What’s the difference between science and pseudoscience? What is a scientific mindset? How are we able to spot pseudoscience when it’s happening? I discuss these questions and more in today’s Ask a Spaceman!

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Thanks to Cathy Rinella for editing.

Hosted by Paul M. Sutter.

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT (AUTO-GENERATED)

I've lost count of the number of times I've been in some conversation with a family member or a random stranger sitting next to me on the plane or just anywhere and we're talking and we're having a normal chat and everything's great. It's light. It's easy. It's small talk or maybe some random interesting subject and then something shifts. When they start talking about something related to science or connected to science or having the appearance of science, but it's just not quite right.

I start to get this little tingle in my nerves and a little headache starts to form right in the back of my head. And it's at that moment that I realize it's one of those. And I have to switch modes from, interested conversationalist Paul to polite smile and nod, Paul, until they're done talking. For the record, when people go, off script in conversations and they start talking about stuff that is just not matching up with the worldview as I understand it as a scientist or as a rational human being, For the record, I make it a personal rule to never ever contradict someone or tell them they're wrong or offer my own insights unless I am specifically asked. It is just not worth the energy.

I find it's much smoother, much easier to just let them talk, say their thing, smile and nod, and then talk about the weather. Just change the subject a little. I can just tell when something is pseudoscientific, not through any magical ability, but just because I've been immersed in the practice of science for a couple of decades now, and I have an intuitive sense of how myself and my colleagues approach problems, and most importantly, approach questions and solutions. And pseudoscience for me is easy to spot because it just it just smells different. You know?

And this isn't unique to science or physicists or astronomers. A lawyer can tell when someone is making a case that seems like a legal argument, but is, you know, missing some of the important bits. A car mechanic can tell when someone is talking about engines and how things work inside of a car, and there it's just a little bit off. When when you have enough practice in a field, you can just tell when someone doesn't know exactly what they're talking about. But the point of this episode is to give you the tools to spot pseudoscience on your own, skipping the whole, decades of immersion in the scientific field part.

So, let me start by telling you my own internal definition of pseudoscience. This is unique to Paul Sutter. There are many possible definitions of pseudoscience, and in fact, the entire term is constantly debated. Even there are even debates on whether we should have the term or not. I do believe we should have the term because there are definitely things that are pseudoscience.

It is a valid category. And, my personal definition is far from complete and far from perfect, but I found it to serve as a useful guide for many situations. And I take my definition directly from the name, pseudoscience, false science, science that is false. It's a practice or worldview or approach to solving problems that looks like science but isn't actually science. To dig into that definition of pseudoscience and how you can use that definition to spot it in the future, let's examine what science looks like because I'm claiming that pseudoscience is an approach to solving problems that looks like science, but isn't actually science.

So what does science look like? What are the surface features of science? What are the stereotypes? Well, there's, usually fancy and somewhat incomprehensible experimental gizmos, like particle colliders and beaker jars and core samples. There's usually fancy and somewhat incomprehensible jargon, space time, DNA, pyroclastic.

There are fancy and somewhat incomprehensible math, equations, formulas, computer programs. These three things and more, but let's focus on these three things, are the day to day operations of science. The gizmos, the jargon, and the math. These are what I call the skin of science, the surface features of science, what science looks like to the outside world. I would say that these are the properties of science that distinguish it as a technical profession from other technical professions.

How do you tell the difference between a lawyer and a scientist? That's not a setup for a joke. I'm sorry. It's just a rhetorical question that I'll answer anyway. From the words that they use, the equipment that they use, and the tools that they use in their day to day work life.

When a scientist goes to work, whether it's in a laboratory or more typically an office with a computer, they are using math, they are using jargon, and they are using gizmos in order to perform their day to day operations. But even though the gizmos, the jargon, and the math are the skin of science, they're not the soul of science. Experiments and jargon and math are merely the tools that scientists use to do science, but it's not science itself. For example, lawyers file legal briefs and motions and petitions, and they have their own form of jargon. But that's not what the practice of law is.

Those are the tools that lawyers use to do their job. Trade workers use hammers and saws and wrenches, and they have their own form of jargon. But the hammers and saws aren't construction itself. Those are the tools that the trade workers use to do their job of construction. So if jargon and math and fancy experiments are just the tools to do a particular job, which is the job of science, what is, you know, the job of science?

The job of science is to be honest. To be honest, that question deserves an entire episode in its own right, so feel free to ask. But you learned the bare bones basics of it in elementary school. The jargon and math and experiments are there to help scientists perform the scientific method. And what does the scientific method do?

Well, science itself has many possible definitions, and those definitions have changed over the years and continue to evolve. The practice and profession of science has changed in the 100 of years since its existence, but in a Extremely brief nutshell just so we can move on to pseudoscience We can fairly say that the point the job the goal of science is to produce statements about the natural world that we can trust. Our goal as scientists is to explain the workings of natural phenomena. That is the job. And we usually do it, not always, but we usually do it through by producing testable, falsifiable claims that we then validate against experiment.

That is the scientific method. The goal of the scientific method is to produce statements about the natural world that we can trust. We can trust them because they're verified against experiment. There are statements only about the natural world, etcetera, etcetera. That is the goal.

That is the point of science. And the skin of science, the tools of science are in service to achieving that goal for sure. That is how the day to day operations unfold. When I wake up as a scientist and I want to do a science today, I reach for my math, I reach for my gizmos, I reach for my jargon in order to create those statements about the natural world that we can trust. But, and this is the difference between science and pseudoscience.

Pseudoscience has the tools. It has the skin, but it doesn't have the soul. You see, there's more than the skin of science that you need in order to produce statements about the natural world that we can trust. That's just the surface features. That's what just what people see from the outside.

On the inside, speaking as a scientist who does science, there's a whole informal system that scientists have developed over centuries that are the real workings of science. You can take away our gizmos. You can take away our map. You can take away our jargon, and we can still be scientists. We can still produce statements about the natural world that we can trust.

It might be a little bit harder. Take a hammer and a wrench away from a construction worker, and building a house is gonna be a little bit more challenging, but it's still doable. The core of science, the soul of science is an entire mindset that serves the goal of producing statements about the natural world that we can trust, and that soul of science has several features. There's rigor. We we take our own statements.

We make a statement about the natural world. We take it seriously, and we pull these statements to their full logical conclusion. If I say space and time are interwoven into a unified fabric called space time, well, what does that mean? What are the implications? What are some ways we can test that?

What are some ways we can validate it or invalidate it? What are some other implications? How does that, connect? There's a feature in the Soul of Science of humility, an acceptance that any statement, any time, that we make can be proven wrong. All it takes is one experiment to start the chain reaction to dismantle an entire field of physics, an entire worldview.

Science has undergone multiple revolutions and evolutions in thought about the natural world, and that has enforced a certain kind of humility in our statement. Scientists are not arrogant people. We are humble. We look at the universe in awe and wonder and we do our best to understand it. And we know that at any time anything we say can be proven wrong.

Another feature of the soul of science is Skepticism We allow no way, you know, we demand the evidence to dictate our beliefs. When a new result is published, we automatically by default don't believe it, and we allow the evidence to accumulate to change our beliefs. There's a sense of openness. Methods and techniques must be shared and publicized so that others can critique it. If you publish a result and you just say the answer, without publishing your methods or your techniques, no one's gonna believe you.

No one is going to accept that as a scientific answer. There's a sense of connectedness. Statements we make about the natural world must connect with a broader collection of scientific knowledge. Nothing stands apart. Nothing stands alone.

If I wanna make a statement about, say, the age of the earth and I want to get a result, I have to make sure my result stands in line with our understanding of the age of the sun and the age of the universe and the formation of the elements. I have to make sure everything aligns. And this isn't this isn't conformity. This isn't isn't groupthink. This is cross checking.

This is sanity. This is validation. And there's a spirit of evolution. Our beliefs and our statements are always under refinement, given new evidence or insights the way we see the world as scientists today is different than the way we saw the world as scientists a 100 years ago, which was different than the way scientists saw the world 200 years ago, and it'll be different a 100 years from now. I sure hope so.

And that's awesome. Because that allows us the freedom to update our beliefs, which is a whole other episode. To me, all this is the soul of science. It's the soul of science that allows us as scientists to do what we're trying to do which is to make statements about the natural world that we can trust. And the soul is what pseudoscience lacks.

Pseudoscience claims to have the same goal, to make statements about the natural world that we can trust, but it only keeps the skin, the jargon, the math, the gizmos. In other words, pseudoscience claims to be scientific and takes on the trappings of science, but it disregards the rigor, the humility, the openness, the skepticism, the connectedness, and the evolution. It's all skin and no soul. This definition of pseudoscience that it is the skin of science and not the soul of science helps us say what pseudoscience is definitely not. Pseudoscience is not philosophy.

Or another way to say this, philosophy is not pseudoscience. Now philosophy shares many features with science, and indeed science is merely a branch of philosophy, but it's not necessarily only concerned with natural phenomenon. And it's also equipped to answer larger and broader questions that we can't tackle with the scientific method. It does not use exclusively experimentation to validate results. It's different.

Faith and religion are also not pseudoscience. Religious statements, faith based statements do not claim to be scientific. Those statements may come into contradiction with scientific findings, but in order to be pseudoscientific, you must claim to be scientific. Once you make that step, once you say, well, this is a scientific result, now you're stepping into pseudoscience territory. Patreon is not pseudoscience.

In fact, it is a great way to support this show. That's patreon.com/pmcenter. I truly do appreciate all of your contributions. Please go home to patreon.com/pmcenter. Bad science, junk science, poorly done science is also not pseudoscience.

Science like any human institution is flawed. And let's be honest, 90% of everything is hot garbage. Science suffers from bad faith actors, shortsightedness, groupthink, and a host of other maladies that makes it far from perfect, and that's a different episode. In fact, I have an entire book on that coming out soon. That's just bad science.

That's just poorly done science. It's not pseudoscience. Also, common sense statements about the world. In here, I'm putting common sense in air quotes. Old wives tales.

Same as oh, yeah. Yeah. Don't you know, the rain is coming. I can tell because the moss is growing in a circular path. Yeah.

That's that's not claiming to be science, so it's not pseudoscience. Also, fraudulent use of science is not pseudoscientific. Anytime the word science appears in an ad or by someone trying to make a point, that's just well, that's just a whole other episode, but it's definitely not pseudoscience. Given our definition of pseudoscience, which is a practice that claims to be scientific and uses the exterior trappings of science, but misses the soul of science, Here are some examples of pseudoscience and how they fall short of real Science. These examples are sadly far from exhausted, but I hope they will give you the flavor of what pseudoscience is.

One example is ghost hunting, which, if I was willing to sell my soul, my scientific soul, I have been invited. I will be honest, I've been invited multiple times to become the host of ghost hunting TV shows, which would honestly earn a lot of money, but I have turned them down every time. And we've all seen it. Like, oh, you know, the ghost hunters go in, and it's a dark room, and they have gizmos and gadgets, and they turn tune this knob, and, oh, did you hear that? Or we can put this detector over here, and it will register the presence of a ghost.

You know, it's one way where ghost hunting falls short. And how it misses the soul of science is that it it lacks rigor. Ghost hunters don't take their own ideas seriously. For example, ghost hunters claim that they can hear or detect ghosts with their equipment. But, in order to do that, that means the ghosts are interacting with the physical world.

They are generating sound waves or emitting electromagnetic radiation. How else are you gonna detect if in order to hear something there must be a sound wave? The sound wave has to come from somewhere, and if you're claiming it's the ghost, the ghost has to emit the sound wave. But generating sound waves or emitting electromagnetic radiation, these have real physical causes that we know and understand. You need to flap stuff around to make sound waves or you need to wiggle some electrons up and down to make electromagnetic radiation.

The ghosts must interact with the physical world in order to be detectable, and ghost hunters claim that they can detect ghosts. The ghosts must be physical because they are interacting with the rest of the physical world, which by definition makes them physical. And a physical entity that interacts with the physical world would have more manifestations than just sound waves or electromagnetic radiation. So take it seriously. Take this hypothesis that ghosts are real and interact with the physical world.

Take it seriously and explore what other consequences there might be. There is a lack of rigor. Another example of pseudoscience is our good friend, flat earth theories. Now you can search this. I I do not recommend it.

There are websites with an unholy amount of math in them. It's one of the skin of science. Right? The mathematics explaining how how the earth is really flat and, satellites actually do this. And when the astronauts take picture, the lenses are curved like this, etcetera.

There's math, math, math, math everywhere. There are explanations everywhere. Where one of the ways where flat Earth ideas fall short of real science is connectedness. Flat Earth theories don't connect with the rest of scientific knowledge. You want to say that the Earth is flat?

Okay. In order to make a flat Earth, you have to completely reformulate our understanding of gravity, our understanding of orbital dynamics, our understanding of light, our understanding of how the Sun works, our understanding of our wider cosmological observations, our understanding of earthquakes, and the mantle, and the core of the earth, that our magnetic field, you have to revamp pretty much all of our modern modern understanding of geology, astronomy, and physics, and more. There's a lack of connectedness. Another example of pseudoscience is astrology, which to be fair, all the way up until roughly the mid 1800 was considered to be a legitimate branch of science. And it's all about star signs, right?

You were born, when you were born, the sun was in a position, a certain position on the sky, it was roughly aligned with a certain constellation, and then this can inform your daily life. Or right now it's Tuesday, and Jupiter is over here, and it has this influence, etcetera, etcetera. One way where astrology falls short of real science is openness. Astrological methods are secret, and arcane and mysterious. Everyone seems to have their own technique and no 2 astrologers agree on what a certain star sign or chart will mean.

And They are the only ones who are capable of correctly interpreting the positions of heavenly objects and how they influence your life and what those meanings are Another example of pseudoscience is homeopathy. Yeah. This this this medical idea, where you cure like with like, if you're suffering from some malady, some disease that causes a certain kind of manifestation, then you go out in the world and you find some herb or some substance that causes a similar manifestation. You take that herb and you dilute it, to one part in quadrillion or whatever, and then you ingest it because otherwise, it would make you sick, and you ingest it and then like me meets like and they cancel out. One way where this fall short is evolution.

Homeopathy was developed over a 100 years ago, but it has not kept up with advancements in medicine. It stayed the same for over a century. No medical knowledge has stayed the same for over a century. If you went into a doctor's office and they said, hey. We're gonna rewind the clock.

You we're gonna take out your appendix, but we're gonna use all the techniques and tools and knowledge of the late 1800. You wouldn't trust it. Why has this branch of pseudoscientific medicine not evolved in a 100 years? Haven't they updated their beliefs? Haven't they changed?

Are they improved? Haven't they learned anything? Another pseudoscientific line of thinking is about, ancient aliens or Atlanteans, some sort of advanced civilization that uplifted early humans, like, our ancestors 1000 of years ago, were incapable of stacking, rocks on top of other rocks to build pyramids. I guess that okay. I don't exactly follow the argument.

But the thinking goes that our our our ancestors were too dumb to do this on their own, and so they had help from some sort of external influence. One way where ancient astronauts, aliens, or Atlanteans were, where this idea falls short of real science is humility and unwillingness to accept that a hypothesis might be wrong and actively ignoring contrary evidence. If you want to claim that ancient aliens helped to build the pyramids, you have to work really, really, really, really hard to blind yourself to the vast amount of evidence, because guess what? Like, the Egyptians literally told us how they built the pyramids, and you have to ignore all of that in order to create your hypothesis. There's ufology and cryptozoology.

The truth is out there, man. Listen. I'll be the first to say. I I do honestly think this is my own personal opinion that aliens, other intelligent civilizations exist elsewhere in the universe. I do not believe that they're here, and there's no compelling evidence that they're here.

But that doesn't stop people from taking pictures and videos of aliens visiting the Earth, or Bigfoot walking around in the forest. Where it falls short here is skepticism. To believe that UFOs, which are by definition unidentified, and if you've claimed that they're aliens, they are no longer unidentified. You're claiming to have identified them, but that's that's a different episode. Feel free to ask.

This ignores other plausible explanations of all the observations. I I I am willing to say that we have made observations of stuff in our atmosphere that we do not fully understand. That's that's not a stretch, But there are many plausible explanations for those observations instrument error, misunderstandings, human perception, amplification of stories, outright fabrications, etcetera. It's the list goes on and a fully skeptical attitude would make sure to rule out all of those completely and then at the end of it, you're still left with an unidentified object. If you wanna take it one step further and make a pause positive claim that it is aliens, you need extra evidence.

But without skepticism, you can't approach that extra evidence. And, of course, all these pseudoscientific ideas miss the soul of science in more than one way. I'm just giving brief examples. If you really, really want me to, I'd be happy to discuss any of these in detail in future episodes. Just let me know.

Now that we have the differences between science and pseudoscience laid out and some examples given, remember, pseudoscience and science differ because both have the same goal, which is to produce statements about the natural world that we can trust. And they have the same skin. They have math. They have jargon. They have gizmos.

But pseudoscience misses the soul. With this difference in mind, with enough practice, you can start to fine tune your own pseudoscience detectometer. If someone comes up to you in a random conversation talking about some subject that looks and sounds scientific, it has jargon, it has math, it has gizmos, Here are some clues that it might actually be pseudoscientific. Does it seem secret? Are there claims to hidden or secret or suppressed knowledge that is only accessible to an elite few and not open or widely publicized.

Remember, real science is open and based on easily accessible data and evidence. Is the topic that this person is talking about, is it all encompassing? Is it one idea that can explain seemingly every available question? A scientific breakthroughs are always much narrower than you would suspect. Does this idea that they are promoting supplant multiple or intersect multiple areas of knowledge at once?

Where it isn't just limited to to one thing, but, the entirety of our scientific understanding of the universe today, which can change in a moment's notice because that's the nature of science, but but it also takes a lot of work. Is this topic conspiratorial? Is there an establishment? You know, whoever they are, but I'm pretty sure I'm a part of it. Does the establishment want to silence or suppress the truth?

Is there a cabal of science? I don't even know what a cabal of scientists would look like. Is there a secret handshake or so? I don't know. But is are, you know, are scientists trying to suppress this knowledge because it's too dangerous because they're too afraid.

Guess what? Any scientist would love to win a Nobel Prize. And if it was that easy, and if they could just latch on to some radical idea, they would do it. Bonus points if the person speaking compares themselves to Galileo. Are their ideas convoluted?

Real science advances along a chain of logical rational reasoning that connects smoothly one idea to another and connects to other ideas smoothly. One statement follows from the next. It may not make a lot of sense, at least at first, but at least it's orderly. Science is very orderly. The statements we make are always predicated on previous statements, on existing knowledge, and they always flow from one thing to another.

The more confusing or disordered an explanation becomes, the more likely it's pseudoscience. Is the idea static? Have the ideas not changed since their inception? All evidence goes to supporting the main belief. All contrary evidence is disregarded.

Real science changes and evolves and updates in time. 70 years ago, we, UFOologists, believed that the UFOs were aliens. Has that changed or updated? Has our knowledge of Bigfoot changed or updated or evolved? Has the practice of astrology changed or updated or evolved given new available evidence?

Name one field of science that has not changed in 50 years, a 100 years, 200 years. They've all changed. And lastly, are the claims arrogant? Does a person claim to have all the answers figured out? Oh, there's there's an explanation for everything.

Guess what? Science is humble. Scientists know that we don't have all the answers. Every theory is incomplete. Every model has shortcomings.

A real scientific model will explain many things, but not all things because nothing is perfect. Even general relativity falls short. We call them singularities. Quantum physics falls short. Our most well tested, venerated ideas in science have shortcomings, have weaknesses, are not capable of explaining all the available evidence and if someone comes along and says while I can, my theory has no flaws, it has no mistakes, no gaps it's probably pseudoscience.

In other words to find pseudoscience you look for the qualities that run against the soul of science the virtues of rigorousness, of humility, of openness, of skepticism, of connectedness, of evolution. If you see all skin, but no soul, it's probably pseudoscience. As for what you should do when you encounter pseudoscience out in the wild, and I'm sure you will, well, I feel compelled to note that these pseudoscientific police systems exist for a reason, and so we can't just dismiss them with a sneering wave of our hand. For example, people seek comfort in a chaotic universe, and astrology fulfills that, brings people comfort. There's a reason it exists.

Many people are distrustful of the modern scientific medical machine, and so homeopathy offers an alternative to that. Check out my older episode on flat earthers for a deeper dive into these kinds of motivations and thinkings. You can't just dismiss it. And to be honest, modern science isn't blameless when it comes to the growth and perpetuation of pseudoscience. The more complicated and locked off and alien we make science, the harder it is for people to connect with it.

That's also part of my book coming out soon. I'll let you choose how to react to pseudoscience. Although I will say that my tried and true method of smiling and nodding has kept the normal smooth functioning of human interaction intact, and, also save me a lot of grief. Thanks to Akanksha b on email, Alex h on email, and Gordon m on Facebook for the questions that led to today's episode. And, of course, thank you to all my Patreon contributors with patreon.com/pmstar.

Please, I encourage you to go sign up and support this show. My top contributors this month, gotta give some shout outs to Justin g, Chris l, Barbara k, Duncan m, Corey d, Justin z, Nalia, Scott m, Rob h, Justin, Lewis m, John w, Alexis, Gilbert m, Joshua, John s, Thomas d, Simon g, Aaron j, Jessica k, and Valerie h. Thank you to all of you. That's patreon.com/pm. Sorry.

Keep those questions coming. Hashtag askaspaceman or askaspaceman@gmail.com. Check out the website, askaspaceman.com. You can follow me on all social channels at Paulmatt Sutter, and I will see you next time for more complete knowledge of time and space.

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