Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Pseudoscientific claims free essay sample

The seven warning signs that a claim about behavior might be a pseudoscientific claim are: claimants avoid peer reviewing or other verification, exaggerated claims, basic theory does not change in response to evidence, they look for only evidence that confirms their hypothesis, the claimant insists that their theory is accurate because it has not been proven wrong, the claim defies what established science has told us about the world, the claimants attempt to persuade using anecdotes, they talk of â€Å"proof† instead of â€Å"evidence, and absence of connectivity to another research. Pseudoscience is often times impossible to test. Most of the times in pseudoscientific claim the excuses make a claim untestable. â€Å"For example, a psychic who cannot demonstrate mind reading or other supernatural feats under carefully controlled conditions at the laboratory might claim that â€Å"the skeptical vibes of experimenters† are blocking his or her psychic powers.† Many scientific claims that turn out to be incorrect are eventually weeded out. We will write a custom essay sample on Pseudoscientific claims or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page However, in pseudoscience, incorrect claims never seem to go away. Pseudoscience tends to heavily rely on anecdotal evidence, which cannot tell us about cause and effect and are often difficult to verify. Particularly, pseudoscience lacks the safeguards against confirmation bias and belief perseverance that characterize science. Pseudoscience is an imposter of Science, claims that are not scientific. Pseudoscience is more likely to be driven by ideological, cultural, or commercial goals. It is important to notice these signs when reading claims about behavior because these signs help us find out if the claims are pseudoscientific or scientific claims. The three examples of pseudoscientific claims are: conversion therapy, palm reading, and graphology. Conversion therapy is a pseudoscientific treatment that aims to change sexual orientation from homosexual or bisexual to heterosexual. It is sometimes known as reparative or sexual reorientation therapy. Conversion therapys practices are based upon the assumption that homosexuality is a mental condition. Conversion therapy is a pseudoscience because it lacks peer review or replication, relies on anecdotes, which do not tell us anything about cause and effect, and failure to connect the treatment to previous researches. Palm reading is commonly practiced all over the world in many countries. However, it is one of the examples of pseudoscience. The reason it being pseudoscience is that it lacks experimental evidence neither it is accurate. People rely on the palmist for what he/she says looking at the palm of a person. The palmist reads the lines on palm and tries to foretell about someone’s future. Sometimes, it will be true, but majority of the times it is untrue. Palm reading is meaningless, that uses fancy scientific sounding terms that do not make sense. Therefore, palm reading is completely pseudoscientific which we should not rely on about our future. Graphology is pseudoscientific study and analysis of hand writing especially in human psychology. Graphologists believe that handwriting can reveal a great deal about the psychological state of the writer. However, I believe it is completely pseudoscientific claim because the hand writing analysis cannot give us the complete information about the person. It has not been verified and approved by any scientists or other scientific communities neither it can be proved in the lab by scientific means. It is just a people’s belief and practices that occurs around the world in various communities and cultural groups. It is completely pseudoscientific claim because it is over relied on anecdotes. To sum up, pseudoscientific claims are the claims that tends to relies on anecdotal evidence, neglects previous researches, bypasses peer review, uses meaningless and fancy scientific-sounding terms that don’t make any sense, and talks of proof instead of evidences. Since conversion therapy, palm reading, and graphology includes at least one of signs above, they are pseudoscientific.

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