Pseudoscience

Abstract

This chapter approaches belief and bias by focusing on the topic of pseudoscience. It is excerpted from Justin E.H. Smith’s 2019 book on Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason, published by Princeton University Press. Smith discusses how established knowledge, that is, scientific fact, can be undermined, ignored, or given to interpretation that includes the spurious. His approach, which includes consulting Theodor W. Adorno and Paul Feyerabend, is based on examining several case studies, including creation “science,” flat-earth theory, and the anti-vaccination movement, and Smith explores how certain groups go about ignoring or even denying established (science) facts. The workings of the natural world become blurred with the workings of our social or emotional worlds when pseudoscience is at work, and the quote in the chapter title, “I believe because it is absurd,” demonstrates the defiant conviction subscribed to no matter the evidence to the contrary.