Truth Shall Prevail

The ultimate goal of science is to discover truth. Like all human endeavors, science is prone to mistakes, but by its nature it perpetually revisits and corrects past errors and misunderstandings. Proponents of pseudoscience are a constant impediment to progress. They spread half-truths, misinterpretations, and outright lies to advance their cause. They prefer anecdotes to evidence, and are less concerned about proving they’re right than they are with persuading other to believe science might be wrong. Billions have been spent, hundreds of lives lost, and countless resources and work hours have been wasted in this battle between evidence-based science, and pseudoscience. It is easy to become frustrated or to lose hope, but giving up is not the answer. Promoting critical thinking in every aspect of society and engaging with acolytes of pseudoscience will help repair the damage they’ve caused and develop a more empirically oriented culture.

Evidence-Based Practice as a Driver of Pseudoscience in Prevention Research

Many of the subject matters discussed under the topic of pseudoscience can be readily distinguished from science proper, and there are few individuals with any serious scientific training who would mistake these for science-based disciplines. Harder to identify and distinguish are those disciplines that may have begun as a genuine science but have transformed into pseudosciences primarily through their pursuit of positive results. This chapter discusses one such example, drug prevention research, and contends that the adoption of so-called “evidence-based practice” by this field of study has been a key driver of its decent into pseudoscience. It discusses this process using a systems approach and focusses specifically on two negative feedback loops, one entailing flexible data analysis and selective reporting and one entailing minimal adherence to study design criteria. These lops are illustrated using examples of prevention and treatment programs that have been deemed “model” intervention by the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP).

Risky Play and Growing Up: How to Understand the Overprotection of the Next Generation

Much of the development of children, young people, and young adults is determined by opportunities for play and “real life” experience in their early years. This is not, as some believe, an optional or frivolous luxury, but an essential life experience for development of character, skills, self-awareness, and competence. Yet in recent years, evidence shows that opportunities for this at all ages have diminished in both quality and quantity in many countries. The reasons for this are multiple and complex, but one factor has been a drive to create a low risk or even risk-free society via the application of newly developed techniques of risk assessment and science-based methods of risk control. However, the health benefits of these public safety initiatives might have much less effect than people might believe and could, overall, be harmful through their prohibitions. We conclude that more research into the nature of risky play and risk exposure through teenage years and into adulthood is necessary, but tentatively propose that we need to also consider the possible effects of irrational overprotection. In addition to the conventional play setting, the current spread of trigger warning and safety rooms will be considered as an illustrative case affecting young adults. Rather than avoidance and consolidation of negative metacognitions about lack of control and vulnerability one needs to convey how science suggests that exposure or interventions to change perceptions of vulnerability may be more beneficial.

Food-o-science Pseudoscience: The Weapons and Tactics in the War on Crop Biotechnology

Humans crave new technology in communications, medicine, electronics, and transportation, but show reserve when new technology touches food. While the industrialized world enjoys the safest and most abundant food supply in human history, the same consumers voice concern about that same bounty. This problem is multi-faceted, with origins in a lack of corporate trust, appeals to nature, an internet filled with poor-quality information, and whims of affluent consumers that spend a small percentage of their income on food. Human history has been a perennial battle against food scarcity and under-nutrition. Crop domestication and the emergence of agriculture changed that. Today’s modern technologies, led by plant genetic improvement, have provided sustained food security. Some of these technologies implement recombinant DNA technology, commonly known as genetic engineering. These new genetic technologies allow farmers to produce record yields with fewer impacts on the environment. However, these same technologies are often maligned and misrepresented by a well-funded and deceptive movement that uses soft scientific claims, misrepresentation of the literature, manufactured risk, fear, and blatant misinformation to promote their cause. Here this contemporary food war is explained, an unfortunate fight playing out at the intersection of science and food, with impacts on farmers, the environment, consumers and the poverty stricken.

The Illusion of Causality: A Cognitive Bias Underlying Pseudoscience

In the last decades, cognitive Psychology has provided researchers with a powerful background and the rigor of experimental methods to better understand why so many people believe in pseudoscience, paranormal phenomena and superstitions. According to recent evidence, those irrational beliefs could be the unintended result of how the mind evolved to use heuristics and reach conclusions based on scarce and incomplete data. Thus, we present visual illusions as a parallel to the type of fast and frugal cognitive bias that underlies pseudoscientific belief. In particular, we focus on the causal illusion, which consists of people believing that there is a causal link between two events that coincide just by chance. The extant psychological theories that can account for this causal illusion are described, as well as the factors that are able to modulate the bias. We also discuss that causal illusions are adaptive under some circumstances, although they often lead to utterly wrong beliefs. Finally, we mention several debiasing strategies that have been proved effective in fighting the causal illusion and preventing some of its consequences, such as pseudoscientific belief.

The Challenges of Changing Minds: How Confirmation Bias and Pattern Recognition Affect Our Search for Meaning

While hosting a television show on the Oprah Winfrey Network, I had the opportunity to investigate 12 claims of miracles, experienced by a wide swath of Americans. This chapter is a summary of some of the takeaway lessons that I learned during that time, as I observed how extraordinary events can be interpreted as evidence for the existence of the supernatural. In particular, our drive to find meaning combined with a faulty memory system, a bias towards confirming our beliefs and our uncanny ability to pick out patterns make it difficult for us to change our minds even in the face of new and contradictory evidence.

Swaying Pseudoscience: The Inoculation Effect

Fighting pseudoscience is a noble endeavor. Even when undertaken by experts, who sometimes can't see the forest for each of their trees, there are ways to wield the big picture in this fight. The tools don't serve as swords in the fight, but as vaccines against quackery.

Hypnosis: Science, Pseudoscience, and Nonsense

In this chapter we present evidence garnered from the scientific literature to counter or refute prevalent yet mistaken beliefs about hypnosis (e.g., participants respond robotically, hypnosis is a sleep-like state, hypnosis greatly increases suggestibility). We discuss the robust influence of the media and stage hypnosis in perpetuating myths of hypnosis as a trance-like state, and we contend that research does not support the existence of a reliable marker (e.g., hypnotized participants respond literally, exhibit a greater tolerance for logical incongruity, and can override the optokinetic reflex) of a special state of consciousness uniquely associated with hypnosis. We further suggest that myths and misconceptions can have serious personal and social consequences and can be misused in forensic and psychotherapeutic consequences. Nevertheless, we also contend that there is accumulating evidence that hypnosis, when properly administered, may be helpful in the treatment of a number of psychological and medical conditions. Despite the myths and misconceptions surrounding hypnosis, the scientific study of hypnosis has advanced beyond hokum and pseudoscience to move hypnosis increasingly into the mainstream of psychological science.

Understanding Pseudoscience Vulnerability through Epistemological Development, Critical Thinking, and Science Literacy

The American public is vulnerable to pseudoscience due to 1) a general lack of science literacy (e.g., not knowing how to distinguish science from pseudoscience 2) pedagogy that emphasizes memorization of facts over critical thinking (e.g., knowing how to ask questions), 3) insufficient epistemological development (e.g., not knowing how to evaluate truth claims), and 4) media distortions of science. This chapter will review these causes and explore a case example of the science claims made by the mindfulness movement that is currently popular in America.

The Psychology of (Pseudo)Science: Cognitive, Social, and Cultural Factors

We review findings from the psychology of science that are relevant to understanding or explaining peoples’ tendencies to believe both scientific and pseudoscientific claims. We discuss relevant theoretical frameworks and empirical findings to support the proposal that pseudoscientific beliefs arise in much the same way as other scientific and non-scientific beliefs do. In particular, we focus on (a) cognitive and metacognitive factors at the individual level; (b) trust in testimony and judgments of expertise at the social level; and (c) personal identity and the public’s relationship with the scientific community at a cultural level.