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6b44ec5
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If someone were to propose that the planets go around the sun because all planet matter has a kind of tendency for movement, a kind of motility, let us call it an 'oomph,' this theory could explain a number of other phenomena as well. So this is a good theory, is it not? No. It is nowhere near as good as the proposition that the planets move around the sun under the influence of a central force which varies exactly inversely as the square of the distance from the center. The second theory is better because it is so specific; it is so obviously unlikely to be the result of chance. It is so definite that the barest error in the movement can show that it is wrong; but the planets could wobble all over the place, and, according to the first theory, you could say, 'Well, that is the funny behavior of the 'oomph.
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theory
imagination
science
explainability
rigor
scrutiny
rationalization
pseudoscience
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Richard P. Feynman |
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bc01c37
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"To take a specific example, a researcher in the Journal of Traumatic Stress interviewed 129 women with documented histories of child sexual abuse that occurred between the ages of 10 months and 12 years. Of those, 38 percent had forgotten the abuse. Of the remaining women who remembered, 16 percent reported that they had for a period of time forgotten but subsequently recovered their memories. [46] Thus, during that time a "false negative" recorded for those women. These are the sort of distinctions for which Elaine Showalter in Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media fails to account."
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child-sexual-abuse
elaine-showalter
epidemics
false-memories
false-negatives
feminists
hysterics
incest
incestuous
misleading
pseudo-science
pseudoscience
recovered-memory
repressed-memories
repressed-memory
sexual-abuse
traumatic-stress
women-survivors
hysterical
trauma
survivors
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Janet Walker |
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f31ef60
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...the boundaries separating science, nonscience, and pseudoscience are much fuzzier and more permeable than (or, for that matter, most scientists) would have us believe. There is, in other words, no litmus test.
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fractal
philosophy-of-science
karl-popper
pseudoscience
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Massimo Pigliucci |
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b89021a
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Many wish to believe that the odd is not so odd, the bizarre not so bizarre, and there is little changing of minds once they are set. There are only so many ways to understand the strange and disordered. The Greeks imagined gods to explain what they themselves could not. It is human nature to invent reasons for why the mind shatters, hope plummets, or the will to live dies. Scientific explanations are complicated and, for many, less humanly satisfying than visionary or religious ones. They are also less interesting than explanations based on planetary misalignment, toxins, or childhoods gone awry. There is a disturbing gap between what scientists and doctors know about mental illness and what most people believe.
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science
pseudoscience
mental-illness
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Kay Redfield Jamison |