PSEUDOSCIENCE indifference to fact. Writers tend simply to make up bogus “facts”— what Norman Mailer calls “factoids”— where needed, instead of going to the trouble of  consulting reliable reference works, much less investigating directly. Yet these fictitious facts are often central to the pseudoscientist’s argument and conclusions! This can also be seen in the fact that pseudoscientists never revise. The first edition of any pseudoscience book is almost always the last, even though the book may go through innumerable new printings, over decades or centuries. Even a book with obvious mistakes, errors, and misprints on every page is just reprinted as it is, over and over. Compare to college science textbooks, which usually see a new edition every few years because of the rapid accumulation of new facts, ideas, discoveries, experiments and insights in science.

PSEUDOSCIENCE “research” is almost invariably exegesis. That is, the pseudoscientist clips new or old newspaper reports, collects hearsay and questionable memories, reads other pseudoscience books, or thumbs through ancient religious or mythological works. The pseudoscientist never or rarely ever makes an independent investigation to check his sources. They are taken at face value, or even better interpreted as “symbolic,” so that the pseudoscientist can use them as a kind of Rorshach inkblot— reading into the myths and old texts anything he wants to find in them. Some areas of pseudoscience are generated by very simplistic “literalism”— the use of inherited “sacred texts” as if they were contemporary science textbooks, a practice that leads to the flat earth, the earth at the center of the universe, Creationism, Intelligent Design and a number of other completely foolish but resolutely traditional claims about man and nature.

PSEUDOSCIENCE begins with a hypothesis— usually one which is appealing emotionally, and spectacularly implausible— and then looks only for items which appear to support it. Conflicting evidence is ignored. Notice how often, when you are asked by a friend about what should be a question of fact if the topic were not pseudoscience, the opening phrase is, “Do you believe in ESP?” (or flying saucers, or prophecy, or Bigfoot)... not, is the evidence good, but rather, do you believe, without raising dull questions of evidence. Generally speaking, the aim of pseudoscience is to rationalize strongly held beliefs, rather than to investigate and find out what’s actually going on, or to test various possibilities. Pseudoscience specializes in jumping to “congenial conclusions,” grinding ideological axes, appealing to pre-conceived ideas and to widespread misunderstandings. Not just Creationists, but 20th Century pseudoscientists of all flavors, from J. B. Rhine and Immanuel Velikovsky to Rupert Sheldrake, have underlying their claims and assertions an anachronistic world-view that essentially rejects all or most of the tested, reliable findings of science.

PSEUDOSCIENCE always achieves a reduction to absurdity if pursued far enough. Maybe dowsers can somehow sense the presence of water or minerals under a field, but almost all claim they can dowse equally well from a map! Maybe Uri Geller is “psychic,” but are his powers really beamed to him on a radio link with a flying saucer from the planet Hoova, as Uri used to claim? Maybe plants are “psychic,” but why does a bowl of (inorganic) mud respond in exactly the same way, in the same bogus “experiment?”  A local psychic says she can commune mentally with your pet— but she also says a photo or fax or computer-printout image of the pet works just as well as the pet itself for her communing!

PSEUDOSCIENCE shows indifference to criteria of valid evidence. The emphasis is not on meaningful, controlled, repeatable scientific experiments— instead, it is on unverifiable eyewitness testimony, stories, faked footprints, blurry photos, and tall tales, hearsay, rumor, and dubious anecdotes. Genuine modern scientific literature is not cited. Real research is never done.  Generally pseudoscientists never present any valid evidence of any kind whatsoever for their claims. One of the most bizarre recent tactics of pseudoscientists is to publish a novel, a work of fiction in which essentially everything is made up by the author— as usual in works of fiction!— but then to turn directly around and treat the completely made-up material as if it were actual, factual and researched. Recent examples of this tactic are The Celestine Prophecy, by James Redfield (1994), and The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown (2003). This is really having your cake and eating it too, because the authors, when taken to task for gross errors and mis-statements, calmly say, “Can't you read? It's fiction, not non-fiction,” and yet when not taken to task for equally gross errors, sneakily treat them as established facts and build upon them to generate yet more best-selling books.

PSEUDOSCIENCE always avoids putting its claims to a meaningful test. Pseudoscientists never carry out careful, methodical, convincing experiments themselves— and they also generally ignore results of such experiments that are carried out by scientists. Pseudoscientists also never follow up. If one pseudoscientist claims to have done an experiment (e.g., the “lost" biorhythm studies of Hermann Swoboda that are an alleged basis of the modern pseudoscience of biorhythms), no other pseudoscientist ever tries to duplicate it or to check his supposed results, even (and especially) when the original results are lost or questionable! Further, where a pseudoscientist claims to have done an experiment with a remarkable result, he himself almost never repeats it to check his results and procedures. This is in extreme contrast with science, where crucial experiments are performed over and over, by scientists all over the world, with ever-increasing precision. When pseudoscientists became extremely excited by fuzzy 1980s photos of a “face on Mars,” they somehow never wanted to look at or even hear about 1990s and later photos which show the area with much sharper resolution, and do not show any “face.” Those who believed that the measurements of the Pyramid of Cheops contain secret information encoded by Gods or Space Aliens were somehow never found making any measurements themselves. Nor did it ever occur to practitioners of “theraputic touch,” which involves ritual hand-waving to manipulate and smooth the “human energy field,” to demonstrate experimentally that such a field (completely unknown to science) actually exists. Believers in the supernatural wonders of crop circles never bother to take a clothesline and a broomstick and see how simple it is to make a circle precisely like the ones they find “inexplicable.”  Those who say the UFO photos of George Adamski or Billy Meier or Ed Walters convince them absolutely that UFOs are real never bother to spend the 60 minutes or so it takes to fabricate a very similar UFO and take it out and make a very similar photo.

PSEUDOSCIENCE often contradicts itself, even in its own terms. Such logical contradictions are simply ignored or rationalized away. In a meaningful description of the physical world we live in, mathematical or factual or logical contradictions simply could not exist. In pseudoscience, they are par for the course! We should not be surprised when a book on dowsing for water, in Chapter 1, assures us that dowsers prefer newly-cut twigs, because only “still living” wood can channel and focus the “earth radiation” used in dowsing, while Chapter 5 states that nearly all dowsers use metal or plastic rods!

PSEUDOSCIENCE deliberately creates mystery where none exists, by omitting crucial information, background, and important details. Anything can be made “mysterious,” if you omit to tell what is known about it, or present completely imaginary details. The “Bermuda Triangle” and “Sea Mystery” books are classic examples of this tactic, as are most books on haunted houses.

PSEUDOSCIENCE does not progress. There are fads, and a pseudoscientist may switch from one fad to another (from ghosts to ESP research, from flying saucers to psychic studies, from ESP research to looking for Bigfoot). But within a given topic there is no progress made, no new information uncovered; new theories are not forthcoming; old concepts are never modified or discarded in light of new discoveries, since there are no new discoveries for pseudoscience. The older the idea, the more respect is given it. ESP experiments started at about the same time as research into the nature of electromagnetic radiation. They're still guessing cards in the ESP labs and yet applications of electromagnetism have completely revolutionized the world, time and time again, since the 1880s. No natural phenomena or processes previously unknown to science have ever been discovered by pseudoscientists. Indeed, pseudoscientists almost invariably deal with phenomena well known to scientists, but little known to the general public— so that the public will swallow the total misrepresentations of the phenomena that the pseudoscientist wants to make. Classic examples: firewalking, Kirlian and orb photography, “psychic motors.”

PSEUDOSCIENCE persuades using misinformation, appeals to widespread belief, rhetoric, propaganda, and misrepresentation, rather than presenting valid evidence (which presumably does not exist). Pseudoscience books offer examples of almost every kind of fallacy of logic and reason known to scholars, and have invented some new ones of their own. A favorite device is the non sequitur. Pseudoscientists also love the “Galileo Argument.” This consists of the pseudoscientist comparing himself to Galileo, and saying that just as the pseudoscientist is believed to be wrong, so Galileo was thought wrong by his contemporaries … therefore the pseudoscientist must be right too, just as Galileo was. Clearly the conclusion does not follow! What is more, anyone who has ever heard of Galileo must be aware that Galileo’s ideas were tested, verified, and accepted promptly by his scientific colleagues. It was the established religion which rejected Galileo’s findings, preferring instead a familiar pseudoscience which Galileo’s findings contradicted. Pseudoscientists are fond of the term “proof,” as in, “I'll pay anyone $10,000 if they can prove Bigfoot does not exist!” Or, “ ...if you can prove the earth revolves around the sun,” or “ ...if you can prove that at least some UFOs are not spacecraft from other worlds.” The money is safe, because the concept of a “proof” comes from mathematics and formal logic, and has no counterpart in any description of things, phenomena and processes in our real world. A late-20th-Century magician and mentalist offered $10,000 to anyone who can prove that hypnosis exists. He's in no danger of having to pay up, but his money would be just as secure if he offered $10,000 to anyone who can prove that hypnosis does not exist!

PSEUDOSCIENCE argues from ignorance, an elementary fallacy. That is, pseudoscientists base their claims on incompleteness of information about nature, rather than on what is known at present. But no claim can possibly be supported by lack of information. The fact that Don Dullard saw something in the sky he didn’t recognize means just that… he didn’t recognize what he saw. We cannot use this fact as evidence that flying saucers are from outer space, since we have no evidence he saw a flying saucer— or anything else! Maybe he saw a ghost! Advocates of “Intelligent Design” claim, without evidence, that science will “never” be able to understand certain features of biological systems. Really? “Never” is a long time. The phrase “Science cannot explain…” is extremely common in pseudoscience literature. In many cases, the fact is that science has no interest in the supposed phenomenon because there is no evidence it exists; in other cases, the scientific explanation is well known and well established, but the pseudoscientist is not aware of it or deliberately ignores it to create mystery. Many pseudoscientific labels— ghosts, UFOs, ESP— are just names for a state of complete ignorance of what, if anything, is being labelled. Could the woods be full of unknown monsters, the rivers full of unknown monsters? Zoologists don't think so; they've been there repeatedly to look, and it's their profession to find and study new animals. To the pseudoscientist, the absence of evidence for some monster is itself a kind of “proof” the monster exists!

PSEUDOSCIENCE argues from alleged exceptions, errors, anomalies, strange or paranormal events, and suspect claims— rather than from well-established regularities of nature. The experience of scientists over the past 400 years is that claims and reports which describe well-understood objects behaving in strange and incomprehensible ways tend to reduce upon investigation to deliberate frauds, honest mistakes, garbled accounts, misinterpretations, outright fabrications, and stupid blunders. It is not wise to accept such reports at face value, without checking them. Pseudoscientists always take such reports as literally true, without independent verification.