PSYC 1150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Pseudoscience, Confirmation Bias, Clinical Trial
1 Apr 2016
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Document Summary
Conversions of many forms of media into sources of pseudoscience (crying statues on the news for example) psueodscience= no evidence to back it up, wears the lab coat of science but is not science. Technical vocabulary is notorious for convincing people to believe in pseudoscientific methods. If we don"t test or experiment, we don"t learn: we don"t progress . By accepting pseudoscientific claims at face value, we give our progress to the dragons (just a metaphor for giving way to ancient, unscientific practice) Avoid claims based on ancient methods because ancient methods lacked scientific reasoning; it is illogical to think that the ancients knew more about science than we do now. Homeopathy is a common dragon or pseudoscience. Correlation with causation fallacy (taking a supplement right after cancer remission doesn"t mean the supplement caused your recovery) Red herring= red flag for pseudoscience (irrelevant pieces of information to distract you from the real idea at hand)
