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By: Ashley England

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Post #3 Pseudoscience Watchlist: Use of Scientific-sounding Language that is Meaningless

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Post #3 Pseudoscience Watchlist: Use of Scientific-sounding Language that is Meaningless

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Use of scientific language definition: This is when someone uses big scientific type words and numbers to distract you from the fact the information may not be proven. This technique is also used to make the argument sound more scientific.

The above image is of a healing practice called sound bathing where the instructor will move a stick around some bowls to make vibrations. These vibrations are supposed to be absorbed by your “skin receptors and engage the parasympathetic nervous system” that is supposed to help you centre your energy and align and heal you. Through the use of the big words above they are trying to demonstrate validity of their claims. If the critical thinking process has been used, more specifically steps 3 and 4 which include evaluate source and evaluate evidence, you would see that the person preforming the healing has no training what so ever making them a very unreliable source. This method of healing has never been proven therefor there is no evidence to evaluate only the claims of the so called healer.

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Post #4 Pseudoscience Watchlist: Results Can’t be Reproduced or Verified

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Post #4 Pseudoscience Watchlist: Results Can’t be Reproduced or Verified

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Results can’t be reproduced or verified definition: This means that if you were to evaluate or complete this experiment twice the two results wouldn’t be the same.

The above image is of a lie detector test, popularly used by the police to determine whether or not a suspect is lying or being truthful. A number of factors can affect a persons heart rate which is the marker these tests use to determine truthfulness. The persons environment or mood that day could have an effect on the results that are being given making it highly unlikely that you would get the same results if even the smallest detail was different from the first set of tests taken. There are many people who have tried to debunk this test for various reasons but are unsuccessful as they are still widely used today. In the summary conclusion section of the critical thinking process, the results would be inconclusive therefore the conclusion would be inconclusive as well.

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Post #5 Pseudoscience Watchlist: Does Not Progress

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Post #5 Pseudoscience Watchlist: Does Not Progress

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Does not progress definition: This means that a practice has been used for a very long time without change. “We have been doing it this way for so long why change it”.

The picture above is of an astrological zodiac chart. The practice of reading one’s zodiac chart has been around for thousands of years and is still widely used in today society to make sense of a persons behaviours and actions. For example Leo’s have a short fuse. There is still a lot of skepticism surrounds the practice of zodiac charts despite them being around so long. Astrology has become very popular in today society through the critical thinking barrier of group think. Your friends believe their sign is the reason for some of their personality traits and you too now believe in the same things.

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Post #6 Red Flags: Correlation Without Causation

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Post #6 Red Flags: Correlation Without Causation

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Correlation without causation definition: This is when you believe that two things are directly linked and impacted by the other simply because they happened in tandem.

The above image is of the placebo effect. This is a study where a group of sick individuals are split into two groups, half with the real medicine and the other with a fake. The people with the placebo may start to feel better because they think they have the medicine. This causes the group with the placebo to have a distorted view of the truth that may be the cause of their feeling better. If you were to run through the first step of the critical thinking process, define claim, the people with the placebo would say they were feeling better because they were on this new medicine when that wasn’t the case.

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Red herring definition: this is when people use irrelevant information to distract you from the true logical information.

The image above is of covid 19. There was so much information in the new about Covid when it was first happening it was hard to tell fact from fiction. It seemed that everyone had their own opinions about what was going on. “The government created the virus in a lab”, “It is being used as population control”, “It’s part of the political agenda”. With so much nonsense being thrown into the media it made it incredibly difficult to decipher the truth. In critical thinking step 2 of recognizing bias, you could tell a lot of these false narratives being spewed were from people that wanted confirmation of their own beliefs. None of the claims were coming from a reputable source and there were no anecdotes seen in the media that were the slightest bit true or proven through the scientific method.

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Ideological support definition: This is when ,usually, a person of authority or power want you to believe what they are saying to be true because it is politically or morally correct.

The above picture is of the Covid 19 vaccine. When the vaccine first came out the media was flooded with people who were extremely against the vaccine stating that it is not safe and they refused to get it. There were many notable people of importance that agreed on that stance which only fuelled the “anti vax” movement more because they were seen to be trusted figures. People like Donald Trump and Pierre Poilievre were big figures in the Anti vax movement, so much so it cause us to witness a lack of practice in critical thinking skills and everyone believed what these politicians were saying would because they had the platform and power. These people of power are backing this idea which means I should too.

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Mystical energy definition: This is when the word “energy” is thrown out to make a claim seem more scientific.

The image above is of crystals, a new age way of healing one’s energy”. Crystals and their magical healing powers have become a huge phenomenon in the last few years with people sleeping with them on their pillows and in their homes simply because they boast claims of centring your energy and offering other healing capabilities. People believe in crystals because they are so mystical and magical and as soon as they hear the word energy people fall right into the trap of believing they have the power to turn around any negative connotations into something positive by simply using that one little word that makes them sound so official.

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Post #10 Red Flags: Suppression by Authorities 

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Post #10 Red Flags: Suppression by Authorities 

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Suppression by authorities definition: This is when you believe there is a higher power suppressing something from the rest of society for person gain.

The above image is of big pharma, who have been at the centre of many conspiracy theories. The most notable of those theories being that they have the cure for cancer but are keeping it under wraps so that people continue to get sick and spend money in hospitals and on widely priced treatment. These are all theories of course and are not backed up by any proof whatsoever but it is a very popular claim that has been made for many years.

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Post #11 Reasons for Belief: Agenticity 

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Post #11 Reasons for Belief: Agenticity 

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Agenticity definition: This is when power and meaning is given to something that has not been proven to exist.

The above image is of an angel, more specifically a guardian angel. People tend to assignment meaning and power to angels even though they are not an earthly being. For example someone is in a bad accident but some out with nothing but a scratch. They claim that they were under the protection of their guardian angel and had that angel not been there, the outcome would have been different.

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Post #12 Reasons for Belief: Perception and Observation

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Post #12 Reasons for Belief: Perception and Observation

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Perception and observation definition: When our sense create perceptions and observations about situations and may alter reality.

The above image is of a police line up. This is where victims are asked to identify the perpetrator next to 4 other people that look very similarly to them to see just how well the victim remembers them. Through the sense of sight the victim must remember days or sometimes weeks after the incident small details about what the suspect looked or sounded like. We are all human and sometimes mistake are made and our sense can distort reality and alter the details of what really happened. You may have remembered that the suspect had tattoos but you’ve now picked someone out of the line up that didn’t have tattoos. Many wrongful convictions happen when lineups are done because we are putting trust into our perceptions and observations to tell us what the reality of the situation was.

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Post #13 Reasons for Belief: Simplicity 

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Post #13 Reasons for Belief: Simplicity 

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Simplicity definition: This is the phenomenon of things sometimes happening at random and the simplest explanation is usually the true explanation of events.

The above picture is meant to represent Daydreaming or subconscious thoughts. Sometimes you may think about a scenario and then that scenario happens. The simplest way to explain this event is that it was a coincidence and those two things, the thought and the event, have no correlation to one another. For example you’re driving on the road and are thinking about what would happen if you were to get into an accident, then minutes later the scenario you were thinking about became reality. Sure there may be a very scientific difficult explanation as to how these two events are related, simplicity tells us the most simple answer is usually the case. In the example above, it may have just been a coincidence.

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Unexplained definition: This is when people believe in something because there is no proof so who’s to say it’s not real.

The image above is of Bigfoot, a long time conspiracy theory that still stumps many who try to prove any details about it. Many people believe in Bigfoot despite any evidence or concrete proof simply because there is no proof. If there’s no proof that he is real who’s to say he isn’t. The evens of Bigfoot are unexplained leaving people to fill in the blanks on their own and create their own stories. The belief of Bigfoot exists because no one has been able to prove other wise.