Deliberately creating mystery is an aspect of pseudoscience to watch out for. It refers to when people try to convince others of pseudoscience by introducing a lot of uncertainty and mystery surrounding the topic.

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Palm readers are individuals that claim to know many aspects of your life and future by reading your palm. They maintain a sense of mystery about your future, keeping their predictions vague to make you believe it. The lack of definitive claims causes people to remain less skeptical. However it's important to realize in this case that when evaluating the source, this individual has no evidence or ability to predict the future.

One of the ways to watch out for pseudoscience is whether the field or subject matter does not seem to progress over time, and remains unchanged for many years.

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One example of this is astrology, or the belief in horscopes. Often, the stereotypes associated with the astrological signs has remained the same, and it does not adapt to changing sources and evidence. It relies a lot on personal anecdotes even when the claims conflict with reality.

Convincing by faith and belief in spite of evidence is when someone bypasses the scientific method by appealing to religious or superstitious beliefs.

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There are individuals that claim that dinosaurs were not real, because it conflicts with some Christian's claim that the earth was made 6000 years ago. While this is easy to debunk by evaluating the sources by historians and researchers, it is a belief people still hold because they have fallen into group-think with other religious members of their community.

Ideological support is when people try to convince you of a belief simply because it has a lot of existing ideological support.

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This is a common phenomenon that occurs in cult recruitment. For example, the Church of Scientology attempts to recruit and convince people to join them, citing the fact that they have many existing members. This is a common way to encourage group-think.

Mystical energy is when people attempt to encourage a belief by attributing the claim to some mysterious, mythical energy behind the phenomenon.

Proof by verbosity is when someone tries to convince you of something simply by introducing a lot of jargon and a lot of words to their argument in an effort to confuse people.

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Many pseudoscientists that attempt to sell ineffective "supplements" may attempt to use a lot of complicated scientific words and over-explain to confuse people and convince them of their authority. One example is Methylene blue, which is being pushed as a supplement to boost the brain, the body, and improve cognition. People who sell this product make many claims about it in an effort to be verbose.

Red herrings are when something unrelated is used to distract from an existing topic. It attempts to derail the conversation and confuse people by introducing anecdotes and irrelavent details.

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One example of a red herring is when a politician attempts to distract from an issue by brining up another, unrelated issue. This attempts to prevent people from evaluating the evidence by distracting onto a new issue.

Suppression by authorities is when a claim is trying to be supported by the fact that the government is trying to "suppress" it. It is told to do something, and justifying that it is good for you because the government is preventing you from it. It tries to scare people by avoiding an evaluation of sources, convincing them the government may be manipulating the facts. This makes them rely more on anecdotes.

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During the COVID pandemic, the government discouraged people from attending large events and indoor gatherings. Some people rushed to the conclusion that the government was suppressing large gatherings to suppress freedom of speech and push unrelated agendas. This led to a distorted sense of truth, and pushed people away from evaluating appropriate sources and sticking to the scientific method relating to COVID-related policies.

One of the reasons for belief is caused by a personal emotional connection. This means someone believes something despite the evidence or valid sources, simply because it makes them emotional.

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When the false claim that vaccines cause autism began, many parents who happened to have autistic children who also happened to have taken vaccines began to believe this claim. In this case, they believed this claim because they were emotional over their children's situation, and believed the claims inspite of evidence from appropriate sources.

Patternicity is when people believe something because they can see some consistent pattern, making them believe things that may not be true.

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Some people believe that there can be symbolism in clouds, relying on the fact that they can occasionally see images or patterns made by the clouds. In this case, this reason for belief is not backed by any scientific method, and instead relies on an individual's visual anecdotes. This is called pareidolia.

Perception and observation is a reason for belief when people believe something because they can directly visualize it, even if it is not necessarily accurate.

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An example of "perception and observation" is when people believe there is water when in reality what they're seeing is a mirage. This is in reality an optical illusion, but people believe it because they believe their own perception. They are unable to evaluate any sources in this instance besides their own anecdotal vision.

This is a reason for belief that leads people to believe something because the phenomenon is unexplained or not well-understood.

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For example, archeologists and historians are uncertain about the way the pyramids in Egypt were created. People therefore believe in things that are not based in the scientific method, such as the belief that aliens built the pyramids. Because there is little known about the pyramids, it is difficult to definitively debunk such claims, causing people to have a distorted view of the truth about the pyramids.

https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-egypt/were-pyramids-built-by-aliens-conspiracy-real-history-facts/