[WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

Sat Dec 17 23:16:23 UTC 2005

On Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 02:42:12AM -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
> >"Where's the science?" is a reasonable question that pseudoscience fails.
> >
> That's an empty generality.

No, it isn't, because ...

> Science is in the process, not the results.

... science *is* in the process, not the results.  Exactly right!

Calling something "pseudoscience" is not an indictment of the results.
It is a statement about the process:  that the "results" were not come
by using a process which resembles science, despite the proponent's own
claims to the mantle of "science".

When someone presents "scientific astrology" -- Google it; it's a real
expression! -- we are correct to ask, "Where's the science?"  That is to
say, "By what process did you come up with this astrology?  Where are
your data, or observations, or clinical trials, or case studies?  What
is your method?  When did you test your hypotheses?  Which ones did you
reject as false, and why?  Where is your peer review?  How can someone
else replicate your results to test their accuracy?  How would your
results differ if the conditions were different -- say, if Mars were in
trine to Venus instead of Jupiter?"

If the answer to "Where's the science?" is an evasion -- be it "Oh, have
faith!" or "But it's the wisdom of the ancients!" or "The spirits of
lost Atlantis revealed it to me!" or "Astrology is more powerful than
rational thought" or "We don't have to show you no steeenking science"
or "Doesn't it *feel* true?" -- then what we have is indeed fake science
-- or, in a word, pseudoscience.

-- 
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>