"You can see a lot just by observing." -Yogi Berra
How can you recognize pseudoscience?[]
- Has the subject shown progress?
- Does the discipline use technical words such as "vibration" or "energy" without clearly defining what they mean?
- Would accepting the tenets of a claim require you to abandon any well established physical laws?
- Are popular articles on the subject lacking in references?
- Is the only evidence offered anecdotal in nature?
- Does the proponent of the subject claim that "air-tight" experiments have been performed that prove the truth of the subject matter, and that cheating would have been impossible?
- Are the results of the aforementioned experiments successfully repeated by other researchers?
- Does the proponent of the subject claim to be overly or unfairly criticized?
- Is the subject taught only in non-credit institutions?
- Are the best texts on the subject decades old?
- Does the proponent of the claim use what one writer has called "factuals" - statements that are a largely or wholly true but unrelated to the claim?
- When criticized, do the defenders of the claim attack the critic rather than the criticism?
- Does the proponent make appeals to history (i.e. it has been around a long time, so it must be true)?
- Does the subject display the "shyness effect" (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't)?
- Does the proponent use the appeal to ignorance argument ("there are more things under heaven … than are dreamed of in your philosophy …")?
- Does the proponent use alleged expertise in other areas to lend weight to the claim?