Tracking Down Pseudoscience - Lochness Monsters and Alien Abductions

This is the 4th part in my series on tracking down pseudoscience. Here are the previous posts in this series:

1. How Reliable is Your Source
2. Tracking Down Pseudoscience - Part 2
3. Tracking Down Pseudoscience - Part 3

Generic Introduction

For those wanting to become educated in critical thinking, for those who want to be able to spot the baloney and the potential intentions towards deception in other people's claims and arguments, and for people who are interested in sound reasoning, Carl Sagan and Michael Shermer propose their baloney detection kit, a set of questions that one should ask when in doubt.

Today I'm going to focus on questions 5 and 7 from the baloney detection kit, leaving the remaining questions for future posts in this series.

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Baloney Detection - Points 5 and 7

Questions 5 and 7 refer to whether or not someone has been trying to disprove a claim and whether or not a claimant has been playing by the rules of science. Let me be more specific.

- Question 5 - Has anyone gone out of the way to disprove the claim, or has only supportive evidence been sought?

I'll use the top image to exemplify. Let's assume someone says:

"There's a monstrous creature in the lake close to where I live."

As I wrote previously:

"If this is wrong, it is only because of lack of evidence. And this may not convince true-believers (fanatics) against the statement. They could, for their own peace of mind (in the very least sense) keep fabricating statements like:

The monster is invisible to detection. or
It could not be seen because it was hiding in the mud at the bottom of the lake."

Let's say you ask a question and you receive the following answer:

• Can I see the creature with my own eyes? No, because it rarely makes appearance. It knows when it's being watched.

In this situation you are facing an unfalsifiable claim, a claim that by its construction cannot be tested. Unfalsifiable claims and theories, which cannot be put under rigorous scrutiny, are not scientific. You hear these type of claims from faith healers, from religious fanatics and the like.

I have nothing against religion. Each person has their own right to care for their own beliefs. Religion is simply not scientific; and it doesn't have to be.

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- Question 7 - Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?

Pseudoscientists, quacks, and people with deceptive intentions most often do not use good science and valid research and statistics tools in making their claims. Again, I'm going to use one of the simplest and probably most inoffensive cases to exemplify this. I'm going to compare UFO fanatic believers to SETI, an organization that searches for extraterrestrial intelligence.

UFO-logists start by automatically assuming that UFOs and aliens exist. To support their claims they fabricate 'wild' theories, present obscure/blurry pictures 'depicting' UFOs and they engage in utmost conspiracy theories. All of these actions are non-scientific.

Unlike the ridicule of UFO fanatics, SETI starts with the premise that ETIs:

"do not exist and that they must provide concrete evidence before making the extraordinary claim that we are not alone in the universe.”

All of us engage in magical thinking. It's human nature. I'd be very excited myself if we could find and positively interact with intelligent life forms outside Earth. We can get closer to such a scenario using science and the wonderful tools provided by technology, not conspiracy theories and fairy tale thinking.

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Ending Thoughts

To repeat myself, examples like the ones from above are inoffensive. Quacks and machiavellian individuals often engage in more sophisticated and stealthier strategies to exploit your logical vulnerabilities.

I wrote previously that:

"Arguments become stronger as they cannot be disproved (through rigorous testing). That is why the scientific method is all about verifying, re-verifying, reproducing, replicating, and trying to falsify claims (proving them wrong)."

Spotting an unfalsifiable claim and being aware of the tools science and technology have to offer are a few of the weapons we can fight pseudoscientists and quacks. Becoming scientifically literate (which you may be surprised, but it's a rarity) is a pursuit that should be high on the priority list.

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To stay in touch with me, follow @cristi

Credits for Images: [Immanuel Giel via Wikimedia Commons] and [Fotomek via Pixabay].

#psychology #practical #science

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Cristi Vlad, Self-Experimenter and Author