Superstitions, Pseudoscience, Behaviors & Beliefs

Clarity of language, challenge of pseudoscience

For this midweek post I’m interrupting the grading of the “Personal Experience Essay” in the class I’m teaching for undergraduate students called “Science or Pseudoscience.” The assignment asks students to:

Personal Experience Essay (100 Points): Most people have personal experiences that include possible superstition and / or pseudoscientific beliefs, behaviors, or traditions. In this essay you should reflect on one of these experiences and 
consider the truth of the claim including how you could utilize a rationale approach to investigate the belief. 

Be sure to include enough information for me to understand your experience and the claim you were confronted with during the experience. Then consider the truth of the claim, were reasons provided for the belief (that is, reasons that the belief should be believed),and whether those reasons have any obvious fallacies or biases associated with them? Consider how you may use a rationale approach to investigate the belief.

If what you have experienced is a behavior or tradition - focus on the belief that underlies that behavior or tradition. For example, the behavior of saying “God Bless You” when someone sneezes started with a belief that your soul escapes your body when you sneeze and saying God Bless You puts it back into you (or at least that is the story I’ve heard). Most behaviors and traditions have underlying beliefs, so try to figure out that core belief. It is the belief that you should focus on.

This assignment should be at least 500 words, but no more than 1500 words.

Photo by Emmeli M on Unsplash

Students have no problem identifying an experience. Either an experience with a friend, family member or acquaintance, or even in themselves. They also have no problem tracking downs beliefs that may have originated the behavior even if not still the reason for the behavior. For example, while “God Bless You” may have originated from a belief related to a soul following a sneeze, it’s pretty easy to recognize (and verify with questioning) that most people saying it do so out of social convention, tradition and a belief that it is polite. For more on this convention, I recommend this clip:

Superstitions

Propositions are statements that can be true or false. Claims are propositions that we putting forward for consideration of whether they are true or false. Beliefs are claims that we accept are true. Superstitions are beliefs (that usually support a behavior) that have no warrant. Warrant here just means a justifiable reason to believe that claim. Superstitions often involve the supernatural, or perhaps unknown natural phenomenon that we can’t fully explain. But just because we cannot fully explain a phenomenon underlying a superstition doesn’t mean we can’t subject it to scientific (read here, empirical) inquiry. Empirical inquiry requires making observations.

Beliefs that have no warrant (superstitions) can be tested to obtain warrant, or reasons to believe. Beliefs that being prepared for testing can then be called hypotheses. When, what, where and how to test is highly dependent on the hypotheses themselves.

Pseudoscience

The dividing line between superstition (belief without warrant) and pseudoscience is that when something is called pseudoscience it is claiming to have warrant that is “scientific.” And by scientific this claim is immediately taken to be more authoritative since we’ve come to accept the validity of the empirical approach utilized by the methods of science to verify (or refute) the truth of claims. Of course, no one doing what may come to be called pseudoscience believes what they are doing is pseudoscience. From their perspective they are “doing science” but they are doing it in such a way that something is missing, or added, that leads others to make the claim that it is pseudoscientific. To someone hearing a belief may ask “Why or how do you believe that…?” And to the believer the answer can be “it has been scientifically proven (or verified or tested).”

Of course now we have a claim believed to be true (the original belief) built on another claim (“it has been scientifically verified”). At this point we need warrant for the second claim. The warrant on the second claim is required to determine whether the warrant on the first claim is pseudoscientific or scientific.

Without science as an accepted way of testing claims, there is nothing called pseudoscience. But pseudoscience also isn’t a “not” science category. That’s superstition. Superstition is a belief that is “not” science (keep in mind that I use the term very broadly including historical science, as in the study of history as a form of scientific inquiry). Pseudoscience is just what it says it is in its name. It is an altered approach to science that then attempts to use the legitimacy of the phrase “it’s scientific” to provide warrant for the original claim. Without the rise of science as a respected way of knowing (an epistemology) there is no pseudoscience.

And ironically - with the rise of pseudoscience, the legitimacy of science as a way of knowing is questioned.

The legitimacy of science is rightfully questioned (that’s a scientific approach) when there are contradictions in findings (for example), an inability to replicate or reproduce findings, etc. However, it’s the scientific approach that then repeats and try’s to figure out why findings contradict, or can’t be replicated or repeated.

Therefore, the scientific study of scientific studies to try to identify what forms, variations, fallacies or biases that fall under the heading pseudoscience that may be at the core of the seeming contradictions in findings is an important activity. But some clarity in the language underlying the logic of claims, beliefs, superstition and pseudoscience has helped to get me started.

Pseudoscience in Physical Therapy

I’m hoping to have a guest post from a group of DPT students that have been working to appraise some research on a particular intervention sometimes associated with physical therapy. They took on a challenging course project for their “Clinical Inquiry” 2 and 3 courses. They picked an intervention to investigate that appears on more than one list of suspected health interventions supported by pseudoscientific claims. They subjected this area of research to accepted standards of scientific inquiry. Thus far they have not been very impressed with what they’ve found.

Wrapping up

Here’s a claim that I’d like to try to provide warrant for at some point. Many of the problems facing society today are related to pseudoscientific verification for claims that end up distorting and maligning beliefs, including the belief that scientific inquiry is an effective way of knowing.

I’m at just about 1100 words. The assignment only required 500, so it’s time for me to stop.