I challenge you:cite ONE paper that discerns Science from Pseudoscience wth CERTAINTY

[Wudang]

This isn't facebook.

 

[Robin]

Things like psi and telekinesis have been accommodated in mainstream universities for years, given resources, personnel and money.

Princeton had a whole department dedicated to studying a form of telekinesis for nearly 30 years.

There are many, many other cases of paranormal studies being given every chance to prove themselves.

Any claim that areas like these have been frozen out by the mainstream just flies in the face of facts.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Things like psi and telekinesis have been accommodated in mainstream universities for years, given resources, personnel and money.

Princeton had a whole department dedicated to studying a form of telekinesis for nearly 30 years.

There are many, many other cases of paranormal studies being given every chance to prove themselves.

Any claim that areas like these have been frozen out by the mainstream just flies in the face of facts.

Actually I saw this documentary about a team of researchers who were getting incredible results, documented, verifiable, repeatable and creating a genuine theoretical and mathematical framework with real world (and monetisable) applications but the entire department was shut down due to personal animosity on the part of the universities leadership. Luckily they were able to....

Oh, sorry. My bad, that wasn't a documentary it was Ghostbusters. I always get them mixed up.

 

[Sideroxylon]

Many members of the mainstream scientific community react with extreme
hostility when presented with certain claims. This can be seen in their
emotional responses to current controversies such as UFO abductions, Cold
Fusion, cryptozoology, psi, and numerous others. The scientists react
not with pragmatism and a wish to get to the bottom of things, but
instead with the same tactics religious groups use to suppress heretics:
hostile emotional attacks, circular reasoning, dehumanizing of the
'enemy', extreme closed-mindedness, intellectually dishonest reasoning,
underhanded debating tactics, negative gossip, and all manner of
name-calling and character assassination.

Two can play at that game! Therefore, I call their behavior
"Pathological Skepticism", a term I base upon skeptics' assertion that
various unacceptable ideas are "Pathological Science." Below is a list
of the symptoms of pathological skepticism I have encountered, and
examples of the irrational reasoning they tend to produce.

For full list see: http://amasci.com/pathsk2.txt

Main page: CLOSEMINDED SCIENCE: Examining the negative aspects of the social dynamics of science.




"Humanity's first sin was faith; the first virtue was doubt."
Carl Sagan



[qimg]https://mnmstatic.net/v_149/img/menemojis/36/popcorn.gif[/qimg]

No pretence to reason now, is there. Nothing left now but absurd posturing.

The deep epistemological questions were a facade. You had no real interest in a discussion. Taking an everyday pragmatic stance, homeopathy is bull ****. It doesn’t work. It is an industry full of grifters and the deluded. It’s a twenty-first century wild west snake oil medicine show.

These forums have had much more interesting discussions of homeopathy with proponents who engaged with posters here. What did you hope to achieve here? Did you imagine you had some brilliant gotcha that would result in pwnage?

 

[Dave Rogers]

In case anybody hasn't posted it yet:

https://xkcd.com/808/

Dave

 

[Mojo]

Things like psi and telekinesis have been accommodated in mainstream universities for years, given resources, personnel and money.

Princeton had a whole department dedicated to studying a form of telekinesis for nearly 30 years.

There are many, many other cases of paranormal studies being given every chance to prove themselves.

Any claim that areas like these have been frozen out by the mainstream just flies in the face of facts.

Those are all part of the conspiracy.

ETA: See, for example, the claims by homeopaths and others that Edzard Ernst was paid by ‘Big Pharma’ to discredit CAM. In fact, his department at Exeter was funded by Sir Maurice Laing, a supporter of CAM, but one who wanted it properly evaluated rather than validated.

 

[Darat]

Things like psi and telekinesis have been accommodated in mainstream universities for years, given resources, personnel and money.

Princeton had a whole department dedicated to studying a form of telekinesis for nearly 30 years.

There are many, many other cases of paranormal studies being given every chance to prove themselves.

Any claim that areas like these have been frozen out by the mainstream just flies in the face of facts.

And we have to always keep in the mind that the likes of psi were investigated because there were claims of amazing macro scale events. People literally levitating, people bending metal with the power of their mind, people seeing even though wearing blindfolds, people moving objects with the power of their mind and so on.

Every single one of those claims were tested in an objective manner and they were either shown to be done via trickery or simple couldn’t be done.

That is why there is so little research now done at “reputable” establishments, they have already investigated it. There is now no reason at all for anybody to look again.

And it is why the few drips and drabs of research are now looking at “statistical anomalies “ in long series of tiny variations in signals, which we never had any reason to ever look at given the original claims.

Psi is now truly psi of the gaps.

 

[Norman Alexander]

http://skepdic.com/pear.html

 

[Craig4]

[qimg]https://i.imgur.com/trw8olo.png[/qimg]

Were you going to address the two papers Abaddon found in posts 323 and 324?

I just ask because you seemed all hot and bothered about finding published papers a while ago so I would have thought you'd have jumped on that.

 

[Giordano]

This is the point.
Homeopathy is not presented as an unproven hypothesis but as a truly efficient medical practice. Without any scientific confirmation, of course.

Second point: How long can an unproven theory be maintained in science?
When a scientific hypothesis remains unverified for a century or less, the scientific community puts it aside.
How long does homeopathy exist -without verification? Since 1805. You can count.

Exactly!

The pseudo scientists either don’t understand or intentionally try to mis-state what a scientific hypothesis is. It is legitimate to report certain hypotheses, such as elementary particles can be described mathematically as assemblies of “strings.” This hypothesis has been examined and so far cannot be ruled out, yet neither does it appear provable at this point in time. The hypothesis is potentially useful as something to keep in mind as something that may prove testable one day, or may explain a future observation, but is not accepted as physically true in any manner. And it’s lack of testable predictions so far does irritate many physicists.

Compare with ESP, which is widely accepted as true by pseudo scientists, is testable, has been repeatedly tested, and has been proven wrong. Nonetheless they remain so certain of this truth they don’t even view it as a hypothesis or a theory; just as a fact.

ESP is not an unfairly neglected and abused string hypotheses.

 

[Wudang]

Copied from an old post of mine.
An analogy I like from John Diamond's book "Snake Oil". Imagine you were arranging a concert and needed 2000 chairs. So you go a chair warehouse and the guys says "Based on my years of experience I can tell you that is exactly 2000 chairs". You count them and get 1700 and he says "That's why I don't count. It gives the wrong answers".
Science is essentially "counting" for more complex problems. People have spent a lot of time showing how we can be fairly sure we get the right answers and not just the ones we want or expect.

He also relates the story of Ray Hyman testing a kinesiologist on his claim he could tell "good" sugar from "bad" sugar.

Hyman wrote: "When these results were announced, the head chiropractor turned to me and said, ‘You see, that is why we never do double-blind testing any more. It never works!’ At first I thought he was joking. It turned out he was quite serious. Since he ‘knew’ that applied kinesiology works, and the best scientific method shows that it does not, then – in his mind – there must be something wrong with the scientific method."

 

[David Mo]

"What was a metaphysical idea yesterday [Homeopathy, Feng Shui, Acupuncture, Bach flower remedies, Parapsychology, Neuro-linguistic programming, the Multiverse, the String Theory framework...] can become a testable scientific theory tomorrow: and this happens FREQUENTLY."

Karl Popper, 1974.

Popper corrected his theory of falsifiability in his later years, but I'm almost certain that this Popper's quote is manipulated. For two reasons;
The square brackets are typical of an interpolation and none of the pseudo-sciences inside these are "metaphysical".

You can undo this (strong) suspicion by entering the complete quote: book and page. I await your news.

Thank you for not squealing. At least in this post.

 

[Wudang]

Stanford's Plato is a good resource. In https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/
it has this

On previous occasions he seems to have interpreted falsifiability differently, and maintained that “what was a metaphysical idea yesterday can become a testable scientific theory tomorrow; and this happens frequently” (Popper 1974, 981, cf. 984).

The 1974 reference is

Popper, Karl, 1962. Conjectures and refutations. The growth of scientific knowledge, New York: Basic Books.
–––, 1974 “Reply to my critics”, in P.A. Schilpp, The Philosophy of Karl Popper (The Library of Living Philosophers, Volume XIV, Book 2), La Salle: Open Court, pp. 961–1197.

 

[bruto]

Popper corrected his theory of falsifiability in his later years, but I'm almost certain that this Popper's quote is manipulated. For two reasons;
The square brackets are typical of an interpolation and none of the pseudo-sciences inside these are "metaphysical".

You can undo this (strong) suspicion by entering the complete quote: book and page. I await your news.

Thank you for not squealing. At least in this post.

Even if Popper is misquoted or out of context, what might become testable tomorrow has not yet become so, and it isn't until it is. The sun might come out tomorrow, but it's raining today.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Even if Popper is misquoted or out of context, what might become testable tomorrow has not yet become so, and it isn't until it is. The sun might come out tomorrow, but it's raining today.

It's a variation on the "They laughed at Copernicus" argument and equally subject to the "They also laughed at Bozo the Clown" rebuttal.

 

[devhdb]

I can answer the "multiverse hypothesis .... science or pseudoscience?" question - I don't know.

Beware! Our intellectual positions might be becoming dangerously close...

 

[devhdb]

Stanford's Plato is a good resource. In https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/
it has this


The 1974 reference is

Thanks, I read it somewhere else though.

 

[devhdb]

The idea that millions are being spent on the multiverse hypothesis is frankly hilarious. Speculating on such ideas is probably the cheapest hobby there is.

Yeah, let's spend it on Homeopathy investigations, which are least are subject to falseability, and/or let's explore if matter and Consciousness are one and the same, right?

 

[devhdb]

Popper corrected his theory of falsifiability in his later years, but I'm almost certain that this Popper's quote is manipulated. For two reasons;
The square brackets are typical of an interpolation and none of the pseudo-sciences inside these are "metaphysical".

You can undo this (strong) suspicion by entering the complete quote: book and page. I await your news.

Thank you for not squealing. At least in this post.

The quote is 100% accurate. It should have been obvious that the text between the brackets was mine, for there was no Multiverse or String Theory in 1974...

But anyway, I appreciate your remark.

 

[devhdb]

The pseudo scientists either don’t understand or intentionally try to mis-state what a scientific hypothesis is.

That's a straw man and a circular argument, sorry.