Jump to content

Talk:List of topics characterized as pseudoscience: Difference between revisions

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
Line 322: Line 322:


Happy to hear other opinions. [[User:Mr swordfish|Mr. Swordfish]] ([[User talk:Mr swordfish|talk]]) 22:28, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
Happy to hear other opinions. [[User:Mr swordfish|Mr. Swordfish]] ([[User talk:Mr swordfish|talk]]) 22:28, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
::Genetic ancestry testing services misleadingly conflate genetic ancestry with ethnic or geographical ancestry, which contradicts mainstream science, as scientists regard genetic ancestry to be distinct from ethnic or geographical ancestry[https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.1150098]. It has been described as the genetic equivalent of [[astrology]] multiple times[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14636778.2020.1811656][https://www.ucl.ac.uk/biosciences/gee/molecular-and-cultural-evolution-lab/debunking-genetic-astrology][https://bigthink.com/life/ancestry-test-genetic-astrology/][https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferraff/2019/04/09/genetic-astrology-when-ancient-dna-meets-ancestry-testing/]. The assumptions made by genetic ancestry testing services are criticized by subject-matter experts[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-accurate-are-online-dna-tests/][https://www.popsci.com/story/science/dna-tests-myth-ancestry-race/], and you only need the opinions of subject-matter experts.[[User:Helioz9|Helioz9]] ([[User talk:Helioz9|talk]]) 00:03, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Revision as of 00:04, 17 December 2023

Any entries not linked to existing articles?

Please list any you find right here so we can examine them. If they are notable enough for their own article, or are mentioned in an article, they may qualify for this list. Otherwise not. Individual entries in lists must be notable, in contrast to content in other articles. When they qualify for mention as a subtopic in an existing article, that article is often enough to justify their mention here. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:01, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Individual entries in lists must be notable, in contrast to content in other articles This entire comment appears to be exercising your subjective opinion as a requirement for this article. It is certainly not the consensus in the section above or at WP:LISTN or WP:FTN, not by my reading.
WP:LISTN says: The entirety of the list does not need to be documented in sources for notability, only that the grouping or set in general has been. Because the group or set is notable, the individual items in the list do not need to be independently notable — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 23:08, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

All seem to be linked articles. Found one MOS:EASTEREGG but fixed it, topic seems to be extensive. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 02:18, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

'pseudoscience' not mentioned in the article

Here's a list of topics that do not include any variations of the word "pseudoscience" in the body of their respective articles, but are listed in this article. So far I've gotten to Hexagonal water, so the list below isn't complete yet.

Some1 (talk) 02:20, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Some1 (talk) 02:52, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all your work. This presents an obvious problem. Their connection to pseudoscience should all be mentioned in their articles. If we are so weak that they are only mentioned here, but not in their articles, then the case is very weak for connecting them to pseudoscience at all, and I suspect that most here know that's not the case. It just needs to be done. If attempts to document them as pseudoscience in their parent articles fails (and that's an acid test), then they should not be mentioned here, unless we're going to endorse gaming the system here. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:21, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I think you have a valid concern. But I will also say, going through this list, an extremely high proportion of these are WP:SKYBLUE pseudoscience.
I think, looking at these, it will be possible to find sources for many of these which are of very high quality, reliable, verifiable, and describe the topic as one of: "alternative medicine", "discounted science", "dismissed science", "using flawed methodology", or some version of "(very/extremely/highly) implausible", if not outright "pseudoscientific", "falsely using the trappings of science" or "not employing the scientific method". I would say WP:SYNTHNOTSUMMARY tells us that such sources, in the absence of reliable sources saying the contrary, that we should include them on this list. I am willing to post a boilerplate message about such sources on each talk page. If we could demonstrate that, and yet there develops a local consensus on the page against inclusion, then I would want to take it to WP:FTN to be a more final consensus arbiter. Because my guess is that these each very likely had "pseudoscience" in their text at some point, and then removed with an imperfect or narrow consensus. And overall, We need some time to evaluate them before removing en masse.
I mean really, consider Vaccines and autism, 5G conspiracies, 5G causes coronavirus, Time Cube, Geocentric model. These are extremely well-known pseudoscience.
I'd like to add sources to your list for consideration @Some1. Would that be alright? — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 05:30, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Amusingly, Time cube was mentioned by arbcom as an example of obvious pseudoscience in that old ruling ... Bon courage (talk) 05:48, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Feel free to add sources in a new comment below; that way the list above is more readable (with just bare article links instead of references following them) and it'll be easier for items to be striken off the list later. Also, thanks for working on finding sources for these topics; since you've found some already, maybe you could add these to the parent articles? It doesn't need to be long, just a sentence or couple of sentences saying the topic has been characterized as pseudoscience/pseudo-scientific, etc. (provided that the sources actually do explicitly say the topic is pseudoscience). Some1 (talk) 23:46, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sources for each list item

Each of the following is an item from the above list, with sources following which describe it as one of: "alternative medicine", "discounted science", "dismissed science", "using flawed methodology", (very/extremely/highly) implausible", "pseudoscientific", "falsely using the trappings of science" or "not employing the scientific method". Most just say "pseudoscience" and I'll put in the source a quote when it does not.

I could definitely use help with this, so anyone who wants to add sources, quotations, or challenge one of these sources, should feel free to do so!— Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 00:31, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the citations on fasting are adequate. They say that various authors have made pseudoscientific claims about fasting; but they don't say that fasting itself is pseudoscience. Most fasting (religious and secular) isn't done for any claimed health benefits, so it's not a topic the label "pseudoscience" could be applied to. Nor have all the health benefits been debunked.
The article paragraph suffers from the same issue, since the sources just show that cure-all claims by quacks are pseudoscience. The underlying fasting practice is irrelevant; I've seen authors promote a whole foods diet as a cancer cure, but it's the "cancer cure" that's pseudoscience, not the whole foods diet. DFlhb (talk) 00:16, 6 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
They say that various authors have made pseudoscientific claims about fasting; but they don't say that fasting itself is pseudoscience.
This article is about topics that have been characterized as pseudoscience. Various forms/types of fasting have been characterized as pseudoscience. That's what the sourcing shows.
Similar to medical uses of silver and aromatherapy, this does not mean all uses of it are pseudoscience. I love the way some essential oils smell, and I'll even use them to block out other smells under my mask during surgery, but I'm not going to use them to cure my patients' cancer. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 05:41, 6 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Various forms/types of fasting have been characterized as pseudoscience. If that's the case, shouldn't this article be more specific and list these various forms of fasting, instead of fasting itself? Similar to how colloidal silver and aromatherapy are both listed on this article, but medical uses of silver and essential oils are not. Some1 (talk) 11:44, 6 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If that's the case, shouldn't this article be more specific and list these various forms of fasting
Sure. It should say something akin to "Some fasting diets have been connected to pseudoscientific claims" or similar. That's what we have the ability to verify. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 21:01, 6 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure why exorcism is included in this article. Exorcism is not claimed to be a scientific way of treating supernatural events. Exorcism, by definition, is a practice related to supernatural and non science related beliefs and ideas. To say that exorcism is 'pseudo science', one must first prove that Demonology is a pseudoscientific claim. MattJ7 (talk) 09:29, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, since this is a list of topics that someone once called pseudoscience, rather than a list of topics that actually are pseudoscience, then that's probably not necessary. All we need is a source in which someone made the rather silly implicit claim that religion is a branch of science.
I wonder, though, whether the WP:List selection criteria for this list is actually restricted to pseudoscience? The sources for the Bates method above, for example, say that it's "fringe" and has "little or no scientific basis" and is "fallacious", but I don't see a characterization as pseudoscience in the quotations. Is this perhaps a List of some topics characterized as pseudoscience, fringe science, bad science, or non-science? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:49, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure about that. Historically, people who believes in exorcism doesn't claim that it's has anything to do with natural philosophy/science. It has always been seen as a supernatural practice. So by definition, not scientific. It shouldn't matter if some random person claimed that exorcism is scientific. But if you really want to include exorcism in it, then you should atleast differentiate between that person's version of exorcism and all the other versions of exorcism. One of the most famous examples of exorcisms is Catholic exorcism. But the Catholic Church doesn't claim that exorcism is a part of science. So Catholic exorcisms cannot be called pseudoscience. There are numerous other examples like this. MattJ7 (talk) 15:47, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure that this list is excluding things that have been called pseudoscience by a tiny minority of sources. The list section criteria are unclear to me.
When we're working on a list such as List of common misconceptions, we're usually pretty strict about what gets included. For that list, I believe the usual standard, for anything, is to cite a source that either uses the exact phrase "common misconception" or something very similar. But it's not obvious to me that strict requirements are being used here. @Shibbolethink, @Valjean, what do you think? Do you expect the sources to actually use the word pseudoscience? Do you expect them to be a majority POV, or at least a significant minority POV? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:45, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Edit times
  • 01:51, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
  • 17:33, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
  • 16:17, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
  • 23:08, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
  • 22:21, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
  • 19:06, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
  • 11:47, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
Sources

  1. ^ Fraknoi, Andrew (28 October 2003). "Dealing with Astrology, UFOs, and Faces on Other Worlds: A Guide to Addressing Astronomical Pseudoscience in the Classroom" (PDF). Astronomy Education Review. 2 (2): 150–160. Retrieved 31 January 2023.
  2. ^ Craddock, Robert A. (2005). "Keeping pseudoscience out of AGU meetings". Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union. 86 (26): 246. doi:10.1029/2005EO260004. ISSN 0096-3941. How many posters or presentations have been made at AGU meetings in the last 10-20 years that support creationism, intelligent design, or other forms of pseudo-science, such as the so-called "face" on Mars?
  3. ^ Pasachoff, Jay; Percy, John (2005). Teaching and learning astronomy : effective strategies for educators worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 172–173. ISBN 9780521842624. Retrieved 31 January 2023.
  4. ^ Regal, Brian (2009). Pseudoscience : a critical encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press. p. 63. ISBN 9780313355080. Retrieved 31 January 2023.
  5. ^ Carroll, Robert Todd. "lunar effects (full moon) The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com". skepdic.com. Retrieved 31 January 2023. When such an analysis is done, says Nienhuys, one discovers that the study is "pompous pseudoscience.
  6. ^ Kelly, I.W.; Rotton, James; Culver, Roger (1985). "The Moon Was Full and Nothing Happened: A Review of Studies on the Moon and Human Behavior and Lunar Beliefs" (PDF). Skeptical Inquirer (Winter): 129–143. Retrieved 31 January 2023. Of the 23 studies we checked, nearly one-half contained one or more statistical errors. Some of these were serious enough to prompt us to publish interim reports (Kelly and Rotton 1983; Rotton, Kelly, and Frey 1983) to correct errors that had crept into the literature. For example, we found that Lieber and Sherin (1972) had employed inappropriate and misleading statistical procedures in their often-cited study of homicides in Dade County, Florida. On the basis of binominal tests of significance, they claimed that a disproportionate number of homicides occurred during the 24-hour period before and after full moons. We found that this claim was based upon 48 tests of significance, which are not reported in their article.
  7. ^ Mayoral, Olga; Solbes, Jordi; Cantó, José; Pina, Tatiana (2 July 2020). "What Has Been Thought and Taught on the Lunar Influence on Plants in Agriculture? Perspective from Physics and Biology". Agronomy. 10 (7): 955. doi:10.3390/agronomy10070955. eISSN 2073-4395. More specifically, it focuses on some pseudo-scientific questions and beliefs that impregnate a large part of agricultural traditions and agronomic practices according to which certain lunar phases encourage plant growth while others compromise their development.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  8. ^ Bensley, D. Alan; Lilienfeld, Scott O.; Rowan, Krystal A.; Masciocchi, Christopher M.; Grain, Florent (July 2019). "The generality of belief in unsubstantiated claims". Applied Cognitive Psychology. 34 (1): 16–28. doi:10.1002/acp.3581. eISSN 1099-0720. ISSN 0888-4080. Their survey included "science" items, with the false science items overlapping substantially with pseudoscientific claims, poorly supported practices, and psychological misconceptions. For instance, they labeled the misconception that the full moon causes people to behave abnormally a paranormal item.
  9. ^ WIESNER, MATTHEW P. (2015). "Modern Geocentrism: A Case Study of Pseudoscience in Astronomy" (PDF). Skeptical Inquirer. 39 (1): 50–53. Retrieved 31 January 2023. A small group of pseudoscience practitioners called modern geocentrists still suggest that the Earth is in fact the center of the universe. An astronomer examines their ideas and uses them to suggest common properties of pseudoscience purveyors.
  10. ^ Daempfle, Peter (2013). Good science, bad science, pseudoscience, and just plain bunk : how to tell the difference. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 23, 26. ISBN 9781442217263. Retrieved 31 January 2023.
  11. ^ a b WIESNER, MATTHEW P. (2015). "Modern Geocentrism: A Case Study of Pseudoscience in Astronomy" (PDF). Skeptical Inquirer. 39 (1): 50–53. Retrieved 31 January 2023. One hears this claim a great deal from pseudoscientists around the world. It might be a free energy machine that utility companies don't want known, or it might be the dangers of vaccinations that medical doctors and drug companies want hidden, or it might be the "fabrication" of the Moon landings that the government wants hidden. The reason that conspiracy theory is so prevalent in pseudoscience is there is always a pressing question: If this idea is so good, why don't physics professors, or medical doctors, or energy companies talk about it?
  12. ^ Mechler, G.E. (May 2002). "Turning a problem into an opportunity using the Fox Network's ``Conspiracy Theory: Did we land on the moon?" as a tool to improve student thinking on science and pseudoscience". Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society. 34: 782. Retrieved 31 January 2023. Fox Network's ``Conspiracy Theory: Did we land on the moon?" offers educators a rich example of televised pseudoscience that 1) can be rebutted in ways readily understandable by nonscience students and 2) will not result in throngs of offended students as this is not a particularly popular pseudoscience and few students will have an emotional investment in it.
  13. ^ Bensley, D. Alan; Lilienfeld, Scott O.; Rowan, Krystal A.; Masciocchi, Christopher M.; Grain, Florent (July 2019). "The generality of belief in unsubstantiated claims". Applied Cognitive Psychology. 34 (1): 16–28. doi:10.1002/acp.3581. eISSN 1099-0720. ISSN 0888-4080. Although labels for different unsubstantiated claims such as "conspiracy theory" and "pseudoscience" may imply that they are qualitatively different, these unsubstantiated claims often share overlapping features. For instance, people who endorse the conspiracy theory that the 1969 moon landing was a hoax are also endorsing a pseudoscientific claim that has been refuted by robust scientific evidence from moon rocks and verified photographs of the earth from the moon (Bensley, 2018). Moreover, pseudoscientists sometimes invoke conspiracy theories to explain skeptics' resistance to their claims.
  14. ^ Bensley, D. Alan; Lilienfeld, Scott O. (September 2020). "Assessing belief in unsubstantiated claims". Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology. 6 (3): 198–211. doi:10.1037/stl0000218. eISSN 2332-211X. ISSN 2332-2101.
  15. ^ Regal, Brian (2009). Pseudoscience : a critical encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press. p. 119. ISBN 9780313355080. Retrieved 31 January 2023.
  16. ^ Losh, Susan Carol; Nzekwe, Brandon (19 April 2011). "The Influence of Education Major: How Diverse Preservice Teachers View Pseudoscience Topics". Journal of Science Education and Technology. 20 (5): 579–591. doi:10.1007/s10956-011-9297-0. eISSN 1573-1839. ISSN 1059-0145. The omitted seven items either had ignorance rates of at least 20 percent among these students (King Tut's curse; the lost continent of Atlantis; or the Shroud of Turin); resembled none of the other pseudoscience general topics (reincarnation; communication with the dead; or the Bermuda Triangle) or were so highly skewed that the item was basically a constant (time travel).
  17. ^ Martin, Michael (October 1994). "Pseudoscience, the paranormal, and science education". Science and Education. 3 (4): 357–371. doi:10.1007/BF00488452. eISSN 1573-1901. ISSN 0926-7220.
  18. ^ PRATKANIS, ANTHONY R. (August 1995). "How to Sell a Pseudoscience" (PDF). Skeptical Inquirer: 19–25. Retrieved 31 January 2023.
  19. ^ Kusche, Larry (November 2015). "The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Delusion: Looking Back after Forty Years". Skeptical Inquirer. 39 (6). Retrieved 31 January 2023. At the end of The Bermuda Triangle Mystery—Solved, I stated that the Triangle was a "manufactured" mystery. That was a polite way to say it was a fraud. The "mystery" of the Bermuda Triangle is one of the most widespread frauds that has ever been perpetrated. It was based on poor research and distorted, untrue, inaccurate information that was uncritically copied, embellished, and sensationalized.
  20. ^ Philipkoski, Kristen (13 July 1999). "Shedding Light in the Dark". Wired. Retrieved 31 January 2023. Mainstream physicists have considered autodynamics a crackpot theory for decades, and most agree that an experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in 1984 proved the theory wrong. "As far as I was concerned autodynamics was disproved. Special relativity is correct," said Pierre Noyes, professor in the theoretical physics section at SLAC, and lead researcher of the 1984 experiment.
  21. ^ "List of Good Pseudoscience Topics". Eduzenith. 3 January 2015. Retrieved 31 January 2023.
  22. ^ "New York Times unskeptically presents discredited physics theory". Physics Today. 18 June 2015. doi:10.1063/PT.5.8122. eISSN 1945-0699. The Times commissioned Overbye to insert his intellect between readers and scientists in reporting on this noble astrophysics investigation that probes and tests Einstein's work. The Times also accepted and unskeptically ran a somewhat rambling screed about a discredited physics theory purporting to expose Einstein's alleged "misconceptions."
  23. ^ Ritter, Stephen K. (7 November 2016). "Cold fusion died 25 years ago, but the research lives on". cen.acs.org. Retrieved 1 February 2023. The excitement quickly died when the scientific community came to a consensus that the findings weren't real—"cold fusion" became a synonym for junk science.
  24. ^ Novella, Steven (11 April 2016). "More Cold Fusion Claims - NeuroLogica Blog". NeuroLogica Blog - Your Daily Fix of Neuroscience, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking. Retrieved 1 February 2023. Unfortunately the cold fusion community has fallen, in my opinion, into a cesspit of pseudoscience
  25. ^ BENNETT, JAY (21 December 2015). "Can Cold Fusion Come Back From the Dead?". Popular Mechanics. Retrieved 1 February 2023. "Cold fusion is dismissed as pseudoscience, the kind of thing that respectable scientists and science journalists simply don't talk about (unless to remind us of its disgrace).
  26. ^ Collins, HM; Bartlett, A; Reyes-Galindo, LI (2016). "The Ecology of Fringe Science and its Bearing on Policy" (PDF). doi:10.48550/arXiv.1606.05786. Retrieved 1 February 2023. a large proportion of the fringe has characteristics of a distinctive community. Members will often meet at the same conferences and organisers are interconnected....Myron Evans, who heads the Alpha Institute for Advanced Studies (AIAS), helped establish the Vigier Symposia, which are now sponsored by NASI, while NASI founding director Richard Amoroso is also listed as member of the AIAS. The NPA's Sagnac Award has been given to Halton Arp (late editor of Apeiron) and Donald Scott, both luminaries among 'Electric Universe' theorists, while the TGA has awarded Gold Medals to, for example, Myron Evans and Wallace Thornhill, who is one of the founders of The Thunderbolts Project. The sense of community, fragile though it may be, is also indicated by certain common characteristics not shared by mainstream science {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  27. ^ a b Pigliucci, Massimo; Boudry, Maarten (2013). Philosophy of pseudoscience : reconsidering the demarcation problem. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 35. ISBN 9780226051826. Why physics rather than the pseudophysics of free-energy machines or antigravitation devices? Why standard history rather than von Daniken's ancient astronaut archeology? In general, why should we teach sciences rather than pseudosciences?
  28. ^ Echoes of an Alien Sky. Publishers Weekly. 2006;253(49):50. Accessed February 1, 2023. "Meanwhile, scientist Kyal Reen is trying to figure out whether Terrans managed to develop electrogravitic propulsion in time for some of them to escape Earth's death throes. The plot--a mix of exposition, polemics and pseudoscience."
  29. ^ Siegel, Ethan (21 November 2018). "This Is The One Key Difference Separating Good Science From Junk Science". Forbes. Retrieved 1 February 2023. (This is a WP:FORBES Contributor, which are typically not considered reliable, but this gentleman is an extremely well-regarded astrophysicist who writes prolifically about junk science in astronomy and physics.
  30. ^ Lancaster, Don (March 1998). "How to Bash Pseudoscience". The Blatant Opportunist. 49 (1). Pennsylvania State University: 1–4. Retrieved 1 February 2023. Pseudoscience Obviously, there are a lot of others who disagree. The web is full of people who are out there mightily striving towards developing perpetual motion machines, building "overunity" generators, running cars on water, abducting themselves to Alderon, traveling or communicating faster than light, performing miracles with magnets, expressing psychic powers, or extracting "zero point energy". I quite strongly believe that these pseudoscience subjects certainly do serve as useful adjuncts to porcine whole body cleanliness. But otherwise are total hogwash.
  31. ^ Point, Sebastien (January 2018). "Free Energy: When the Web Is Freewheeling" (PDF). Skeptical Inqurer. 42 (1): 51–55. Retrieved 1 February 2023. Claims about "free energy" are all over the Internet. What's it all about? Not real science...it is fortunately possible (but for how long, you will ask) to consult on the Internet many videos or descriptions of free energy machines that are presented as so much proof … mostly unverifiable....This type of reasoning comes from a misunderstanding of the very concept of energy: it is often imagined as an exchangeable fluid present in us and around us. But energy is an inherent property of matter, and it has no existence of its own...
  32. ^ Orzel, Chad (26 January 2018). "Scientific Failure as a Public Good: Illustrating the Process of Science and Its Contrast with Pseudoscience". Pseudoscience. The MIT Press. doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262037426.003.0010. I illustrate this contrast with three examples: the 2011 superluminal neutrino anomaly reported by the OPERA collaboration, the 2014 claim of primordial gravitational waves by the BICEP2 collaboration, and the pseudoscientific field of "hydrino" physics.
  33. ^ Sukharev, Maxim (June 2019). "A quick how-to user-guide to debunking pseudoscientific claims" (PDF). doi:10.48550/arXiv.1906.06165. Retrieved 1 February 2023. In what follows I will try to do my best to provide a simple how-to user's guide to debunking pseudoscientific claims...Now with a little bit of quantum background we can turn to our last example – hydrino (a curious reader may wish to google this word). Claim: hydrogen atoms can be brought to a new state called hydrino, which has an energy lower than the ground state...But remember – extraordinary claims must be supported by extraordinary evidence. Most importantly, the experimental evidence must be independently verified. It did not take too long for the scientific community to jump into this. Firstly, the experiments were scrutinized [7] and the experimental procedure was questioned. The scientists questioned the validity of the hydrino experiments. Secondly, the very theory of hydrino was checked for consistency [8] and it was clearly shown that the hydrino model is inconsistent and is in contradiction with the well experimentally tested quantum theory...To our biggest surprise the hydrino is still very well alive [10] with its author being interviewed by CNN, who seems to be constantly triggered by buzz words such as "clean energy". Moreover, some people even invest their money into this "hydrino clean energy" endeavor. It certainly is very clean in a sense that it does not exist. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  34. ^ Rathke, A (19 May 2005). "A critical analysis of the hydrino model". New Journal of Physics. 7: 127–127. doi:10.1088/1367-2630/7/1/127. eISSN 1367-2630. We found that CQM is inconsistent and has several serious deficiencies. Amongst these are the failure to reproduce the energy levels of the excited states of the hydrogen atom, and the absence of Lorentz invariance. Most importantly, we found that CQM does not predict the existence of hydrino states! Also, standard quantum mechanics cannot encompass hydrino states, with the properties currently attributed to them. Hence there remains no theoretical support of the hydrino hypothesis.
  35. ^ Dommerholt, Jan; Fernández-de-las-Peñas, César; Petersen, Shannon Mbravo (27 May 2019). "Needling: is there a point?". Journal of Manual & Manipulative Therapy. 27 (3): 125–127. doi:10.1080/10669817.2019.1620049. eISSN 2042-6186. ISSN 1066-9817. PMC 6600071. PMID 31230588. According to Nada, 'trigger point dry needling is a money grabbing marketing ploy hiding behind a veil of tooth-fairy and pseudoscience. No matter how well presented, this takes the profession further away from our roots and closer to fringe CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) professions' [35]. Others opined that 'DN is an utter fool's errand wrought with placebo ... induced by maximal ritual effect, novel and exciting stimulus as well as an injection of hope for those desperate enough to allow someone to stab them with a needle'
  36. ^ Bohr, Thomas. Problems with myofascial pain syndrome and fibromyalgia syndrome. Neurology. 1996;46(3):593-597. Accessed February 01, 2023. "However, we can at least be intellectually honest and admit that the trigger point injection is an unproven technique. Doubtless, it helps many patients, but given that dry needling has a similar effect, it is likely due to placebo effect...With FS, theory has traditionally outpaced science. Martin Gardner once said, "In no other field have pseudoscientists flourished as prominently as in the field of medicine." For years, muscle was pursued as the responsible site for the pain, with apparently ``positive biopsies described. Later, when investigators got around to using control subjects, it was decided some of the ``abnormal findings previously described were actually nonspecific. Other investigators found no consistent microscopic abnormalities in FS....Thus, the traditional foundation of FS is breaking down, that is, the notion that specific tender points exist in muscle and fibrous tissue. Given this fact, it is no surprise that the diagnosis is quite fungible. FS is whatever one wants it to be, and this includes either party in the physicianpatient duo. To officially diagnose a tender point, the examiner does not necessarily have to note a grimace, flinch, or withdrawal; he need only ask the patient if the palpation is painful, which constitutes virtual self-diagnosis."
  37. ^ Kreidler, Marc; Hall, Harriet (4 May 2020). "Dubious Claims in Psychotherapy for Youth Part III: Externalizing Issues and Daily Routines". Skeptical Inquirer. 44 (3). Retrieved 1 February 2023. Acupressure is a variant of acupuncture, a prescientific treatment system based on myths. Acupuncture has been extensively studied and found to be a theatrical placebo (Colquhoun and Novella 2013).
  38. ^ Lilienfeld, Scott O.; Lynn, Steven Jay; Lohr, Jeffrey M.; Tavris, Carol (2015). Science and pseudoscience in clinical psychology (Second ed.). New York: The Guilford Press. p. 234. ISBN 1462517897. Currently, conventional science has yet to validate the core principles of New Age psychotherapies—the idea that thoughts can influence one's external environment, the existence of subtle energies and fields—or of meridians, acupressure points, chakras, auras, or of the ability of some psychotherapists to reliably detect these constructs.
  39. ^ Lilienfeld, Scott O.; Lynn, Steven Jay; Lohr, Jeffrey M.; Tavris, Carol (2015). Science and pseudoscience in clinical psychology (Second ed.). New York: The Guilford Press. p. 234. ISBN 1462517897. ...these findings suggest that AA is indeed a pseudoscientific treatment, persisting by virtue of intuitive appeal and strident adherents despite weak empirical support...To conclude, the role of AA in the science-based AUD treatment enterprise has been highly controversial....from a scientific standpoint, there are reasons to be critical of AA's outmoded etiological model and to question the strong identification of formal treatment programs with AA principles (Kelly, 2013). Participation in community mutual-help groups like AA will not be for all patients, but, for some, AA may very well enhance formal treatment efforts.
  40. ^ Williams, William F. (2013). Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience : From Alien Abductions to Zone Therapy. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. pp. 7, 303. ISBN 9781135955229.
  41. ^ Regal, Brian (2009). Pseudoscience : a critical encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press. pp. 12, 13. ISBN 9780313355080. Retrieved 31 January 2023.
  42. ^ Ernst, Edzard (11 November 2014). "Alexander technique: some evidence and plenty of wishful thinking". edzardernst.com. Retrieved 4 February 2023.
  43. ^ Burley, Richard Ford (11 April 2016). "Borderline Woo: The Alexander Technique Vol. 3 / No. 24.1". This Week in Tomorrow. No. 3.24.1. Retrieved 4 February 2023. The Alexander Technique appears from the websites of its proponents to be totally nuts. It has all the signs: HTML from 1995, a pay-for lessons system, unreliable health claims (like that it cures asthma), and naturalistic fallacies ("we show our students precisely what they are inadvertently doing to themselves that gets in the way of their natural functioning" [emphasis mine])...The Alexander Technique. A little pseudosciencey, and probably not covered by your insurance the way PT is, but maybe not total bunk if you want to relieve muscular-based back pain through better posture and need someone to tell you how to pay attention to the way you use your body. The chances of it curing your asthma are rather less positive.
  44. ^ Čavojová, Vladimíra; Ersoy, Selin (7 October 2019). "The role of scientific reasoning and religious beliefs in use of complementary and alternative medicine". Journal of Public Health. 42 (3): e239–e248. doi:10.1093/pubmed/fdz120. eISSN 1741-3850. ISSN 1741-3842. PMID 31588497. Fries classifies CAM according to its effectiveness ratings of family physicians into two broad categories: 'accepted' (acupuncture for pain management, massage therapy for muskuloskeletal indications, chiropractic care for muskuloskeletal indications, relaxation therapy, biofeedback and somewhat surprisingly also spiritual or religious healing) and 'rejected' (homeopathy or naturopathy, Feldenkrais or Alexander technique, Rolfing, herbal medicine, traditional Chinese medicine and reflexology).
  45. ^ Austin, John (3 December 2022). "Dark Hidden Origins of the Alexander Technique". Connecting Up the Dots. Retrieved 4 February 2023. Alexander's ideas related to eugenics boil down to: if you help people change their habits, they can have better children...In Man's Supreme Inheritance, Alexander asserted that modern man had evolved beyond 'the savage' whom Alexander described as being driven by instinctual reaction rather than conscious control...In light of Alexander's philosophy of mind-body unity he saw, 'conscious control of the self' (or 'good use of the self' etc.) as a moral issue and someone with 'bad use' was behaving immorally (unconsciously). Because Alexander's thoughts on evolution of conscious control (essentially a racist ego development theory) he and Saleeby saw the AT as applied eugenics.In 1944, a scathing critique of the AT, 'Quackery Versus Physical Education' was published in the South African Fitness Journal, Manpower. It insisted that research cited as supportive did not provide any evidence in support of Alexander. It also referred to Alexander's 'followers' as a 'head balancing cult' and put their 'belief' down to 'group hystero-neurosis typical of a new faith.' The article contained a section, 'The misquoted Sherrington' which claimed Alexander had mischaracterized Sir Charles Sherrington's research as being supportive to his work.
  46. ^ Green S (1997). "Pseudoscience in Alternative Medicine: Chelation Therapy, Antineoplastons, The Gerson Diet and Coffee Enemas". Skeptical Inquirer. 21 (5): 39.
  47. ^ Vickers, AJ; Cassileth, BR (2008). "Living proof and the pseudoscience of alternative cancer treatments". Journal of the Society for Integrative Oncology. 6 (1): 37–40. PMID 18302909.
  48. ^ Grimes, David Robert (14 July 2019). "How to survive the fake news about cancer". The Observer. Retrieved 4 February 2023. "That pseudoscience is being hawked to vulnerable patients isn't a new problem – cancer scams have existed for decades, and combating them was the impetus behind the 1939 Cancer Act. The substantial difference now is the ease with which falsehoods can be disseminated. Cancer surgeon David Gorski, professor of surgery and oncology at the Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, Michigan and managing editor of the online journal Science-Based Medicine, notes that cancer misinformation is "way more prevalent now for the same reason other misinformation and conspiracy theories are so prevalent – because they're so easily spread on social media."
  49. ^ Grimes, David Robert (1 January 2022). "The Struggle against Cancer Misinformation". Cancer Discovery. 12 (1): 26–30. doi:10.1158/2159-8290.CD-21-1468. eISSN 2159-8290. ISSN 2159-8274. PMID 34930788. This dubious amplification of pseudoscience diminishes trust in the medico-scientific sphere. Cancer misinformation is harmful even when it is not fully embraced or believed, precisely because it creates a lingering impression that no medical consensus exists on the topic or that official sources of information lack credibility.
  50. ^ Ernst, E (August 2001). "Alternative cancer cures". British Journal of Cancer. 85 (5): 781–782. doi:10.1054/bjoc.2001.1989. eISSN 1532-1827. ISSN 0007-0920. PMC 2364136. PMID 11531268. Alternative cancer cures (ACCs) typically have a common life cycle (Ernst, 2000). At the origin of almost every ACC is a charismatic individual who claims to have found the answer to cancer. He (the male sex seems to dominate) often supports his claims with pseudoscientific evidence referring to (but rarely presenting) many cured patients. Thus he soon gathers ardent supporters who lobby for a wider acceptance of this ACC. The pressure on the medical establishment increases to a point where the treatment is finally submitted to adequate testing. When the results turn out to be negative, the ACC's proponents argue that the investigations were not done properly. In fact, they were set up to generate a negative result so that the commercial interests of orthodoxy would not be threatened. A conspiracy theory is thus born, and the ACC lives on in the 'alternative underground'.
  51. ^ Shermer, Michael; Linse, Pat (2002). The Skeptic encyclopedia of pseudoscience (First ed.). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. pp. 125, 819, 820. ISBN 9781576076538.
  52. ^ Leach, Nathaniel (November 2014). "Gendering Pseudo-Science: Inchbald's Animal Magnetism". Literature Compass. 11 (11): 715–723. doi:10.1111/lic3.12198. ISSN 1741-4113. A commission appointed by the King of France determined that the effects claimed to be produced by animal magnetism were merely theatrical and imaginative, qualities that were feminized in an attempt to denigrate animal magnetism as pseudo-science. Inchbald's play follows this attack by satirizing animal magnetism through the absurd character of an old doctor who wishes to learn this pseudo-science in order to manipulate the affections of his young ward. Inchbald's satire, however, encompasses not only the fraudulent pseudo-science but also the official patriarchal power that the doctor also represents. Inchbald thus demonstrates the proximity between official structures of power and the supposedly fraudulent pseudo-science...
  53. ^ Coale, Samuel Chase. "Mesmerism and Other Pseudo-Sciences". Nathaniel Hawthorne In Context. Cambridge University Press. pp. 126–135. doi:10.1017/9781316271537.013.
  54. ^ Novella, Steven (20 June 2012). "Bee Venom Therapy Update". sciencebasedmedicine.org. Retrieved 4 February 2023. There are no published clinical studies of BVT and stroke recovery (however I did find a case report of a stroke following bee stings). There is also no legitimate scientific reason to suspect that BVT would be effective in stroke recover. Magsaysay gives his own explanation for how he thinks it works. His description is pure pseudoscience, just made up science-sounding nonsense.
  55. ^ Novella, Steven (25 April 2018). "Bee Venom is Snake Oil". sciencebasedmedicine.org. Retrieved 4 February 2023. What about the scientific research? Here we find the typical results anyone familiar with alternative pseudoscience should expect...Let's look at so-called bee-venom acupuncture (BVA) – which conveniently combines two pseudosciences into one treatment.
  56. ^ Stukus, David R. (November 2019). "How Dr Google Is Impacting Parental Medical Decision Making". Immunology and Allergy Clinics of North America. 39 (4): 583–591. doi:10.1016/j.iac.2019.07.011. ISSN 0889-8561. PMID 31563191.
  57. ^ Burnett, Dean (6 April 2016). "Gwyneth Paltrow's bee sting beauty treatment just won't fly". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 February 2023. It's apparently a very old idea going back thousands of years, and we know that in pseudoscience circles age is a perfectly valid substitute for "evidence that is actually works". You can sort of see some rationale behind it; bee stings obviously have a definite physical effect on the body, they're 100% natural (another substitute for effectiveness), and a localised swelling certainly would remove wrinkles, albeit temporarily and painfully.
  58. ^ Barrett, S. "Aromatherapy: Making Dollars out of Scents". Science & Pseudoscience Review in Mental Health. Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice. Retrieved 21 February 2013.
  59. ^ Hodson, Derek (1 January 2009). "Further Thoughts on Demarcation". Teaching and Learning about Science. BRILL. pp. 113–150. doi:10.1163/9789460910531_006. An interesting feature of life in the late 20th century and early 21st century has been the upsurge of interest in "New Age" and pseudoscientific beliefs such as the healing power of crystals, reflexology, aromatherapy, iridology, qigong, feng shui, Tarot, and the like.
  60. ^ MacLennan, Alastair H; Morrison, Robert G B (March 2012). "Tertiary education institutions should not offer pseudoscientific medical courses". Medical Journal of Australia. 196 (4): 225–226. doi:10.5694/mja12.10128. eISSN 1326-5377. ISSN 0025-729X. PMID 22409674. "The international scientific credibility of Australian tertiary education institutions is being undermined by the increasing number of pseudoscientific health courses that they offer. Many universities teach therapies without a scientific basis to their students within their health care curricula, including homeopathy, iridology, reflexology, kinesiology, healing touch therapy, aromatherapy and "energy medicine".
  61. ^ "The Ockhams 2018". The Skeptic Magazine. 18 October 2018. Archived from the original on 18 December 2019. Retrieved 11 March 2020.
  62. ^ Hale, Tom. "This Year's Award For The Worst Pseudoscience Is Especially Deserved". IFL Science. Archived from the original on 11 March 2020. Retrieved 11 March 2020.
  63. ^ Jha, Alok (23 December 2012). "Struck off MMR doctor handed award for 'lifetime achievement in quackery'". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 February 2023. Andrew Wakefield 'supported or practised pseudoscience in the most ludicrous, dangerous, irrational or irresponsible manner', according to campaign group Good Thinking Society
  64. ^ Swire-Thompson, Briony; Lazer, David (March 2022). "Reducing Health Misinformation in Science: A Call to Arms". The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 700 (1): 124–135. doi:10.1177/00027162221087686. eISSN 1552-3349. ISSN 0002-7162. The most infamous example of scientific disinformation is when The Lancet published an article suggesting a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism (Wakefield et al. 1998). A substantial vested interest existed for the lead author, Andrew Wakefield, whose research was funded by lawyers in legal battles against MMR manufacturers, and who had lodged a patent for a new vaccine (Eggertson 2010).
  65. ^ Pierce, Daniel E.; Farace, Anthony P.; Lewis, Dana M. (19 April 2021). "America's Haven of Health: Hydrotherapy and tourism at Excelsior Springs, Missouri, USA". History and Anthropology: 1–28. doi:10.1080/02757206.2021.1901286. eISSN 1477-2612. ISSN 0275-7206. Over the years, mineral water's use as a hydrotherapy was increasingly viewed by the public as pseudoscience and unreliable. This scepticism culminated in two U.S. Senate hearings on 'Health Frauds', 'Quackery', and 'Misrepresentations'. This bought much negative attention to the already declining heath tourism industry.
  66. ^ Wrobel, Arthur (2015). Pseudo-science and society in 19th-century America. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. pp. 74–78. ISBN 9780813165035.
  67. ^ Aramesh, K (1 July 2018). "Science and Pseudoscience in Traditional Iranian Medicine". Archives of Iranian medicine. 21 (7): 315–323. PMID 30041531. There are many reports of the treacherous, injurious, and pointless treatments imposed by the practitioners of TIM to their patients. In his book, Public Health in Qajar Iran, Willem Floor portrays some of the practices of these TIM practitioners. For example, at the time of the Cholera outbreak, believing that Cholera has a warm temperament, they prescribed immersion and plummeting the patients into the chilling cold water. This treatment killed some patients who could have survived the disease itself.20 In the contemporary TIM, also, various kinds of purging, venesection, leech therapy, wet-cupping, etc. are being performed, mostly without any scientific supporting evidences and based on the medieval understandings of human physiology and pathophysiology
  68. ^ May, Andrew (2016). Pseudoscience and science fiction. Cham: Springer. pp. 103, 104. ISBN 9783319426044. Another fringe therapy that interested van Vogt was the "Bates method" for improving eyesight. Devised early in the 20th century by Dr William Bates, it was described by SF writer and sceptic John Sladek
  69. ^ Deery, June (1996). "Huxley and the New Age". Aldous Huxley and the Mysticism of Science: 146–169. doi:10.1057/9780230375055_8. The Bates method has little or no scientific basis and there is no evidence that it improved Huxley's eyesight
  70. ^ Kreidler, Marc (8 July 2000). "Fallacies of the Bates System". Quackwatch. Retrieved 9 February 2023. The Bates theory of accommodation is not only fallacious; it is not even a new theory-as claimed by his supporters. The idea that the eyeball elongates when it accommodates was held by Sturm, Listing, and other scientists in the early nineteenth century. They abandoned it, however, when studies of the lens image proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that accommodation is produced by changes in the curvature of the lens. Dr. Bates is regarded as a discoverer of new truths by his disciples [6]. Yet all he did was to resuscitate a discredited, early-nineteenth-century theory, moving not forward to the future but backward to the past.
  71. ^ Ravindranath, Prasad (21 February 2018). "Oncologists step aside, here comes medical astrologers". Science Chronicle. Retrieved 11 February 2023.
  72. ^ Jones, Clay (23 October 2015). "The Time a Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Got Manipulated by a Chiropractor | Science-Based Medicine". sciencebasedmedicine.org. Retrieved 11 February 2023.
  73. ^ GIRARD, J. MARC (14 August 2018). "An example of pseudoscience: Chronic Lyme disease" (PDF). Le Spécialiste. Retrieved 11 February 2023.
  74. ^ Brown, Carolyn (17 November 2014). "Lyme law uses "junk science" says expert". Canadian Medical Association Journal. 186 (18): 1354–1354. doi:10.1503/cmaj.109-4936. eISSN 1488-2329. ISSN 0820-3946. PMC 4259767. PMID 25404395.
  75. ^ Auwaerter, Paul G; Bakken, Johan S; Dattwyler, Raymond J; Dumler, J Stephen; Halperin, John J; McSweegan, Edward; Nadelman, Robert B; O'Connell, Susan; Shapiro, Eugene D; Sood, Sunil K; Steere, Allen C; Weinstein, Arthur; Wormser, Gary P (September 2011). "Antiscience and ethical concerns associated with advocacy of Lyme disease". The Lancet Infectious Diseases. 11 (9): 713–719. doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(11)70034-2. ISSN 1473-3099. PMID 21867956. Similar to other antiscience groups, these advocates have created a pseudoscientific and alternative selection of practitioners, research, and publications and have coordinated public protests, accused opponents of both corruption and conspiracy, and spurred legislative efforts to subvert evidence-based medicine and peer-reviewed science. The relations and actions of some activists, medical practitioners, and commercial bodies involved in Lyme disease advocacy pose a threat to public health.
  76. ^ Melanson, Vanessa R., et al. "The Epistemic Fallacy: Unintended Consequences of Empirically Treating (Clinically Diagnosed) Chronic Lyme Disease in a Soldier." Medical Journal, US Army Medical Center of Excellence (MEDCoE) (2022). "This case illustrates that an inappropriate clinical diagnosis and empirical treatment can be inherently detrimental to the health, safety, and well-being of the patient. Additionally, the amalgamation of perceived mistrust and limitations in LD testing combined with an eagerness to diagnose LD based on what may be considered “pseudoscience” is potentially harming patients with undiagnosed chronic illness."
  77. ^ Gorski, David (7 April 2008). "Colon "cleanses": A load of you know what… | Science-Based Medicine". sciencebasedmedicine.org. Retrieved 17 February 2023. This is, of course, utter nonsense.
  78. ^ Caulfeld T. From Kim Kardashian to Dr. Oz: The future relevance of popular culture to our health and health policy. Ottawa L. Rev. 2015;47:371. "In the past year alone, Gwyneth Paltrow, my favourite purveyor of pseudoscience,' has suggested that women should steam their vaginas, that infrared saunas are a good way to treat the flu, that we should all get regular colonics, and that wearing a bra increases your risk of getting breast cancer s Not only are all of these recommendations completely science-free, but they are also potentially harmful."
  79. ^ Dedmon, Robert E. (1 December 2011). "The urge to purge: colonic 'hydrotherapy', unproven but widely practiced, potentially dangerous, and unsupported by scientific evidence". Asian Biomedicine. 5 (6): 731–734. doi:10.5372/1905-7415.0506.099. ISSN 1905-7415. Retrieved 17 February 2023.
  80. ^ Atwood KC, 4th (25 March 2004). "Naturopathy, pseudoscience, and medicine: myths and fallacies vs truth". MedGenMed : Medscape general medicine. 6 (1): 33. PMID 15208545. ...others are highly implausible and easily explained by ordinary mechanisms (applied kinesiology by ideomotor action, colonic "cleansing" by the norm of reciprocity, etc.); and still others are barely plausible but highly unlikely and dangerous and, unlike aspirin, are without any empirical support (eg, St. John's wort as an anti-HIV drug). None of these claims should be studied in human trials...These points are irrelevant to the greater issue, however: the field of naturopathic medicine, as a whole and at its highest levels, promotes fanciful, pseudoscientific, dangerous, and unethical practices.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  81. ^ Caulfield, Timothy A. (2015). Is Gwyneth Paltrow wrong about everything? : how the famous sell us elixirs of health, beauty & happiness. Boston: Beacon Press. p. 29. ISBN 9780807057483. The idea that a colon cleanse removes toxins and promotes health is so ridiculous that it is a pretty good test for quacks.
  82. ^ Teovanović, Predrag; Lukić, Petar; Zupan, Zorana; Lazić, Aleksandra; Ninković, Milica; Žeželj, Iris (7 December 2020). "Irrational beliefs differentially predict adherence to guidelines and pseudoscientific practices during the COVID‐19 pandemic". Applied Cognitive Psychology. 35 (2): 486–496. doi:10.1002/acp.3770. eISSN 1099-0720. ISSN 0888-4080. PMC 7753549. PMID 33362344. Participants (N = 407) reported (1) how often they followed guidelines (e.g., handwashing, physical distancing), how often they engaged in pseudoscientific practices (e.g., consuming garlic, colloidal silver), and their intention to receive a COVID-19 vaccine
  83. ^ Giuffre, Maureen (December 1997). "Science, bad science, and pseudoscience". Journal of PeriAnesthesia Nursing. 12 (6): 434–438. doi:10.1016/S1089-9472(97)90007-1. ISSN 1089-9472. PMID 9464033.
  84. ^ Naeem, Salman Bin; Bhatti, Rubina; Khan, Aqsa (12 July 2020). "An exploration of how fake news is taking over social media and putting public health at risk". Health Information & Libraries Journal. 38 (2): 143–149. doi:10.1111/hir.12320. eISSN 1471-1842. ISSN 1471-1834. PMC 7404621. PMID 32657000. There are a range of other therapies promoted by those who subscribe to various pseudoscientific claims: The colloidal silver solution can help with coronavirus.
  85. ^ Pickett, Mallory (5 October 2017). "Colloidal Silver Turns You Blue—But Can It Save Your Life?". Wired. Retrieved 25 February 2023.
  86. ^ Gavura, Scott (28 May 2020). "An incomplete list of COVID-19 quackery | Science-Based Medicine". sciencebasedmedicine.org.
  87. ^ Khazan, Olga (22 June 2020). "A Common Snake Oil Reemerges for the Coronavirus". The Atlantic. Retrieved 25 February 2023.
  88. ^ Chavda, Vivek P.; Sonak, Shreya S.; Munshi, Nafesa K.; Dhamade, Pooja N. (14 July 2022). "Pseudoscience and fraudulent products for COVID-19 management". Environmental Science and Pollution Research. 29 (42): 62887–62912. doi:10.1007/s11356-022-21967-4. eISSN 1614-7499. ISSN 0944-1344. PMC 9282830. PMID 35836045. {{cite journal}}: no-break space character in |title= at position 18 (help)
  89. ^ Caulfield, Timothy (27 April 2020). "Pseudoscience and COVID-19 — we've had enough already". Nature. doi:10.1038/d41586-020-01266-z. eISSN 1476-4687. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 32341556.
  90. ^ Chinnu Sugavanam, Senthilkumar; Natarajan, Balakrishnan (22 July 2020). "Pseudoscientific beliefs and practices in the COVID-19 pandemic: A narrative review of unwanted experiments attributed to social media-based misinformation afflicting the public health". Journal of Health & Biological Sciences. 8 (1): 1. doi:10.12662/2317-3076jhbs.v8i1.3394.p1-9.2020. eISSN 2317-3076. ISSN 2317-3084.
  91. ^ Boutros, Alexandra (December 2020). "The Edges of a Pandemic: Pseudoscience, Alternative Medicine, and Belief in the Age of COVID". TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. 41: 42–49. doi:10.3138/topia-006. eISSN 1916-0194. ISSN 1206-0143.
  92. ^ Wang, Yuxi; Bye, John; Bales, Karam; Gurdasani, Deepti; Mehta, Adityavarman; Abba-Aji, Mohammed; Stuckler, David; McKee,, Martin (22 November 2022). "Understanding and neutralising covid-19 misinformation and disinformation". BMJ: e070331. doi:10.1136/bmj-2022-070331. eISSN 1756-1833. PMID 36414251.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  93. ^ Mostajo-Radji, Mohammed A. (12 April 2021). "Pseudoscience in the Times of Crisis: How and Why Chlorine Dioxide Consumption Became Popular in Latin America During the COVID-19 Pandemic". Frontiers in Political Science. 3. doi:10.3389/fpos.2021.621370. eISSN 2673-3145.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  94. ^ Hotez, Peter J. (28 January 2021). "Anti-science kills: From Soviet embrace of pseudoscience to accelerated attacks on US biomedicine". PLOS Biology. 19 (1): e3001068. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3001068. eISSN 1545-7885. PMC 7842901. PMID 33507935.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  95. ^ Chrzan, Janet (2022). Anxious eaters : why we fall for fad diets. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 6–7, 37–38. ISBN 9780231549806. "There is no single definition of a fad diet, but we generally understand a fad diet to be a novelty diet that makes big promises and often has little scientific evidence supporting it or in many cases is supported by debunked science or pseudoscientific claims.... For example, adherents of calorie-restricting (CR) longevity diets often practice a grueling 40 percent daily calorie reduction for years, believing that such restriction yields a longer life span and lower rates of cancer, diabetes, and other diseases, in spite of mixed scientific evidence in both humans and nonhumans.49 Like so many religions, a great many fad diets often feature fasting, asceticism, conversion, and renewal as their central tenets.
  96. ^ Schwarcz, Joe (2019). A grain of salt : the science and pseudoscience of what we eat. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: ECW press. ISBN 9781773053851.
  97. ^ Banks, Peter; Lunney, Daniel; Dickman, Chris (2012). Science under siege : zoology under threat. Mosman, N.S.W.: Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales. p. 93. ISBN 9780980327274. Retrieved 12 March 2023.

Clunky Wording

The technology subsection has this phrase describing 5G conspiracy theories:

"theory proposing that 5G causes health issues and also causes COVID-19."

This wording seems quite clunky and poor-written. I propose it should be changed to:

"a theory proposing that 5G causes health issues, including COVID-19."

I would change it myself, but article is semi-protected (and for good reason).

Wikisincerely, 2601:600:9080:A4B0:C5F6:3A3F:38B1:6B3 (talk) 00:17, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

 Done. –CWenger (^ • @) 00:23, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

EMDR does not claim to be a science

Collins dictionary defines pseudoscience as "a discipline or approach that pretends to be or has a close resemblance to science". . EMDR practioners do not claim a scientific base for it. Thus EMDR is not a pseudoscience. . (It just empirically works for some people (and is thus recommended by WHO, NICE, etc).) 5.66.63.86 (talk) 11:09, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, we don't care about what Collins defines as pseudoscience. We care about what things our sources say have been characterized as pseudoscience. Hence the name of the article.
And, additionally, EMDR practitioners do indeed claim a scientific basis: [1][2][3][4][5][6] — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 16:39, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
ridiculous. I'm sure somebody somewhere, to use an example from the EMDR talk page, thinks thinks that "Steaming your vagina" has a science basis. That does not mean that is the consensus view. 5.66.63.86 (talk) 17:18, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Follow the sources and all will be well. Suggest we're done here. Bon courage (talk) 17:22, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 15 June 2023

Hypnosis and hypnotherapy are not pseudoscience. There are many solid studies showing strong evidence, especially in the areas of pain and depression. The American Psychological Association (APA), specifically division 30, recognizes hypnosis as a science and provides definitions for each term involving hypnosis.

Here is an article showing evidence of how hypnosis is as effective as cognitive-behavioral therapy for mild to moderate depression in a randomized controlled rater-blind clinical trial (strong evidence):

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165032721002032

Here are some additional articles that provide evidence of the effects of hypnosis:

Pain: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4465776/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10801169/

Hypnosis and cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7751482/

If you need more information, please contact me.

Thanks. Meltbreak (talk) 18:30, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template. Note that the top of the page says: This is a list of topics that have, either currently or in the past, been characterized as pseudoscience by academics or researchers (emphasis added). So, regardless if you want to litigate whether it's actually pseudoscience or not (I don't!), I feel like it's a good fit for this page, because the in-line reliable sources do classify it as such. Bestagon ⬡ 19:38, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What is the "criteria" for inclusion?

Hello,

I recently added an entry to this page, but it was reverted as "not meeting the criteria". Unlike many list pages, I do not see any list of criteria for inclusion. Please elaborate on what the criteria is for inclusion and what specific criteria would be violated by including the proposed entry. Thanks. Mr. Swordfish (talk) Mr. Swordfish (talk) 15:29, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

On the face of it, this looks like a List of common misconceptions entry. The criteria is for inclusion in List of topics characterized as pseudoscience is in the title - an area of scientific study that someone else has labeled pseudoscience. The area would be "Lift"? and somebody called it a pseudoscience? Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 03:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Genetic ancestry testing entry

Not my field of expertise, but a quick skim of the topic articles and the cited sources don't seem to establish that this is pseudoscience. The first cited source reads more like an opinion piece, and the other two are far more nuanced to the point where I don't see either as supporting the claim that genetic ancestry testing is pseudoscience.

I'm going to remove the entry pending review here. Granted, the commercial enterprises providing this service may overstate it's reliability or applicability, but that doesn't seem like enough, or if it is we should probably be more specific about which claims are non-scientific rather than describing the entire field as bogus.

Happy to hear other opinions. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 22:28, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Genetic ancestry testing services misleadingly conflate genetic ancestry with ethnic or geographical ancestry, which contradicts mainstream science, as scientists regard genetic ancestry to be distinct from ethnic or geographical ancestry[7]. It has been described as the genetic equivalent of astrology multiple times[8][9][10][11]. The assumptions made by genetic ancestry testing services are criticized by subject-matter experts[12][13], and you only need the opinions of subject-matter experts.Helioz9 (talk) 00:03, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:List_of_topics_characterized_as_pseudoscience&oldid=1190276361"