Demarcation between science and pseudoscience: Still a Problem?

Kitty said:
I don't think there was a problem in the first place, so there's no need for solutions.

We start with a simple enough question: can this publication tell us anything, or not? Answering it is a practical task, not a philosophical enquiry. We're in too much of a hurry for that.
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Different problem.

Practical tasks and philosophical enquiries aren't mutually exclusive.

What are we in a hurry for?
 
wabi-sabi said:
I'm curious about your philosophy of science background? It's a subject I find fascinating. Who do you recommend reading?
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My undergraduate philosophy was half a century ago, and I struggle to remember details. I suspect @hallmarkOvME is much better placed to provide suggestions. All I am dragging for the recesses of my memory so far is Karl Popper’s “The Poverty of Historicism”, whereas something more general is what you are presumably looking for.

Perhaps a left field suggestion would be looking at something on logic, as that is the underpinning of analysing research papers, though it may be that much on formal logic is too technical for easy access. I will ponder this to see if I can drag anything relevant from the dark cellar of my memory. Fifteen years ago I thought it was a good idea to put all my undergrad and postgrad notes and papers into the recycling when I moved to a smaller house not thinking how worsening ME would wreck havoc with my internalised filing system.
 
hallmarkOvME said:
You dropped "the art" from definition both times. Was that intentional?
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Only in the sense that I don’t understand what «the art of» means in this context.

Someone trying to do critical thinking aren’t doing science if they clearly don’t know how to do critical thinking. Mistakes happen from time to time, but if widespread and substantial mistakes are the norm we’re no longer within the boundaries of science.

And because people that tend to know what they are doing also tend to be able to identify or understand their mistakes if pointed out by others, very few people or fields will be in the gray area - they are either clearly doing science or clearly doing pseudoscience.
hallmarkOvME said:
Also, I only apply it individual scientist's behaviors, not fields.
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Do you think that the field of homeopathy can’t be classified as pseudoscience, for instance? Why not?
 
Utsikt said:
Only in the sense that I don’t understand what «the art of» means in this context.

Someone trying to do critical thinking aren’t doing science if they clearly don’t know how to do critical thinking. Mistakes happen from time to time, but if widespread and substantial mistakes are the norm we’re no longer within the boundaries of science.

And because people that tend to know what they are doing also tend to be able to identify or understand their mistakes if pointed out by others, very few people or fields will be in the gray area - they are either clearly doing science or clearly doing pseudoscience.

Do you think that the field of homeopathy can’t be classified as pseudoscience, for instance? Why not?
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"The art of" only signals that creativity is (usually, mostly likely always) an essential ingredient in the conjunction, and to leave it as a conjucton, similar to any pursuits described with the initial phrase "art and science of", except in this instance it would be redundant and clunky to write it back to back and get "the art of the science of the science of...."

Homeopathy "remedies" like seriially diluted tincture preparations were initially creative but still woefully lack in critical thinking. I would call those unscientific or non scientific because it's useless as medicine. The problem, at least here in the colonies, is that you can label some products that alleviate symptoms as claimed (better than placebo/greater than chance at CI 95%) homeopathic even though the founder of homeopathy's "similia similibus curentur," or "like cures like" was not part of the intent in creating the treatment. "Pseudoscience" is too generous a term. I reserve that to include still debatable, unkown, currently untestsble or tested ad nauseam but still divisive phenomena.

As "the field of" aspect goes, it depends on what you mean by "field." As in "the field of physics" or "the field of math"? No. Again, too generous. It's more an un field and its one "axiom" (similia similibus curentur, or "like cures like") is too broad. By that "definition", flu and covid immunization preparations are homeopathic, which is absurd.
 
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Peter T said:
My undergraduate philosophy was half a century ago, and I struggle to remember details. I suspect @hallmarkOvME is much better placed to provide suggestions. All I am dragging for the recesses of my memory so far is Karl Popper’s “The Poverty of Historicism”, whereas something more general is what you are presumably looking for.

Perhaps a left field suggestion would be looking at something on logic, as that is the underpinning of analysing research papers, though it may be that much or something formal logic is too technical for easy access. I will ponder this to see if I can drag anything relevant from the dark cellar of my memory. Fifteen years ago I thought it was a good idea to put all my undergrad and postgrad notes and papers into the recycling when I moved to a smaller house not thinking how worsening ME would wreck havoc with my internalised filing system.
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I might still have my PoS syllabus, but have no energy to go to storage. I imagine any syllabus a current professor has made available online would do. John Worrall of the LSE might have something about for beginners, but I only mention him because he specialized in philosophy of medical science. If you've a passable understanding of formal logic any epistemology course would give you a broader idea. Text books are great if you just want to wet your whistle, but they only leave me wanting more. History of Science courses can be excellent primers also. If you've specialized knowledge in one discipline's PoS practices, you can start with their theoretical source referents and trace a genealogy to more general sources.

A problem with PoS is that it usually relies on current scientistic innovations and/or discoveries and so is limited advancing at the pace of the sciences. For instance, medical science hasn't had any major break throughs since penicillin despite its unchecked enthusiasm. Semaglutides might pan out that way, but there's no guarantees
of curbing its inhibition from later
unintended consequences like we now
face with antibiotics resistance. A great read about that is The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine by the MD Jame Le Fanu.l The psychiatrist David Healy's Pharamgeddon, the PsyDoc Gary Greenberg's Mam Depression, professor at University College London The Myth of the Chemical and, of course, the investgative journalist James Whitaker's seminal Anatomy of an Epidemic.
 
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hallmarkOvME said:
A problem with PoS it usually relies on current scientistfic innovations and/or discoveries and so is limited advancing at the pace of the sciences. For instance, medical science hasn't had any major break throughs since penicillin despite its unchecked enthusiasm.
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Maybe the problem for PoS is that it is done by people with no practical knowledge of science or real understanding of what it is about? That was my impression as a philosophy student. (I might make an exception for John Worrall, whose medical wife was my PhD student.)

If medical science has not had any major breakthroughs since penicillin how come various members of my family:
1. Are disease free despite prostate, bowel, breast and blood cancers, incurable in 1941 (or 1930).
2. Are fully grown despite childhood coeliac disease.
3. Could walk freely again as a result of hip replacement.
4. Were born in the first place as a result of the work of Patrick Steptoe.
5. Can still walk faster than I can at the age of 93 thanks to drugs, despite psoriatic arthritis that would have put them in a wheelchair or worse.
6. Can still hear human speech despite severe deafness, as a result of technology new since 2020.
7. Could still see for another 10 years thanks to anti-VEGF injections for wet macula degeneration or lens implants.
8. Are now free of tuberculosis thanks to modern triple therapy.

And that is just immediate family. Medical progress may have slowed since 2000 but we don't need to be three quarters of a century out of date.
 
Peter T said:
My undergraduate philosophy was half a century ago, and I struggle to remember details.
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Thank you so much! Don't expend any energy on this that you don't have. I will look up Popper.

I know what you mean about the internal filing system. I've recently started keeping a reading journal because my internal system is no longer functional.
 
wabi-sabi said:
I will look up John Worrall and go from there.
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John Worall is mostly known for his work on structural realism, with James Ladyman. Their take is sensible, if not that novel, but it is way out in metaphysics in relation to anything medical. (The idea is that all we can know about the world is its mathematical causal structure.) Worrall got involved in Evidence Based Medicine arguments later on and I am not impressed that he grasped the subject. As @rvallee often points out 'EBM' isn't all it claims to be, but we all knew that back around 1990 when it was proposed. He is cited alongside Gordon Guyatt on Wikipedia!!
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
Their take is sensible, if not that novel, but it is way out in metaphysics in relation to anything medical.
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I don't mind the far out stuff. One of the jots of philosophy is that philosophers seem to think about the world in abstract ways that other people don't. I've found it to be wonderful mind candy- a joy to read an think about even if it's not (or maybe especially because it's not) always practical.
 
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