79. Science, Pseudoscience, & the Demarcation Problem | THUNK

Science rules, & pseudoscience drools...but which is which? Learn about Kuhn, Popper, & the demarcation problem!

-Links for the Curious-

[CarneadesOfCyrene]

I am concerned about the problem of underdetermination. I have a series on it, but simply, it involves Kuhn's ideas to the next step, there is no way for us to tell of a particular errant result where the problem lies, be it in our experiment or one of the many beliefs that make up our background theory. We can never test a particular theory in isolation, merely in comparison to our background beliefs. This seems to make no theory falsifiable. Such a conclusion is in line with Kuhn's theories, but seems directly opposed to Popper's. If nothing else this is a clear point where Kuhn and Popper are miles apart if not a significant problem for falsification style solutions to the demarcation problem. Thanks for the video!

[theamazingflubber]

Thank you so much for the knowledge and breaking it down!

[thorkrynu]

Kuhn is sometimes taught as a stepping stone to throwing out science all together or embracing new age or religious views. The irony is that science does evolve (making it more open minded) while these other systems seem remarkably static. Recent technology and AI are making teleological arguments come back in vogue. ( I like your episode on that subject) which is yet more irony since they are fruits of science.

[String.Epsilon]

Sudo-Science made me laugh. Well done.

[chrisrichardsonpiano]

there is probably more than one difference between pseudoscience and science. Various traps to fall into, such as not being falsifiable; ignoring evidence; constructing experiments where the experimenter already has some bias towards a particular outcome. etc

[inquisidiego]

I've been watching your videos since you started and I love them. Just wanted to let you know that. keep up the puns!

[somewony]

Are there any theories about the demarcation between science and math? Because according to both Popper and Kuhn, math is not science (which I agree with as a mathematician), but the line gets fuzzy in some circumstances. For example, my university claims fluid dynamics is math, a physicist friend of mine insists that string theory is math as well and though I myself think statistics /isn't/ math, other people think it is.

[LeeCarlson]

I always love that the term "pseudoscience" appears to be used as often (and in the same contexts) as the word "heresy" has been by the Catholic Church. I am particularly entertained when some well-meaning "scientistic" person assures me that something has been "disproven by science" when there has never been a shred of research actually performed on the subject. I'm still looking for anybody who has done any peer-reviewed research on astrology and how it might function (and good astrology is no more, or less, predictive over the same timescale than meteorology.).

[UnluckyFatGuy]

I've always liked Kuhn's theory, since IMO seems to interpret the history of science very well. Science tends to believe it has everything sorted out and just kind of hand-waves away any anomalies. That is until there are too many anomalies and then a new scientific revolution is born. Yesterday's pseudoscience becomes today's science.

[PaulBijenhof]

I hate to nitpick, but there is more than one demarcation problem. The demarcation problem between science and pseudoscience is one of the most well known, but it is not the only one. In philosophy, whenever there is a problem that concerns drawing a boundary on a spectrum between two categories, that's a demarcation problem. Another good example is the demarcation problem between observable and unobservable objects.

[LeeCarlson]

I find it entertaining that you cite the Mythbusters as I have watched many of their episodes because my children have enjoyed watching them blow things up. I have found it very instructional that whenever they have set out to "bust" a myth, they tend to play very fast and loose with environmental variables which provide for good (i.e. entertaining) television, but (IMO) poor science and when they want a myth validated, the variables are precisely accounted for.

[metatron]

I think Popper called this "naive falsification"

[olivercroft]

I like Popperian logic and the analytic school, but lets say, if hypnotism is a somewhat empirical allusion to the notion of a subconscious, given it's success in the clinic and school yard magic tricks, surely then psychoanalysis is not totally unfalsifiable. I could concede that the psychology of object relations and developmental psychology could be seen as speculative areas for research and not scientific in method, but the method of psychoanalysis that posits and explores the unconscious makes use of the scientific method of phenomenology to secure depth. Otherwise one would be throwing the baby out with the bath water. Right about now I would reference "Against Method", by Paul Feyerabend, which has remarkably similar assumptions to the Lacanian School of thought in psychoanalytic theory. Slavoj Žižek is a concrete example of this, a philosopher moving beyond the landfill of historical textbooks, to go to the point where he may have conviction in the matter. He has oddly specific ticks and gesticulations of sort that allude to the fact that he is pent up with a historical memory of references to modern culture, movies and films, of the past and present, fact and fiction, and yet he avoids having an up tight personality in relation to them in the production of discourse with others using them as references and not for the purposes of other cultural studies, supposing that some subject of psychoanalysis is to be an emergent relation between people using arbitrary literature. THIS could otherwise be barred as an object of cognition, like jokes in a court room, or, as it is in reality, more or less excommunicated like Spinoza from the Dutch religious assembly. In short, this is because of the interpretation of psychosexual developmental theory, ruining the context of meta-psychological papers, for instance, the idea that knowledge construction could be an anarchic process. It would be hard to give a finite objective description of the scientific method without coming to terms with and solving difficulties in the theory of mind writ large, and problems like induction and hypothesis generation in the scientific method.

[sciencmath]

Or we could take the Lawrence Krauss approach of "THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO READ PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE ARE OTHER PHILOSOPHERS OF SCIENCE!"
*farts and inhales deeply*

[Fiddling_while_Rome_burns]

"there's no shortage of disciplines that people claim are as good as or better than mainstream science like physics or medicine at prediction and accessing truth."

Being employed in the field of archaeology (ok pun intended), I erm sort of make the claim this discipline is better than science at accessing truth (about prehistory).

[metatron]

I think he also claimed historical materialism was a pseudoscience

[roberteospeedwagon]

When I read scientific papers even if they make positive claims, I always read them as possibilities that are always possible to be disproven. I was always taught that science is falsifiable, so I see that it should always be seen that way. No model is 100% correct, we can always build on our current ones to the point of pushing all previous claims out of the water, as this could happen at anytime I don't see why anyone should take a paper as 100% empirical fact. So I side with Kuhn.

[wickedspikes]

The list you made on pseudo-science was great, until you mention the last item "a whole slew of weird stuff" that's good for your health. A lot of supplements have had (hopefully impartial) trials done on their affects, and simply haven't been FDA approved because the FDA has too much on their plate (pun intended). I agree a lot of stuff is marketed as "science" when it's not, but a lot of non-conventional medicines/supplements work, and have the scientific trials to back it up. You probably meant things like the metal wristbands that are supposed to cure arthritis, but I had to mention this since there are a lot of people who reject non-conventional medicines outright because they assume it's pseudo-science.

Overall great video, it's a wonderful introduction into the Demarcation Problem.

[InfiniteEchos]

Popper....should've been a balloon modeller.

[sanshinron]

There's a big problem though with established scientists calling everything that contradicts their theories a pseudoscience.