SPED102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Dietary Supplement, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor, Spiritualism
2 Jun 2018
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SPED102 Week 5: Pathological Science
Pathological science –
• The science of things that aren’t so – scientists get it wrong too
• They key issue is how mistakes are handled
• Langmuir summarises the pitfalls that scientists may fall into
• Most of his examples were from physics
o N rays – they simply do not exist
o Scientists who believed they could see them were victims of self-
deception
o Cold fusion – ‘the scientific fiasco of the century’
o Benveniste dilution experiments (homeopathy)
• Other examples:
o Facilitated communication
o Extra sensory perception – the field of parapsychology
▪ Not accepted by mainstream psych – still considered a ‘fringe’
subject
▪ Despite over 100 years of investigation, thousands of trials and
hundreds of published research papers, the evidence remains
highly questionable at best
▪ Respected, well meaning and legit researchers continue to
actively engage in studies that attempt to prove the existence of
psi; clairvoyance, telekinesis and precognition
• Why does pathological science happen?
o Confirmation bias → “It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the
human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives
than by negatives” – Francis Bacon
▪ Selective thinking → the tendency to look for evidence that
confirms our beliefs, and ignore anything that
disconfirms/contradicts our beliefs
▪ Example – if you believe that Friday 13th is an unlucky day
then if something unfortunate happens to you on that day you
will attribute it to being an ‘unlucky’ day
▪ Similarly, you will hardly notice all the Friday 13ths that go by
where nothing ‘bad’ happens
• Fraud?
o Rare in all disciplines but it does occur
o Not usually implicated in pathological science
o Examples → Wakefield vaccine research, parapsychology
• Bad science or fraud?
o Andrew Wakefield – very small case series of 12 children published in
The Lancet in 1998 that he claimed at subsequent press conference
suggested a relationship between the MMR vaccination and autism
o Motivated many anti-vaccine groups e.g. Australian Vaccination
Network
o Decreases in vaccination rates internationally → led to increase in
childhood illnesses, morbidity and death
o Despite the vast evidence disproving the hypothesis, many continue to
believe it is true
o Paper published in 1998
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