Science has a certain common core, especially a reliance on empirical methods of assessing hypotheses. Pseudosciences have little in common but their negation: they are not science. They reject meaningful empirical assessment in some way or another. Popper proposed a clear demarcation criterion for Science v Rubbish: Falsifiability. However, his criterion has not stood the test of time. There are no definitive arguments against any pseudoscience, any more than against extreme skepticism in general, but there are clear indicators of phoniness. Post: http://www.scifuture.org/science-vs-pseudoscience

1. Science v Pseudoscience: What’s the Difference?
Kevin B. Korb
Clayton School of IT
Monash University
kbkorb@gmail.com
twitter: @kbkorb

2. Abstract
Science has a certain common core, especially a reliance on
empirical methods of assessing hypotheses. Pseudosciences
have little in common but their negation: they are not science.
They reject meaningful empirical assessment in some way or
another. Popper proposed a clear demarcation criterion for
Science v Rubbish: Falsifiability. However, his criterion has not
stood the test of time. There are no definitive arguments
against any pseudoscience, any more than against extreme
skepticism in general, but there are clear indicators of
phoniness.

3. Demarcation: Science v Non-science
What’s the point?
Possible goals for distinguishing btw them:
Rhetorical, Political, Social
Methodological: aiming at identifying methodolgical virtues
and vices; improving practice
How to proceed?
Traditional: propose and test necessary and sufficient
conditions for being science
Less ambitious: collect prominent characteristics that
support a “family resemblance”

4. What is Science?
Science is something like the organized (social, intersubjective)
attempt to acquire knowledge about the world through
interacting with the world.
In the Western tradition, this began with the
pre-Socratic philosophers and is especially
associated with Aristotle.

5. Nature of Science
Science contrasts to:
Learning: individuals learn about the world. Their brains
are wired for that.
Mathematics/deduction: a handmaid to science, but
powerless to teach us about the world on its own.
Dogma, ideology, faith: These may be crucial to driving
even scientific projects forward (as are good meals, sleep,
etc.), but as they are by definition not tested by evidence,
they are not themselves science.

6. A Potted History of the Philosophy of Science

7. Wissenschaftsphilosophie
The Vienna Circle
Early 20th Century Scientific Major Success Stories:
Charles Darwin (evolutionary biology)
Gottlob Frege (formal logic)
Albert Einstein (physics)
The sciences were showing themselves as the most successful human
project ever undertaken. In Vienna a group of great philosophers asked
themselves: Why? How did this happen? With the Vienna Circle philosophy
of science became a discipline, attempting to answer these questions.

8. The Vienna Circle & Logical Positivism
The beginning was the appointment of Ernst Mach as Professor
of the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences at the University of
Vienna, 1895.
Thereafter, Mortiz Schlick founded the Vienna Circle (and
Logical Positivism) in 1922.
Through the helpful activities of Adolf Hitler, the
leading philosophers of science introduced the Vienna
Circles ideas throughout the English speaking world.

9. Vienna Circle
Ernst Mach
Moritz Schlick
Rudolf Carnap
Hans Reichenbach
Karl Popper
Paul Feyerabend
Noretta Koertge
Positivismus
Falsifikationismus
Anarchismus

10. The Vienna Circle
Basic Principles:
Philosophy as logical analysis
The logical foundation of science lies in observation &
experiment
e.g., Rudolf Carnap’s 1928 title: The Logical Construction
of the World!!
Key: Verifiability Criterion of Meaning
What cannot be proven empirically, is meaningless.
E.g., metaphysics, religion, superstition.
{h, b e1, . . . en; e1, . . . en} verifies h

11. Karl Popper Objects
Many scientific hypotheses are universal:
E.g., light always bends near large masses. But
{h, b e1, . . . e∞; e1, . . . e∞}
is not even a possible state of affairs
Aside from that, metaphysics is an ineliminable part of
science; all science has fundamental presuppositions.

12. Karl Popper
Falsificationism
Key: Demarcation criterion for science
What cannot be falsified empirically, is unscientific.
E.g., Marxism, religion, psychoanalysis.
{h, b e, ¬e} falsifies h
Theses:
We can make scientific (or social) progress alternating
between Bold Conjectures and Refutations.
The ideal test (severe test) is guaranteed to falsify one of
two (or more) alternative conjectures.
Progress: refuting more and more theories; not
accumulating more and more knowledge.

13. Imre Lakatos
Sophisticated Falsificationism
{h, b e, ¬e} falsifies (h&b)
Hypotheses stand or fall in networks, networked to each other and to
theories of measurement, etc. = research programmes
If a research programme makes novel predictions that come up true, it
is progressive
If a programme lies in a sea of anomalies and is dominated by ad hoc
saving maneuvers, it is degenerating
Unfortunately, there’s no definite point at which a degenerating research
programme rationally needs to be abandoned.

14. Thomas Kuhn
Scientific Revolutions
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) he introduced the idea
that science moves (not: progresses) from “normal science” through a
sea of anomalies to “revolutionary science” to a new “normal science” –
from “paradigm” to “paradigm”.
According to Kuhn, the process is not rational, but explained in terms of
psychology, social processes and power relationships.

15. Paul Feyerabend
Epistemic Anarchy
In 1958 Feyerabend went to Berkeley, where he turned against Popper,
promoting “Epistemological Anarchism” instead (Against Method, 1974).
He embraced the inability to reject research programmes, promoting
methodological pluralism instead.
Denunciations of witchcraft, pseudosciences, etc. are mere expressions
of prejudice.

16. Ludwig Wittgenstein
Open Concepts
Natural language concepts have an “open structure”, based on
family resemblance, not definition.

17. Ludwig Wittgenstein
Open Concepts
One of Wittgenstein’s examples: Define “game”, in terms of the
necessary and sufficient conditions. Now let’s play a game
involving changing those conditions. . .
Socrates’ game of taking some sophist’s definition for
“love”, “knowledge”, “good” and poking holes in it could be
played forever.
Hence, Socrates’ phony humility in claiming that he knew
nothing.
The reality is that our understanding and use of language
doesn’t depend on definitions.

18. “Science” is an Open Concept
Instead of assembling inadequate necessary and sufficient
conditions, let’s collect examples of science and non-science
and see what the former share in family resemblances. Leave
problematic cases for later.
Physics Mathematics
Epidemiology Medicine
Paleontology Religion
Climatology Mining
Evolution Theory Creationism
Economics Politics
Political Science Fox News

19. “Science” is an Open Concept
I’d like to suggest the key family resemblances are:
Empiricism: insistance on an empirical base versus
ideological dominance
Abstraction (generalization) and mathematization (when
possible) versus anecdotal evidence
Social processes encouraging objectivity, intersubjectivity,
peer review, Popperian critical rationality versus
authoritarianism

20. Some Pseudoscientific Arguments
AGW/ecology/genetic regulatory/etc models are highly
abstract, lose track of detailed reality and so are not scientific.
George Box: “All models are wrong, but some are useful.”
Any computer model will misrepresent continuity, but does
it matter?
The question is whether the property of the model of
interest (mapping to reality) is preserved under model
dynamics, not whether irrelevant details are carried along.
The demand for “proof” in science is a good indicator of
dishonesty.

21. Some Pseudoscientific Arguments
Similarly: the model predicts overall process ok, but omits some really tiny
details and therefore is wrong.
Here’s an example I gave a data mining class; 120 years of data on business
profits.
Looks like three different trends concatenated. Let’s just regress just the
points from 80-120.

22. Some Pseudoscientific Arguments
Not bad. But some ornery shareholder says, let’s just try years
109-120 instead.

23. Some Pseudoscientific Arguments
As we can all see profits are hardly moving; let’s turf out the
board!!

24. Some Pseudoscientific Arguments
NB: profit = global surface temperature; competitiveness =
solar energy.

25. Some References on Scientific Method
F Bacon (1620) Novum Organum Scientiarum.
JS Mill (1843) System of Logic.
M Gardner (1957) Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.
Dover.
T Kuhn (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
K Popper (1963) Conjectures and Refutations.
R Carnap (1966) An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science.
C Hitchcock (2004) Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of
Science.