All I was getting at was: some drivel that proponents or adherents wrongly call science or confuse with science, or that competes with science to explain some aspect of nature. Instead of using scientific method, they dress up their “explanations” with scientific-y jargon - often tacking “-ology” onto their brand of bullshit.
There are those that believe astrology to be science - studying the position of planets can appear to be scientific. The story of Rapunzel is just as true as astrology but no one would refer to it as non-science any more than they would refer to it as non-jello. In practice is there an important distinction between pseudoscience and non-science?
or non-sense for that matter
Now, where in the Enquirer did I read about some crystal-based cure for split hairs? 
Great additions! Wish I’d thought to add von Daniken.
Why’d you include literary analysis or Sci-Fi philosophy treatments in the list? If you mean pseudointellectually deep discussion of fiction, is that really pseudoscience? Or am I missing something?
Neuro Linguistic Programming [at least as preached by Tony Robbins]
Myers <sp>-Briggs Analysis
There is a pretty exhasutive list here at the Skeptic’s Dictionary
Damn! I was going to make compiling this list my life’s work and you come along and bleeding hand it to me on a platter!
The difference is that non-science is not believed by anyone sensible, while pseudoscience looks convincing, and can fool highly intelligent people if they don’t have specific knowledge of the field.
Postmodernist literary analysis has gone to co-opting the language and form of science and mathematics and in fact has conflated itself with philosophy and science but with null semantic content; see Fashionable Nonsense, particularly the chapter regarding Postmodernist feminist literature and its singular (mis)use of mathematics to “prove” claims.
I’ve heard enough people trying to justify some physical phenomena or bolster some philosophical argument by citing The Physics of Trek or The Matrix and Philosophy with great seriousness that I think they qualify as legitimate (heh) pseudoscience in their own right.
While we’re at it here, let’s add:[ul]
[li]Maxism, Maoism, and any other form of dogmatic Communism.[/li][li]Lysenkoism[/li][li]Memetics as a field of neuroscience[/li][li]Leibowitzism (fictional)[/li][/ul]
Stranger
That’s it, thanks.
LMAO!
Yes. Whether it works or not for back pain, it’s explanations are clearly psuedoscientific - full of babbling about “chi” and “subluxations” and “energy flows.”
You don’t get to be a real science unless you can make falsifiable claims, and in this case, that would include being able to measure (or even produce evidence of the existence of) these mechanisms.
Acupuncture is another one of these; there’s some edge-of-statistical-significance evidence that the process works to control pain in at least some individuals. What’s lacking is a mechanism.
It’s like claiming that amoxycillin cures bacterial infections because of the “pinkness effect” – doesn’t make you any less cured, but doesn’t make other pink substances any more likely to work.
Regarding back and neck pain, there are good and bad chiropractors. And, success is highly dependent upon your specific injury and how resilient yoru body is. Personally, I have have remarkable success with my chiropractor concerning back pain from what the MRI shows as “minor abnormalities”.
Before I met this chiropractor, the pain had been so severe, I was in tears trying to “outrun” the pain being unable to find sustained relief in ANY position lasting for more than 20 seconds. My condition is primarlily caused by a stenosis (narrowing) in the tunnel through which the nerve(s) exit the lower back and into the left leg. This narrowing causes the nerve(s) to be impinged upon - firing up all kinds of trouble. At its worst, I have been walking with a cane due to extreme stiffness, sciatica, spasms, and numbness. (And, I am happy to say that I have avoided surgery at all costs.)
I was skeptical, too, at first. But, my chiropractor put me back on my feet - on more than one occasion. I will never be 100% perfect, but pretty darn close!
- Jinx
My chiropractor never mentioned any of these things. In fact, if he had, I would never have returned. Instead, my chiropractor spoke to me about the workings of the muscular-skeletal system and what muscle combinations work together or fight each other (when under spasm). Through this knowledge along with ultrasound heat treatments and physical manipulations, he was able to isolate the “culprit” muscles (my words, not his) hindering my progress.
Believe me, I thought I had messed up my back for life. And, while I must be careful to avoid any lifting, my back problems have been controlled/managed with help of my chiropractor, many periods of icing down my back (even in the middle of the night when at its worst), and ibuprophen.
It hasn’t been easy, but I couldn’t have done it without his help.
- Jinx
Numerology, biorythms.
Freudian Psychoanalysis
Repressed Memory Recovery by therapists
Reiki
Magnetic pain relief mattress overlays
From an article I just read in Scientific American, needling can reduce pain by stimulating the release of endorphins. But it works just as well whether you use the prescribed acupuncture points or not - the theory behind acupunture is hooey, but the practice itself does work.
Jinx: You were treated by one of the sane, non-charlatan chiropractors, the ones that are given a bad name by the frauds who have stolen their professional title.
I cannot think of any field that has such a strong case of professional schizophrenia. On the one had, there are people who manipulate the spinal column to relieve pressure on nerves and treat excruciating pain at the source without drugs or surgery. On the other hand, there are people who crack joints based on utterly nonsensical ideas about ‘energy flow’ or ‘sublaxations’ and mainly succeed at picking the pockets of the gullible. I have absolutely no idea how they came to be called by the same name.
I also have no idea why the honest chiropractors don’t kick out the frauds and insist upon strict licensing for anyone who wants to practice in their field. You don’t see ‘dentists’ claiming that root canals can cure cancer or ‘oncologists’ giving people megadoses of niacin and ranting about evil spirits that must be cleared out.
How to choose a chiropractor, from Quackwatch.
Moving on.
Should conspiracy theories be considered a pseudoscience, or merely a very strong indicator that something is a pseudoscience?
[ul]
[li]As a pseudoscience, conspiracy theories are the evil doppelganger of political science or perhaps sociology: They attempt to describe how organizations and groups work, but from flawed premises and with illogical reasoning.[/li][li]As a correlate/indicator of pseudoscience, conspiracy theories are pretty damned effective in my experience. It seems everyone who is hawking their Grand Unified Cash Cow is being Persecuted by The Establishment. After all, They laughed at Galileio and They thought Newton shouldn’t sit beneath apple trees even with nobody else but me, but They showed Them! MUA-HA-HA![/li][li]As a sign of mental disturbance, well, they certainly sound paranoid. If you really think your Great Idea is being ignored by everyone, isn’t everyone, then, Out to Get You? I suppose this is how we separate the charlatans from the crazies.[/li][/ul]Food for thought.
This may provoke a philosophical debate, but I’m not sure a clearly defined mechanism is necessary to define a field as scientific. For example, British health authorities in the mid-19th century made a lot of progress controlling cholera and other infectious diseases by building sewers and otherwise improving sanitation decades before anybody had isolated and identified the disease-causing bacterial agents. They used scientific methodologies – measurement, hypotheses, testable actions – to achieve results without any understanding of how, specifically, the results were being achieved.
The problem with chiropractic, as I see it, is not that a mechanism is lacking. It’s that the results being sought are subjective to the point of being unmeasurable (“feeling better”), so inquiries into and refinement of the discipine can’t be properly organized around scientific principles.