Travis Mitchell, 24 and 21, have been under investigation since Sarah gave birth to twin girls at her grandparents' home in March. The birth was attended by three midwives, church members, and family members. But when one of the twins, Gennifer, struggled to breathe, no one called 911. A church elder contacted the city's medical examiner only after the baby died.

The Mitchells are members of a Christian sect called the Followers of Christ Church, which has a history of infant deaths. Adherents reject traditional medical care in favor of prayer, and believe that if a person dies, the death was God's will. An Oregonian investigation in the late 1990s found that 21 of the 78 children in the church's graveyard could have been saved by medical intervention. Sarah Mitchell's own sister, Shannon Hickman, and her husband were found guilty of second-degree manslaughter in 2011 for the death of her infant son, who was born two months premature and weighed less than four pounds. The church, which is influenced by Pentecostalism, has about 1,000 members in Oregon and Idaho.

There are larger, better known religious traditions that also reject elements of modern medicine, of course, but in recent years they have made attempts to reconcile their objections with the law, technology, and compassion. Christian Science, which rejects medical science, has made moves to emphasize its approach as supplemental; leaders have said that the church now quietly allows members to seek a doctor's care if necessary. Jehovah's Witnesses, who object on religious grounds to blood transfusions, have allowed parents to acquiesce to court orders requiring their children to receive life-saving transfusions, reasoning that in such cases the parents themselves technically avoid making the decision. Meanwhile, that tradition's objections to blood transfusions have led to significant advances in the area of "bloodless medicine"; the New Yorker reported in 2015 that many doctors have now begun using transfusions more conservatively in response. Both Christian Scientists and Jehovah's Witnesses have seen dramatic declines in membership in recent years.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of states allow no religious exemptions for parents who decline necessary medical treatments for their children. The Mitchells are being prosecuted in Oregon thanks to a 2011 law that rolled back legal protections for parents who reject life-saving medical care based on their faith. Sixteen states, including Texas, Tennessee, New York, and Massachusetts, now have similar laws on the books, often passed in the wake of appalling preventable deaths. In Idaho, which currently allows religious exemptions but also allows courts to order treatment, one sheriff recently formed a unit to investigate every death of a child associated with the Followers of Christ. A previous task force in Idaho found that the child mortality rate among the group was 31 percent, about 10 times the rate in Idaho children overall.

Federal law on faith-healing parents, meanwhile, is relatively weak. The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, which Richard Nixon signed in 1974, was designed to help states fund programs to combat child abuse and neglect. But it also required states to include exemptions for parents who reject mainstream medical care for religious reasons. Those provisions were crafted and promoted by Nixon aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman-both Christian Scientists.

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Members of Oregon Faith-Healing Sect Charged With Murder in Death of Infant

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Two members of an Oregon sect that believes in faith healing have been charged with murder in the death of their premature infant daughter. Sarah and Travis Mitchell, 24 and 21, have been under investigation since Sarah gave birth to twin girls at her grandparents' home in March.

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Post #5 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Image 1 

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Post #5 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Image 1 

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The image below shows comparisons between science and pseudoscience while poking fun at pseudoscience. The image shows pyramids of how scientific subjects would be reviewed from the beginning step to the final step.At the top of the  pseudoscience pyramid you see how it says "I just know", I find this funny because looking and reading at certain pseudoscience beliefs I really sit and wonder how they came to life. I find the biggest red flag in pseudoscience has to be Confusion of correlation with causation, because such as the vaccine example there is really no proof they "just know"

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Post #6 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Image 2

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Post #6 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Image 2

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I liked this image not because of the comparison between science and pseudoscience such as in the first image but I like it because of the first and fifth point under pseudoscience. The first point says to begin a Pseudo-scientific fact you start from the conclusion and work backwards to confirm it and looking at certain pseudosciences it does make sense for example crop circles. The fifth point says it picks favorable evidence and relies on weak evidence and when you think of crop circle they state how UFOs are circles and nothing else can make something like that. It is weak evidence but like it said before, they "just know".

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Post #7 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Image 3

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Post #7 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Image 3

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I chose this picture because while I read the article on the comparing vaccines to autism I wondered why and how they would make that correlation and I guessed they said the rise of autistic babies and the rise of vaccines go up at the same time and said it must be the vaccines. When I saw this image I realized that it could be anything at all the caused autism to increase and it is just a false correlation. This image shows the red flag confusion of correlation with causation because two things can rise at the same time but it doesn't have to have any correlation at all.

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Post #8 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Video 1

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Post #8 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Video 1

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I liked this video because it goes though a bunch of pseudoscience beliefs all in a rap. I especially like it because it says at the ending to use the knowledge of pseudoscience for guidance and I feel this is the proper way to look at pseudosciences. They are dangerous but if you understand them, do your research and look at red flags you will be safe and can laugh at them as much as this guy probably does.

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Presenting the Pseudoscience Rap. I explain why believing in the bad science is bad for you!

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Post #9 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Video 2

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Post #9 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Video 2

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In this video Michael Shermer who is an author and we have also been mentioned about in the course discusses the dangers of pseudoscience. I like how in the video he says the most dangerous pseudo-scientific beliefs are those that affect politics, public safety or personal lives. I agree with him 100% and I like how he brought up the vaccine autism argument too because it is one of the best examples to prove the dangers of pseudoscience. He explains how parents are not getting their children vaccinated and how it can cause an outbreak of diereses because "their kid can get autism"

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Michael Shermer: What Are The Most Dangerous Pseudoscientific Beliefs That People Hold?

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Post#10 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Video 3

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Post#10 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Video 3

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I thought this was perfect for the discussion of why pseudoscience is dangerous because it takes a comedic punch at the idea that vaccines could cause autism. After i watched this clip from the episode of Family Guy I went and watched the whole episode and in the end everyone gets measles because no one is vaccinated. Also in the beginning when Brian, the dog talks he says the exact same thing as Michael Shermer on how the only way no vaccinations could work is if everyone else is vaccinated but you. I think pseudoscience is very dangerous and there are real facts on that.

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Family Guy - The Griffins Say NO to Vaccines

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Post #11 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Written Asisgnment

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Post #11 Dangers of Pseudoscience: Written Asisgnment

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Discussion Questions