I've experienced, believed, disbelieved a lot of pseudoscience in my time. My journey is similar to many others. We're all taken in by tall stories. We sometimes react quite forcefully when we find we've been lied to.
- Chariots of the Gods. Seriously: I took it out of the library and read it. What a pile of cobblers. I never took any of it seriously but,..
- Hippy nonsense. Macrobiotics, and other gibberish. I believed some of this junk. So I understand how and why, people believe things which are clearly not happening. You take it on trust from people you have faith in. Because none of us have the time to research everything for ourselves.
- Linear No-threshold dose-response, LNT. Was explained to me in biology or physics class as an undergraduate. I sat at the front of the class and questioned the lecturer immediately (I remember he had red hair, a beard, and gentle Scottish accent; but only my general argument and his response. Not the actual words exchanged). Because a linear dose-response is not something I expect from biological organisms! He said "We know this. We're certain". I took that to mean - we've done the experiments and can show it. No. They never did low dose experiments to show LNT.
- Tomatoes cause cancer?!%$. A conversation with my eldest sister about tomatoes. She asked me whether I though "tomatoes cause cancer"? Right through my entire life I've been told X, or Y cause cancer. For example: coffee causes cancer (Don't worry. It really does not).
- Cancer. At sometime, or other, almost everything under the sun, especially man-made things have been accused of causing cancer. By scientists - not by eco-loonies.
- New Scientist, Scientific American and sensationalist science. Popular science was taken over by sensationalism, novelty, and speculation. Round about the early 1970s. Magazines which used to publish actual science (some of which you could do for yourself!) became mouth-pieces for sensation, novelty, and speculative stories with some tendentious scientific connection.
- I studied continental philosophy (French and German, part-time) for 3 years in the early 1980s under Peter Dews. He really was an excellent teacher. Once you believe any philosophical system you can believe any old nonsense. This taught me that even people who see through the nonsense of everyday thinking, and common sense can be easy victims to a system of thought, like:
- Marxism, Psychoanalysis and Postmodernism. At first glance none of these are science. But Marxism did claim to be Scientific Socialism, and Psychoanalysis said it was a science.
- Skepticism. I can't remember which Michael Shermer book I read, he's written so many. But I remember being disappointed by it because he took on lots of easy targets.
- Drugs. So much nonsense is written about illegal drugs. The one I remember most was the Ricaurte 1986 study on MDMA published in leading journal Science showing fried brains caused by MDMA. Published just as new anti-MDMA legislation went through. The study (not the law) was later retracted because they accidentally, used methamphetamine in the study instead of MDMA!!.
- Russian science. Talking to chemists (I have a chemistry education), about published Russian research. A lot of which is apparently junk.
- Looked into Scientific racism a bit. Read Stephen Jay Gould's "Mismeasure of Man" and Elazar Barkan's excellent: "Retreat of Scientific Racism".
- Biofuels. First noticed a big discussion of this in chemistry forums in mid-1990s. Conservative chemists convinced me it was junk science with a few back-of-the-envelope calculations. Even though it is junk, many scientists made their careers from it.
- Ozone and CFCs. I actually taught this pseudoscience: The ozone layer is destroyed by CFCs to high school students in the late 1980s; to illustrate free-radical chain reactions by example. It's nonsense. CFCs have no great effect. E.g. read: Holes in the Ozone
- String Theory. Anyone who hasn't read "Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, ..." by Lee Smolin really should read it. For about 10 years every 2nd physics doctorate candidate was funneled into studying string theory because the world's leading physicists got it into their head that it held the secret of Grand Unification Theory In a sense string theory is not even wrong. I can neither be shown nor refuted because there is not test one can make for it's validity. This taught me the importance of the null hypothesis, and the falsifiable hypothesis
- At first, I believed the AGW radiative forcing argument against carbon dioxide without even looking into it in detail. Like the anti-CFC and many cancer arguments it seemed plausible.
- Anti-fossil fuels. This stretches back a long way. Fossil fuels are running out, they pollute, cause global warming, ... Anti-fossil fuel thinking was insinuated into my bones by a lifetime of anti-fossil fuel propaganda, taken in unconsciously. Initially I accepted the fossil fuel kills upto 5 million people argument. This is based on assumption made against PM2.5 EPA spent over ½ $billion funding PM2.5 toxicology research. They got nothing conclusive against it and their main hypothesis was never even close to being proved. That did not stop them believing in the hypothesis! Steve Milloy explains this pseudoscience in Scare Pollution,
- The blank slate argument in education. This has been viciously fought throughout my entire lifetime, as well. From genes largely determine to development and education largely determine to the present time: where it's slightly biased in favour of genes. Left Scientists always wore their heart (and anti-capitalism) on their selves. But the politics was always far better then any science they did.
- My time promoting nuclear power on the internet. Taught me that nuclear power is safe (relatively, when well-regulated, as it is, in fact: over-regulated), anti-nukes have 1001-arguments. I discovered that experts believe junk. Here is a junk 2016 study I helped retract.
- LNT. Return. I discovered that LNT was junk science about 2014.
- Statistics, damned lies, and statistics. Statisticians became a lot more responsible in the last 10 years. The kind of hoodoo which once sailed through science publication with a couple of statistical tricks in no longer as acceptable. Andrew Gelman | Matt Briggs | Philip B. Stark and Andrea Saltelli
There's more pseudoscience around today than at any time in history. Nearly all of it is written by scientists. This the the big change I've seen during my life. Back when I was young, the pseudoscience was written by pseudoscientists with little science education. Now it's written by pseudoscientists with doctorates! And there's a lot more of them, they publish far more frequently. The one saving grace is today's pseudoscience is more sciency. Not so outrageously nutty. But this is making it far harder to detect. It easily slips under the radar of most scientists.
