300-350 words
The essay is only one page-long, double-spaced, so focus on describing the following components :
- research on the internet or YouTube to find an example of science dealing with the ocean and an example of pseudoscience dealing with the ocean,
- describe the methods and characteristics of scientific investigation,
- describe the methods and characteristics of pseudoscience
- analyze the characteristics of the ocean science example that you found and the pseudoscience example
- https://theconversation.com/pseudoscience-and-cons…
What Is Pseudoscience?: Scientific American
1/10/14 11:02 AM
Permanent Address: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-pseudoscience
What Is Pseudoscience?
Distinguishing between science and pseudoscience is problematic
By Michael Shermer |
Thursday, September 15, 2011 |
64 comments
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Climate deniers are accused of practicing pseudoscience, as are intelligent design
creationists, astrologers, UFOlogists, parapsychologists, practitioners of alternative
medicine, and often anyone who strays far from the scientific mainstream. The
boundary problem between science and pseudoscience, in fact, is notoriously
fraught with definitional disagreements because the categories are too broad and
fuzzy on the edges, and the term “pseudoscience” is subject to adjectival abuse
against any claim one happens to dislike for any reason. In his 2010 book Nonsense
on Stilts (University of Chicago Press), philosopher of science Massimo Pigliucci
concedes that there is “no litmus test,” because “the boundaries separating science,
nonscience, and pseudoscience are much fuzzier and more permeable than Popper
(or, for that matter, most scientists) would have us believe.”
It was Karl Popper who first identified what he called “the demarcation problem” of
finding a criterion to distinguish between empirical science, such as the successful
1919 test of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and pseudoscience, such as
Freud’s theories, whose adherents sought only confirming evidence while ignoring
disconfirming cases. Einstein’s theory might have been falsified had solar-eclipse
Image: Illustration by Alex Robbins
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data not shown the requisite deflection of starlight bent by the sun’s gravitational
field. Freud’s theories, however, could never be disproved, because there was no
testable hypothesis open to refutability. Thus, Popper famously declared
“falsifiability” as the ultimate criterion of demarcation.
The problem is that many sciences are nonfalsifiable, such as string theory, the
neuroscience surrounding consciousness, grand economic models and the
extraterrestrial hypothesis. On the last, short of searching every planet around
every star in every galaxy in the cosmos, can we ever say with certainty that E.T.s
do not exist?
Princeton University historian of science Michael D. Gordin adds in his
forthcoming book The Pseudoscience Wars (University of Chicago Press, 2012),
“No one in the history of the world has ever self-identified as a pseudoscientist.
There is no person who wakes up in the morning and thinks to himself, ‘I’ll just
head into my pseudolaboratory and perform some pseudoexperiments to try to
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confirm my pseudotheories with pseudofacts.’” As Gordin documents with detailed
examples, “individual scientists (as distinct from the monolithic ‘scientific
community’) designate a doctrine a ‘pseudoscience’ only when they perceive
themselves to be threatened—not necessarily by the new ideas themselves, but by
what those ideas represent about the authority of science, science’s access to
resources, or some other broader social trend. If one is not threatened, there is no
need to lash out at the perceived pseudoscience; instead, one continues with one’s
work and happily ignores the cranks.”
I call creationism “pseudoscience” not because its proponents are doing bad science
—they are not doing science at all—but because they threaten science education in
America, they breach the wall separating church and state, and they confuse the
public about the nature of evolutionary theory and how science is conducted.
Here, perhaps, is a practical criterion for resolving the demarcation problem: the
conduct of scientists as reflected in the pragmatic usefulness of an idea. That is,
does the revolutionary new idea generate any interest on the part of working
scientists for adoption in their research programs, produce any new lines of
research, lead to any new discoveries, or influence any existing hypotheses, models,
paradigms or worldviews? If not, chances are it is pseudoscience.
We can demarcate science from pseudoscience less by what science is and more by
what scientists do. Science is a set of methods aimed at testing hypotheses and
building theories. If a community of scientists actively adopts a new idea and if that
idea then spreads through the field and is incorporated into research that produces
useful knowledge reflected in presentations, publications, and especially new lines
of inquiry and research, chances are it is science.
This demarcation criterion of usefulness has the advantage of being bottom-up instead of top-down, egalitarian instead of elitist,
nondiscriminatory instead of prejudicial. Let science consumers in the marketplace of ideas determine what constitutes good science,
starting with the scientists themselves and filtering through the editors, educators and readers. As for potential consumers of pseudoscience, that’s what skeptics are for, but as always, caveat emptor.
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Grammar
Composition
Characteristics of Science
Characteristics of Pseudoscience
Ocean Science Example
Ocean Pseudoscience Example