Teaching Pseudoscience

[NobbyNobbs]

I've followed the commentaries for quite some time now but I am brand new to the forums, so I apologize if this has already been covered elsewhere. I teach physical science in a small private school and I do a unit on science vs. pseudoscience, and how to detect the difference. A major resource I use is Carl Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit". I would love to give my students a variety of "woo-woo" sites to try out their new detection skills on, and there is no dearth of them. The problem is how these sites are written. Most of them are illegible due to either poor grammar or the overuse of ten-dollar words. Can anyone recommend a variety of sites that someone at a 6th grade reading level might understand? (I actually teach 9th grade, but our school is for students with learning difficulties, which usually results in high intelligence but lower skill levels.)

Thanks so much!

[brodski]

I've followed the commentaries for quite some time now but I am brand new to the forums, so I apologize if this has already been covered elsewhere. I teach physical science in a small private school and I do a unit on science vs. pseudoscience, and how to detect the difference. A major resource I use is Carl Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit". I would love to give my students a variety of "woo-woo" sites to try out their new detection skills on, and there is no dearth of them. The problem is how these sites are written. Most of them are illegible due to either poor grammar or the overuse of ten-dollar words. Can anyone recommend a variety of sites that someone at a 6th grade reading level might understand? (I actually teach 9th grade, but our school is for students with learning difficulties, which usually results in high intelligence but lower skill levels.)

Thanks so much!
It's not strictly a "woo site" but a fantastic site to test people critical thinking skills and scientific knowledge is www.dhmo.org (http://www.dhmo.org) everything they say about dhmo on that site is absolutely true, but once you work out the twist in the tale, the site demonstrates perfectly how misleading "true" statements can be.

[NobbyNobbs]

Thanks, I already use a report on the dangers of DHMO as an example of how you can influence peoples' thoughts with how you choose to write. I was looking more for the sites of people who claim to be abductees, astral projectionists, ESPers, crop circles, etc. Like I said, there are plenty of them out there. The problem is finding some my kids can read and understand.

[tsg]

The problem is finding some my kids can read and understand.

I have a hard time finding some adults can understand.

For some reason, THEY feel the NEED to present EVERYTHING like [COLOR="Purple"]this/color]!!!1!11!one!1

As if fonts and colors are the same as evidence. "You have to believe me!!! I typed it in red!"

[ChristineR]

Answers in Genesis...although I'm guessing you don't want to leap into that particular can of worms.

Seriously though, once you start looking closely at some of these claims it's amazing how thin most of them are. There are intelligent, balanced people out there who believe in ghosts and ESP, but that's mostly because they haven't done their own hard testing and they assume that if it makes it onto the Sci-Fi channel someone else must have looked at the whole thing critically.

I remember once reading some comments from a man who had the misfortune to buy the "Amityville House" between the time when the Ansons moved out and the time their book came out. Once he lost his temper with a stranger who wanted to trepass on his property and screamed (I'm paraphrasing) "It's a fake! They made it all up!"

The tourist looked at him and said "What? You're kidding. It's not possible."

[Kiless]

Interesting! :)

I would also suggest that perhaps students have a look at what challengers on skeptics sites do. We have a few (well, he's former now) contributors like Iacchus who I suspect demonstrate what you're after (although you might want to remove the helpful 'cheat sheets' supplied by Mercutio and Tricky and the like as to how to deal with him...)? If they are a long-term contributor on a skeptics' site, they often have better grammar and spelling.

[ceo_esq]

Welcome to the forum, Nobby. You are obviously a Terry Pratchett fan.

[Zep]

Here's one top-flight crack-pot who might be a candidate for you: www.victorzammit.com

[athon]

A good exercise could be to have them track down and find such sites, and analyse them. It will draw their attention to the fact they are all too often poorly written and hard to understand.

Good luck, Nobby. If you need any additional help on how to pitch it, some of us have done similar classes with kids. PM me if you want more info'.

Athon

[Eos of the Eons]

http://www.quantum-life.com/

I find this quite interesting. Good to introduce kids on what is and is not quantum physics. The folks that sell this machine tell folks that quantum physics is the universe's ability to find anyone anywhere via energy signatures (you just input your date and time of birth into the machine sold at the site). Then the universe can heal with its own energy, can heal your energy, and anything wrong with you by correcting your energy. Yes, I've been told this can happen long distance. You can be across the world from the machine, and it will still heal you.

You can then explore the Raelian view of quantum physics (what the bleep do we know video where they say you can't see what you haven't seen before, etc.)

http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/04/what_the_bleep_.html

[Strider1974]

I have always liked the "dihydrogen monoxide" warnings.
http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html


edit - just googled dihydrogen monoxide and posted a link then realised NobbyNobbs has already seen this site :bwall

[Strider1974]

You may want to use examples from www.snopes.com

[Piggy]

There are a few in this thread (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=55009) that might interest you.

My favorite is Ken Adachi's site, educate-yourself.org, which I call "the Wal-Mart of woo woo". There, you can find pages on a jaw-dropping array of nonsense, as well as a products page with various useless devices. Also of interest is his business model, outlined on the products page.

[Elaedith]

What about this graphology site with sample handwriting analyses combined with testimonial evidence based on subjective validation: britishgraphology.org/analyses/joyceparkinson/

[UndercoverElephant]

Just for the record, I think some people have a tendency to label things "Pseudoscience" when actually they are something else - metaphysics for example. "Pseudoscience" literally means "fake science", so something which is openly metaphysical (or religious) and not pretending to be science isn't technically "Pseudoscience." The same goes for the "soft sciences" like anthropology or economics. The worst examples of actual pseudoscience comes not from what JREFers call "woo-woos" but from the advertising industry, particularly concerning health and beauty e.g. hair products. The other classes of pseudoscience are where some sort of political, religious or metaphysical ideology is driving the so-called "scientific" conclusion, instead of that conclusion being driven by empirical science. That includes Bush administration comments on climate change, creationism and also the worst examples of materialistic reductionism:

http://esophy.com/arc1/scienceandpseudoscience.html

In short, we mustn't call everything we consider gibberish to be pseudoscience. To deserve that name it has to actually be pretending to be empirical science. For example, new agers refering to "energy" but who would openly admit they aren't talking about the scientific concept of "energy" shouldn't be called "pseudoscientific" because it is openly a metaphysical/religious concept they are talking about. The word "energy" is not owned by science. The new-ager is simply using the word to mean something it could have meant before science adopted it to mean something specifically physical. You may think there's no such thing as "spiritual energy" (the potential of a metaphysical system to do work i.e. change and effect things), but you can't really accuse someone who does believe in such things of being "pseudoscientific" because they are actually making an openly metaphysical-religious claim and do not want to be mistaken for scientists). As a final note, this is somewhat confused by people refering to things like "Occult sciences" or "philosophical sciences" since in this case even the word "science" is being used in a way that was once an accepted and understood usage, but now causes problems because some people have a far more restrictive understanding of what we mean by "science".

[Piggy]

You can then explore the Raelian view of quantum physics (what the bleep do we know video where they say you can't see what you haven't seen before, etc.)
The Raelians aren't behind the What the Bleep Do We Know? film. That's a channeler named J.Z. Knight (http://ramtha.com/html/events/special_events.stm).

[Eos of the Eons]

LOL, yeah, it's Ramtha, not Raelians. Ooopsie, I always get those nutty folks mixed up :D

Thanks for clearing that up!

[Piggy]

The field of intuitive medicine is a very frightening pseudoscience. See, for example, Jean Syme (http://www.intuwellness.com/) and Brent Atwater (http://www.brentenergywork.com/MAIN%20INDEX.htm).

Not to be confused with the actual scientific work of Intuitive Surgical (http://www.intuitivesurgical.com/index.aspx), btw.

I have to disagree somewhat with JustGeoff regarding how widely it's reasonable to apply the term pseudoscience, although his point is well taken.

I agree that many bogus health claims, and Bush's altered reports, qualify as pseudoscience, and that metaphysics is not necessarily pseudoscience (depends on what the metaphysician in question is claiming and how it's being couched).

But a humbug doesn't have to go so far as to claim to be empirical science to qualify as a pseudoscience. Many New Age claims regarding "energy", for example, while couched in spiritual language, are making very concrete claims about alleged bodily systems and about procedures that supposedly have a physical affect on the body.

For instance, if one claims that there are chakras or meridians which are located at specific locations in the body, and that certain physical activities can cause them to produce physical changes in the body, or that there are meridians on the earth that have tangible effects in the physical world, or that q'i energy in the body can be harnessed to do physical work or heal damaged cells, that is, to my mind, a clearly pseudoscientific claim.

The prefix pseud- denotes not only that which is intentionally purported but false, but also that which is unreal, or which bears a close but only superficial resemblance (e.g. pseudobulb, pseudocarp).

It's in this wider sense that a lot of humbug which claims to be spirituality, religion, or metaphysics is also pseudoscience. They borrow the vocabulary of science (quantum mechanics and energy are favorite targets), they often claim that actual research shows something that it does not actually show, etc.

[AmyWilson]

For instance, if one claims that there are chakras located at specific locations in the body, and that certain physical activities can cause them to produce physical changes in the body, or that there are meridians on the earth that have tangible effects in the physical world, or that q'i energy in the body can be harnessed to do physical work or heal damaged cells, that is, to my mind, a clearly pseudoscientific claim.


You're just denying everything you can't sense and see with your physical eyes. Take a look at dogs and cats -- they have far superior senses to humans, and they can sense another animal distances away.

Prove that chakras don't exist. If you can't, you have no right to say psychics and mediums are wrong.

[Piggy]

NobbyNobbs, here's another woo woo site (http://forums.randi.org/member.php?u=8550) for you.

[Roboramma]

You're just denying everything you can't sense and see with your physical eyes. Take a look at dogs and cats -- they have far superior senses to humans, and they can sense another animal distances away.

Prove that chakras don't exist. If you can't, you have no right to say psychics and mediums are wrong.

A new age Christian white supremacist? Now I've heard it all.

He's not denying anything he can't see with his eyes. He doesn't deny the air, or that there are differences between sugar and salt, or that the earth is round, or the force of gravity (I could go on for pages, by the way). What he does deny is things that have no evidence at all for them.
The above may be invisible (except for the earth of course), but there is still evidence for them, and that's why we believe them.
What reason do you have to suggest that chakras exist?

[aggle-rithm]

You're just denying everything you can't sense and see with your physical eyes. Take a look at dogs and cats -- they have far superior senses to humans, and they can sense another animal distances away.

Um...yeah. Comes in handy when you're an obligate carnivore, unlike us.



Prove that chakras don't exist. If you can't, you have no right to say psychics and mediums are wrong.


And you have no basis for saying they're right, other than your wish that it be so.

[aggle-rithm]

Most of them are illegible due to either poor grammar or the overuse of ten-dollar words. Can anyone recommend a variety of sites that someone at a 6th grade reading level might understand? (I actually teach 9th grade, but our school is for students with learning difficulties, which usually results in high intelligence but lower skill levels.)

Thanks so much!

I would think the obfuscation used by some pseudo-sites would make an excellent lesson in teaching kids that, just because someone uses big words, it doesn't mean he knows what he is talking about.

Of course, you might have to go through and parse the sentences for them one by one, to demonstrate that they don't actually say anything of substance. This could get a little tedious.

[ferd burfle]

Can anyone recommend a variety of sites that someone at a 6th grade reading level might understand?

How about crankdotnet? http://www.crank.net/

This is less specific information than I think you asked for but on the good side, everything is indexed and categorized nicely by type of woo, with some good links to anticrank sites as well.

Ferd

[cbish]

Here is some of our local talent.
http://insightdirectory.com/

I had this woman's son in class.

[Jon.]

Here is some of our local talent.
http://insightdirectory.com/

I had this woman's son in class.

Had to reproduce today's "Daily Pearl" from that site:

Adventuring into a life of knowingness creates a everyday life of uniqueness

How can you even begin to respond to something like this?

"Adventuring into..": okay, I don't think "adventure" is a verb, but I'll play along. What could we be adventuring into here? A jungle? A swamp? A dark castle with a mysterious dungeon?

"...a life..." Oh. Well, I guess you could say I "adventured" my way into my life when I was born. Sure as heck didn't realize I was "adventuring", though.

"...of knowingness..." And I don't think I had a whole lot of "knowingness" at the time. Knew how to suckle, cry, poop and sleep. Even taking it from the present time, what is "knowingness"? I know who I am, where I live and (usually) how to get home, is that enough? I know how to do my job at a reasonably competent level, is that enough? I know my family loves me and I love them, how about that? What are we talking about here?

"...creates..." Um. Okay. "Adventuring" into what I do every day, as long as I am "knowing", "creates" something. Where? Out of what?

"...a everyday life of uniqueness." Here we come to the payoff, and it says ... that my life will be unique. Yippee. I already knew that - my life is mine, and not the same as anyone else's. I didn't need to go knowingly adventuring to find that out. Geez.

[Piggy]

"...of knowingness..." And I don't think I had a whole lot of "knowingness" at the time. Knew how to suckle, cry, poop and sleep. Even taking it from the present time, what is "knowingness"? I know who I am, where I live and (usually) how to get home, is that enough? I know how to do my job at a reasonably competent level, is that enough? I know my family loves me and I love them, how about that? What are we talking about here?
Knowingness is an extremely dangerous concept, as it is commonly used in New Age and neo-spiritual indoctrination. It also crops up in metaphysical pseudoscience.

The goal of "knowing" is akin to developing a faith in intuition, with the caveat of course that one has to develop one's intuition and spiritual perception in the proper way (usually thru the guru/teacher/sect's books, tapes, retreats, or what have you) before you can move into "knowing". Otherwise you'll merely be deluding yourself.

"Knowing" is a direct, immediate recognition of manifest truth, without the interference of mediating concepts and ideation, without the delay of rumination.

Beyond Belief into Knowing: My Soul's Journey (http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/view-item?item=705&166172859-15632aaa)

Amaravati: Beyond Belief (http://www.amaravati.org/abm/english/documents/the_way_it_is/16beb.html)

Radical Knowing : Understanding Consciousness through Relationship (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594770794/002-6422722-1980056?v=glance&n=283155)

[Beady]

This looks perfect for the OP's purpose. On the face of it, the credentials of the founder are absolutely spotless.

http://www.noetic.org/

http://www.noetic.org/glyphs/about_54.gifThe Institute of Noetic Sciences is an organization comprised of, and supported by, a diverse group of individuals committed to an open-minded exploration of science and society. Find out more here about the people behind the organization.
Founder of the Institute (http://www.noetic.org/about/founder.cfm)
Read about the institute's founder, Apollo 14 Astronaut Edgar Mitchell

[Deus Ex Machina]

This looks perfect for the OP's purpose. On the face of it, the credentials of the founder are absolutely spotless.

http://www.noetic.org/

http://www.noetic.org/glyphs/about_54.gifThe Institute of Noetic Sciences is an organization comprised of, and supported by, a diverse group of individuals committed to an open-minded exploration of science and society. Find out more here about the people behind the organization.
Founder of the Institute (http://www.noetic.org/about/founder.cfm)
Read about the institute's founder, Apollo 14 Astronaut Edgar Mitchell

Just say "Noe"?

We are the Knights who say "Noe"?

[curt]

You're just denying everything you can't sense and see with your physical eyes. Take a look at dogs and cats -- they have far superior senses to humans, and they can sense another animal distances away.
umm... so?

Prove that chakras don't exist. If you can't, you have no right to say psychics and mediums are wrong.
Don't lay the responsibility on non-believers to prove a negative - it's a logical fallacy. That's not going to go over very well here.

It's the responsibility of those who make claims to provide evidence for them or make it clear that they are just talking about an opinion.

[Beady]

I think AmyWilson went away. Hasn't posted for ~2 months.

[Marquis de Carabas]

I think AmyWilson went away. Hasn't posted for ~2 months.
It's true. :)