How I learned to love pseudoscience
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- Опубликовано: 9 июл 2024
- Check out Brian Keating's channel: / @drbriankeating and have a look at his new book, Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: urlgeni.us/amzn/TLANPW
As a scientist, I spend a lot of time fighting pseudoscience. But I have come to think that pseudoscience is actually good for science, because it helps us to improve our methods. In this video I explain how pseudoscience led to the development of single-blind trials, double-blind trials, and random controls.
The text I read at 3 mins 37 seconds is from Claude-Anne Lopez article:
Franklin and Mesmer: an encounter.
Yale J Biol Med. 1993 Jul-Aug; 66(4): 325-331.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
Info about Michael Gordin's book which I mention at the end is here:
global.oup.com/academic/produ...
Many thanks to Jordi Busqué for helping with this video jordibusque.com/
You can support us on Patreon: / sabine
0:00 Intro
0:24 Pseudoscience as a Byproduct of Science
2:12 From Mesmerism to Single Blind Trials
5:13 From Homeopathy to Double Blind Trials
8:04 Skeptical Societies
9:23 From Telepathy to Random Controls
10:30 The Fight Isn't Over
12:00 Sponsor Message
#science #pseudoscience 
Наука
“There are many hypotheses in science that are wrong. That's perfectly alright; it's the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.”
Carl Sagan
That's an idealistic view of science. Scientists are human and have their own problems and the process of publication with peer review is far from self correcting. Noam Chomsky has said that all creatures have scope and limit and this applies to humans. Maybe there are limits to what humans can understand about the universe.
@@richg2881 only as long as they remain human. While we are advancing we are also evolving. That's gotta have an effect.
Actually, all are wrong, the key, is that they are less wronger than previous hypothesis and non scientific hypothesis... Or that's the idea.
@@richg2881 Most "scientists" are not true scientists, but cargo cult scientists!
Too bad Sagan was wrong. And in fact he promoted, profitably, an early version of "global warming" called "nuclear winter".
“Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.”
― Werner Heisenberg
Miss the stuff he made 😢
Though the fact that we can think might be stranger still
You said Universe and I think you meant University.
The most important pseudoscience nowadays isn't just "pseudoscience", it's corporate financed pseudoscience with a purpose. It's usually to either avoid corporate consequences or to keep making more and more money.
Yes. Big corporations are not just hindering the advancement of science with their financial greed they are becoming an increasing threat to our survival with their financial greed.
In Sweden the forestry corporations have a strong grip around the "science" about forestry. They have a strong lobby organization that promots clearcuting and how have an more intesive regime of clearcuting the forest will save the climate and everything else. There is examples where scientific papers have ben strongly critisized for having wrong result not bad methods. And it's an hard pressure to get science that tells the "swedish forest model" is superb and best in the world in all thinkable ways.
So that is an example for your claim.
There is also more subtle prolbems where trails with medicines and similar examples only get published and noticed when geting possitive results and if many enough experiments is done the result is that most published results can be wrong.
Sure. But don't forget governments. They need pseudoscience (climate alarmism never looking beyond the period before 1850, virology alarmism) performed by actual scientists to create, impose and sustain credible fear into the populous. Governments and NGO's will then claim they can stop climate change and viruses provided the people vote for them. In fact, if nowadays you don't go along with the politics of fear, you will not get paid by government as a 'scientist'. So yes every body happy. Companies, governments, NGO's. except the dumb sheeple who got to pay for all this nonsense. And as for sabine. Executing science according to scientific methods does not mean the underlying scientific outcome itself is correct. In the 60's perfectly accepted scientific research concluded it was perfectly safe and even healthy to smoke, even for pregnant women. Asbestos was scientifically determined to be a perfect building material without any risk, it was all considered a science fact because scientific methods where used. In fact in physics such lousy methods as peer review will ensure any mistake will be with us forever. There is a reason theoretical physics goofed and failed to make any progress for 5 decades. Averting attention to pseudoscience is just a lousy excuse for hiding ones own failures. In fact; if the scientific method is not enough to find the correct answers, then really it makes perfect sense to try 'crazy' things beyond the shackles of 'good science'. As Einstein put it: you can't solve problems by the using the same thinking we used to create the problems in the first place.
@Science Revolution
Have you used an Compass?
Have you lived near the Ocean?
Think a little bit and don't get fooled by utter nonsens: Why would corporation try us to believe in an magnetic field that don't excist, what do they win on that. Real conspiracis is stuff like tobaco is good for helth and burning oil don't affekt the global climate. That is stuff that big coorporation can win/loose money on.
@@RWin-fp5jn > Executing science according to scientific methods does not mean the underlying scientific outcome itself is correct
Proving you don't understand what the scientific method is.
> In the 60's perfectly accepted scientific research concluded it was perfectly safe and even healthy to smoke, even for pregnant women
Exactly. The scientific method accepts that we get it wrong sometimes and _allows us to rethink a problem._ The idea that the scientific method doesn't provide a "correct" outcome is fundamentally missing the most important part of the method.
Of course, there is a time factor involved. Discrediting today's result tomorrow still means we've got a day where the incorrect outcome is the accepted one - and yes, that time factor can and does absolutely get exploited by power-hungry officials and greedy corporations and occasionally just dipshits wanting to make a name for themselves.
But that's not the issue we're facing today - not the issue your post is helping to make worse.
See there's a problem with exploiting that time factor - time keeps ticking and you eventually get found out. So the power-hungry and greedy have turned to a new method: spreading deliberate misinformation. Instead of trying to slip falsified data under the radar and having to deal with the inevitable consequences when some third party notices they're full of shit, they've instead starting telling you that _all_ data should be suspect - theirs, the third party's, even your own data. You can't trust any of it!
And once you no longer believe in truth as even a concept, it becomes very very easy to convince you of a lie - especially if that lie is emotionally charged - which generally translates to some form of bigotry because _they_ still believe in the science of psychology and are well aware that people have a natural tendency to hate "the other".. so just provide an "other" to blame everything on and those truth-deniers will happily believe anything they're told.
And no I'm not just making that up. It comes straight from the tobacco industry - literally called the "tobacco industry playbook" if you want to look it up somewhere that hopefully writes more eloquently than I do. And that plan is being replicated far and wide these days - the fossil fuel industry is the prime "modern" example of course. _Some_ of the prominent antivaxxers are trying to take that tactic but they're being kind of drowned out by the complete idiot antivaxxers who still believe in microchips and other complete nonsense like that.
Like 80% of Trump's rhetoric followed that style (though I'm not convinced he even realized he was doing it - I suspect he's been living a life of lies so long that he's made himself unable to recognize the truth). But regardless of the reason, his ability to sow doubt has led to completely unnecessary and damaging increases in racial tensions, much of the antivax idiocy noted above.. and perhaps most concerningly, a growing distrust of the electoral system - a problem that has the potential to lead to the kind of "completely secure elections" we see in places like Russia and China - secure only in the sense that the ruling party seems to magically be secure in their position no matter how disliked they are.
Once again, a super presentation that makes even fairly complex and per se uninteresting topics just so engaging!
At the time that he was promoting them, Mesmer's theories would have sounded much more plausible than those of that crazy Frenchman claiming that microscopic creatures caused disease.
Yeah I mean it literally sounds insane, the only way it would have made sense is if he got the idea from looking at parasites and just saying "Maybe they be very small parasites?"
@@davidwarford3087 I get your point, but you do it no justice by labelling microbes parasites. Not all microbes are "parasites"... many microbes are actually very useful and our body and survival depends on them.
Much of today’s science would be impossible to prove back then too, they just didn’t have the tools available.
@@supertubemind and those useful ones wouldn't be the same as the disease-bringing ones, would they?
Same happened with heliocentric and galileo, there were a lot of things that didn't fit with his theory and he didn't have a way to explain them at the time.
Sabine: My favorite science teacher I never had as a student, although, she's probably 5-10 years younger than me, so it would have been weird back then, so I'm glad I've chosen to be a lifelong student.
Age is irrelevant. I know toddlers more competent than most the US population.
@@vid2ification XD
Same. Although I think I've driven Sabine a bit batty on her blog with the questions some other commenters and I were asking of her. I think we're the reason she said a few videos ago that some things are 'just math things'. :-9
@@CAThompson Every class needs *that* kid! Good work out of you. :-D
@@martymodus7205 I dunno... It wasn't much fun having Sabine apparently annoyed with us but at least we got her attention. 😆
Carl Sagan was what was called a wet skeptic, which meant that he saw every expression of pseudoscience as an opportunity to teach why a pseudoscience was false. This most vigorously expressed in his article of Velikovsky's views , written of in Sagan's Book, "Broca's Brain," in which he deals carefully and methodically with Velikovsky's silliness in mathematical detail.
Just found this channel, loving everything about this! Sabine is a dose of sanity on multiple levels 🎉🎉🎉
Sending her money should count as medical expenses.
Sabine is on another level. It's truly a blessing to have her share her views here on this platform.
She mesmerized you.
@@constantinqueins9313 yes , I’m mesmerised also ❤
Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (1962) is obligatory reading for those interested in this topic. One also should note that many scientists are unwilling to give up what they learned in grad school. Among these are the Clovis-firsters in anthropology and the geologists who reject catastrophes. I am old enough to have been ridiculed by a smug grad student because I suggested that the coastlines of Africa and South America looked like they fit together. That was in 1961!
I would rephrase that as "most people are unwilling to give up what they are taught." People tend to believe their earliest education more strongly than later evidence that contradicts it, and often get combative about it. As a species we like to be comfortable in our knowledge, and dislike it when that knowledge is challenged.
Any paper without relevance includes 'PARADIGM SHIFT' though.
Yes, that book was required in university - psychology course. Back in the mid 70s. I still have it.
Same observation, same year! My schoolteacher was derisive.. though the guy who suggested plate tectonics had a rough old time.
I could be your grandson, that's crazy.
I am totally mesmerized by the way you explain complex topics and your clever use of editing. great work!
Did you touch your rod?
Dear Sabine, once again, I need to state, you're doing a brillant job sharing your insights! So much appreciated!
I love your dead pan humour. Really have to pay attention to pick these gems up.
Another great video
Humour? To a German that is just real talk.
😂 I can confirm about that 🇩🇪
@@johnfran3218 Why are you religious fanatics always telling us to repent? You must be very bad persons.
I have no reason to repent.
@Phil Collins not trolling, German humour
@@johnfran3218 The trouble is, there are tons of people, particularly in the US, who believe this sort of nonsense. It is, quite literally, crazy. But because it's called religious, they get a free pass, but not from me.
It wasn't harmless to the snake, that's for sure.
Homeopathy should be excellent against alkoholism.
@@zenokarlsbach4292 I wouldn't put it past homeopaths to decide that the fusel acohol is the real culprit of alcoholism and then decide to dilute them in pure ethanol.
It's a fact of nature that something, or someone, always has to pay. There is a cost for everything.
1:09 😂👍
I love your work. Thank you so very much. I am 69 years old and retired, but your kind of stimulating and informational discussions keep me young.
Can remember a psych professor saying he took a daily multivitamin because a placebo effect is still an effect! With all of the caveats around it that you'd imagine of course
Taking placebo effect is similar to listening to a good/bad piece of music, or movies, or arts, etc.. It effects human's EMOTIONs and subsequently HORMONEs, etc.. in our body! Not that hard to figure it out, there's need to mystify this effect!
This was a really fun video, Sabine, you're awesome
Thanks for the kind words 😊
@@SabineHossenfelder You should learn to use them more often with your Physics colleagues.... BUT genuinely kind words, without later a rebuttal or "distancing" comment of some kind... Just my opinion darling.
@@SabineHossenfelder I have not watched this video yet. BUT I am getting the feeling you are REALLY listening to me.. reading my "elaborate" comments.
@@SabineHossenfelder I believe sometimes we are in "Telepathic" contact... On the same wavelength....
@@christinalaw3375 The video shows a different approach to sifting through ideas and testing them to find the valid ones, rather than accepting them as true or false without testing them.
This is one of the best shows I saw this month on youtube. Many thanks for your great work, Sabine.
Thanks for the insight. Don't forget that not everyone has your background. Your perspective enables a lot of people to find/identify historical and modern sources of information that they can be inspired by.
I have just started reading a new book (Rutherford & Fry's, 'Complete Guide to Absolutely Everyhing'.) which suggests in the introduction that science is the art of being wrong as a starting point to being less wrong. It seems to ring a chord with what you are saying in this video. 👍 Love the hat. 😍
Thanks Sabine for another interesting and thought-provoking video!
The problem of today’s science is how quick an opponent hypothesis is dismissed as pseudoscience and the naïveness in believing of what some scientists say without even considering other possibilities. Even worse, to argue against a dominant hypothesis is being considered a crime!
Love watching you and learning new ideas about the world.
Sometime I pause your videos that I might process the breadth of what you have said fully .
I always learn something from you, and you always make me smile.
Thanks for both.
❤
Sabine, thank you so much for this extraordinarily informative and entertaining talk!
Pseudoscience has one huge benefit that science does not have: It can be very lucrative for people who know nothing, or even less than nothing.
Not all sciences are really scientific - like anthropology , ethnology etc - each is a science amenable to political , and economic manipulation to fit certain narratives.
Exactly.
indeed, just ask the authoritarians who pushed a rushed batch of untested chemicals onto their population
Sabine...love your videos. You are a very good communicator. You seem to have a way of taking the grey areas of science and turning them in to a well balanced understanding. I'm a big fan of you and your channel.
Many thanks for all the research that goes in to this videos; and I mean thinks like going to the original documents, looking for the relevant parts, etc. You set a very high standard for diligence.
Sabine, I must say I do enjoy your talks...even though my knowledge extends to watching grass grow...however I've always been interested in the subject, space flight etc. The more I've listened the more it seems to be sinking in !! Your manner and delivery is great!!! I intend to follow your channel!!! You also have a good voice for singing . I believe you would be a very interesting person to converse with!!
This whole video shows how open you are to the others' interpretation that you gladly assert your experiments and definitions to challenge them and you seem like a person when if something's wrong doesn't justify the end of something as there are a lot more to observe.
Dear Sabine, I'm in awe of your precise presentations, attention to detail and patience when explaining matters. You are a brightly shining star in the firmament of scientific knowledge, and long may you shine forth your wisdom.
Did you know they used the pseudo science of racism to justify sending black people into the mines back in slave times since black people weren't considered humans scientifically? Reminds me of your name human canary.
@@blackriver2531
Unfortunately, such heinous practices (plus many others) were still perpetrated even long after serious doubt and scientific contradiction was thrown over such pseudoscience. I suppose some Quackerites considered feeling superior superceded reality.
@@blackriver2531 Not surprising...the ones I see seem to still be descending from the trees...
Hi H.C. If you ever need to earn a bit extra, you can always get a job with your local religious cult shouting "preach it, brother", and "amen". Cheers, P.R.
Sabine and team you always expand my mind in subtle and thoughtful ways. Keep up the amazing work!
Would you please explain me how did this video subtly and thoughtfully "expand you mind"?
@@lucassiccardi8764 obvious troll is obvious
@Locas Siccardi Boy, wouldn't you like to know!
@@DarkShroom I'm not a troll. I am just very critical. The praise expressed in this post seems absurd to me.
Dear Sabine, You are both an excellent physicist and teacher, so I request that you give us a one of your excellent lectures explaining why imaginary numbers and their derivatives ( like imaginary mass ) are, helpful to physicists in understanding reality. I, as a typical non-physicist, have no understanding of how numbers, which are based on the non-existent square root of negative one, can be any useful in understanding reality.
Whether intentional or not, I love the Dr. Strangelove-esque title.
Of course it’s intentional
Pseudoscientists often ask good questions. The problem is when they don't accept good answers.
Scientists are afraid to ask good questions because of what they might find. They are continually afraid to find something unpleasant.
@@kmonsense8716
Yes so sad, because of this we still live in caves.
@@kmonsense8716 nonsense
@@DrWhom Why light does not need a medium to propagate but the sound does? Where does entropy come from? What is the difference between a man and a male? a woman and a female? Why can't we call a male dog a man? Darwin notices persistent changes in nature, what is causing that change? Why do we lose consciousness temporarily? I wish you could help me?
You inspire me to learn Sabine!
I appreciate your reading recommendations too.
One of the major issues since the onset of the internet is that pseudoscience and quackery is far easier to disseminate than ever before thus fighting it has become a far more daunting task.
Sabine is fabulous! Thank you for making me feel like there is hope in the madness.
Sabine, your videos mesmerize me!
I was talking to a woman at the library whos said, "I never read fiction!" I should have told her that her entire world was fiction 125 years ago.
Well...99.99999999% of the fiction written 125 years ago was wrong.
Have you read modern fiction? Agenda-driven ill-constructed drivel. The closest we came to a modern Dosteovsky is Gore Vidal and he's dead now.
Its really interesting to see this view on pseudo science, as in history where I study, I dont see many 'pseudoscience' leading to good historical methods BUT I would agree with the part "the fight isnt over" that it really helps to sharpen the tools of historians, to also work on cases maybe not really relevant for the scientif community, but for lots of people and learn how to communicated more educational
Thanks for another great video Sabine ❤️
Sabine is a short, handsome lady. :-)
Thank you for this nuanced video. Today two categories of people are harming science : people believe that everything from the establishment is right and everything else is pseudo-science and people believing that everything from the establishment is wrong and that truth is out there. Scientists must bring their nuanced methods to a greater audience.
Existence of science and scientists can be debunked just like telepathy - by testing knowledge and mathematical skills of 100 random people from the street. I think I can predict results.
@@vladimirseven777 Huh? How does testing 100 random people have anything to do with proving that science or scientists exist? Makes no sense to me.
Scientists are sheep
@@saulgoodman7858 You are a gecko.
@@david203 You are not bright really, like lot of scientists who cannot see flaws in their methods and results. To debunk telepathy they tested random people in the sense of their abilities. Of course because all people are equal by constitution and got results worth nothing.
When sysadmins do it, it is sudo science
science...
you know that sudo in spanish means sweat?
like those admins sweating monday with the facebook servers that went down
You got to the root of it in one sentence. Well done, sir/madam.
Bloody superusers...
@@arch1107 sudo means nothing, sudor on the other hand...
@@juannicolaspardomartin8332 you forgot the differnece between verb and term
yo sudo, tu sudas, el suda, nosotros sudamos, ellos sudan
Thanks for the tip to Brian Keating's channel.
"Did you hear about the man who forgot to take his homeopathic medicine?"
"No. What happened?"
"He died of an overdose!"
Ha! Love it!
JAMES RANDI
LoL!
James Randi haha
An overdose of distilled water is called drowning.
Although astrology is pseudo science, the math to predict the future configuration of planets in terms of constellations founded advanced math and astronomy.
@Kelvin I think you confuse Astrology with astronomy. Two completely different fields. Astrology does not predict any planetary configurations, that's part of astronomy. Astrology simply picks up certain actual scientific facts from astronomy and put their woo twist on it and call it astrology.
I highly recommend you watch this video of "Professor Dave Explains" about "Quantum Mysticism"
ruclips.net/video/aQTWor_2nu4/видео.html
Really well summarized.
@Kelvin Do tell us all about woo woo! But seriously, her point here is that there is a dynamic between pseudoscience and science by which objective truths are uncovered; thus pseudoscience can actually be of value in the process.
@Kelvin How did ancient astrology differ from today's astrology? I'd be interested to know, since I have no idea, and I would like to stop being a big dummy.
@Kelvin you sound bitter
You can even imagine how astrology may have started. Some ancient King being told that the seasons can be predicted by observing the stars, then demanding personal predictions.
Wow, I found this to be very unique and informative. Changed my view of some things right away. Great stuff!
I hate how science deniers have taken "skeptic." They're skeptical of well-established science and perfectly okay with actual proven quackery and disinformation.
you know the old line about having to be open-minded, but no so open-minded that our brains fall out
@Sean Hogan Or how it was ' well established' that The Cuf Cuf didn't come from a lab in China. Turns out ' well established' means one politically connected scientists wrote an opinion peace in a scientific journal and his main funding for all of his research came from China. All the 'experts' just repeated what was written in this article none of even tried to correct the obvious issues because they risked loosing funding or jobs because they are promoting 'pseudo science'.
Very excellent & thought provoking. Thank You again.
I read an interesting book called Lithium: A Doctor, A drug, and A Breakthrough. The development of what drug trials are now is really interesting. People thought Mogens Schou was full of it so he had to work hard to improve his data. It's the last part that helped him break away from the Lithium Water snakeoil of old.
Makes me think about some recent things on god
Lsd Cures Materialism and all the associated ignorance and suffering
@@slyraccoon17 ...and Big Bang, Black Holes, "Dark energy", Hawking radiation... etc etc...
ALL of what we call "faith" is not even worthy of the term 'pseudoscience', while half of what we call modern science is purely pseudoscience!
@@christinalaw3375 I know it's not, but he had to overcome negative perceptions of lithium because of the quackery around lithium springs and bottled lithium water; things had nothing to do with his own research. There was also another roadblock, right as he was gaining ground, when there were a bunch of lithium poisonings from a lithium salt
being used as a seasoning substitute.
@@Barbreck1 Please prove that half of what we call modern science is purely pseudoscience. I would be willing to put some money against you if we had a good way to test such a conjecture.
This was really good for me, because I am one of those armchair science enthusiast who has a bromance with science but it's not my job.
And frankly, pseudoscience makes my forehead veins dance. Truth be told we learn much from failure.
We prove our ideas by trying to debunk them not prove them directly.
So ya in a indirect way, that which is not falsifiable, can lead to narrowing down what does work given the rigors of the scientific method.
TLDR this video helped me lighten up in a good way, thank you,
Ultimately we would be lost without some degree of failure.
Really enjoy listening to your talks (and songs)
thank you for doing this very important work
Placebo drugs could be an affordable treatment for the masses, but it was found they only work if they are very expensive.
They also work when cheaper. Just not as much.
Getting an injection works better over a pill. And depending on the country you live in a b brown pill might work beter than a blue one.
Of course they have to be expensive! Everybody knows that the more expensive something is, the better has to be, isn't it???
@@eljcd good point. In the UK, an overbusy surgeon increased their prices, just to decrease referrals. They increased. I can't give you references, and am aware this story might be apocryphal.
This is definitely not true. In a Spanish trial of an analgesic drug the placebo group became very upset when the doctors refused to issue prescriptions for the pills they’d been taking. The subjects said they were the most effective they’d ever taken.
We should seriously consider prescribing placebos. Oh... actually that's homeopathy.
Thank you for your channel, you have the most informed and level headed descriptions of all the rest.
"The Society of Truth Loving Men no longer exists." You can say THAT again sister...
Have it ever existed?
@@Alexagrigorieff Sadly, maybe only in legend.
True, but it has been superseded by the Society of Money-Loving Men. 9 out of 10 people can't tell the difference.
But "The Society of Sabine Loving Men" gets larger every day!
Thank you for your good content Dr. Danke' :)
Lovely content. Thank you.
Sabine .........those Tin Foil Hat images of you are adorable!! 💜
I'm no aesthetician and so while the antennas perhaps look "cool", as the kids might say, they are also picking up government rays and sending them directly into the pariatal lobe and possibly the sensory cortex, thus making you far easier to control. I'll get back with some citations that I've invented to prove my case.
@@SofaKingShit let me help you. mitochondria are a foreign bacteria in your body. They feed and regulate as a gateway for every energy and chemical that enters your cells. mitochondria membrane can be opened using millivolts of electricity. They regulate the life of a cell when it lives and when it dies.
@@SofaKingShit Ah, but perhaps you miss the true purpose. Maybe it's not to keep out the Government mind control, or the alien spy rays. To borrow a couple of terms from Bill Bailey, could it be to prevent her from being "incretinated" with "passive stupidity" when surrounded by idiots?
@@SofaKingShit Of course, the kingdom of the unicorn horses of spherical flat-earth is an intergallatic local homoheterosexual straight gay luxury economic communist capitalistic conservative liberal arnarchist federation empire of the 4th dimension of the crystals and polymers of vibrational waves, particle and cords at the plank scale with quantum entangling and classical mechanics, with windows and mac os. Life and death... Everything and nothing is all and none at once. No apparent object is every-present. 0 * 0 = 1, prove me wrong.
@@SofaKingShit gay
One thing I find very relevant to this is the misuse of "unscientific" as a synonym for incorrect or wrong. Unscientific just describes whether the scientific method can be successfully applied to an idea or not, and this changes with time and technology. Without microscopes, germ theory is unscientific. Atomic theory used to be unscientific. Consciousness is currently unscientific. String theory and multiverse are unscientific. So while I agree that pseudoscience serves as useful foil against which to progress scientific methods, I would caution against conflating pseudoscientific ideas with unscientific ideas. To me, pseudoscience has a deliberately malicious component that "unscience" doesn't. All pseudoscience is unscientific, but not all unscientific ideas are pseudoscience.
Well put, I hadn't thought of it that way.
Except that people who advocate and build businesses out of pseudoscience practices may do so with the best intentions. What you and I may interpret as quackery and fraud - they may merely be dupes or paid agents of dupes (worse in a way). Traditional [insert cultural name here] Medicine for example. Curiously popping up in ethnic leaning areas. I too agree with you that it's deliberately malicious although one could argue that the only victims are their customer base, which, in a karma-kind-of-way sorts itself out. Too bad the placebo effect is so effective that this nonsense won't go away any time soon via natural selection,.
@@billr3053 how can the placebo effect “be so effective” to the point of wishing it wasn’t? If it works it works, and will not be “weeded out” by natural selection?
@@LKRaider You have a point. But the purveyors of placebo medicine are tapping into some curious human psychological byproduct. Their only substantive interaction with reality is waving their hands in "theatre". They are counting on their clients' ignorance and continued belief that the theatre IS the cure.
It still irks me that at its root it's deception for profit. I have trouble expressing reasons for my vexation.
You may continue to argue that the patients are willing, recurring and loyal and part of their handing over money is instrumental in the placebo buy-in. Just as high-end audio cables gives people the warm-and-fuzzies precisely because they DID pay a lot.
That was so good, thank you
Your brave attempt to pronounce the Dutch noun kwakzalverij is highly commendable.
Could you make a video on recent progress, achieved by MIT in the field of superconducting magnets. The numbers suggest higher strength and considerably lower power consumption.
Thanks for the suggestion!
@@livinginthisgalaxy7961 For the longest time I thought astrology was dead. But in the past few years I have seen it pop up more and more. I try to tell these people that no matter what their pro-astrology arguments are, I will still refuse to believe in any of it. Of course, that's probably because I'm a Taurus, and we tend to be pretty stubborn.
@@chriskennedy2846 Archie Bunker says to Edith as she flips the pages of the paper: "You don't really believe that horoscope stuff do you?"
Edith: "No, of course not, but I read it so I'll know what's going to happen."
@@clarencegreen3071 She also noted that the light in her refrigerator only worked when she opened the door.
@@chriskennedy2846 we Taurians are not stubborn, just because we refuse to listen to airy-fairy clap-trap from Aquarians. 😁
I don't know if it's the algorithm trapping me in my own bubble of interests but I do feel like there are indeed more and more very high quality scientific channels on RUclips, a big thank you to all of you!
Haha yes. Apparently theres a huge surge in interest in city planning, geo-guessing and chess as well?! Source: my RUclips feed :D. If you want to know what's really going on: logout and clear your cookies. Spoiler alert: it will be depressing...
@@mrcool7140 oh I know what's going on, and good guesses :) Interesting in what it's revealing about what in a particular interaction is relevant to the algorithm, apparently it is not time-based since my comment was 7 months ago.
I gotta say, those drawings of Mesmer with rays coming out of his fingertips looked pretty cool.
It's an interesting perspective with some valid points though I'd add that one thing missing in lower grades would be teaching critical analysis to younger students; with today's access to the internet and the reach of media/news that could also make a huge difference.
We can’t simultaneously claim that a theory is unscientific because it is unfalsifiable, while at the same time claiming that the theory has, in fact, been falsified.
true
More like having it disproven just for them to be reinterpreted
It can be both (kind of)
The unfalsifiable is nonscientific, and can be disregarded until circumstances change without making any such claim of falsity.
We should nevertheless be wary of an appeal from ignorance: the unfalsifiable is no more true for lack of proof to the contrary.
Not sure which theory you are referring to.
A hypothesis may be unfalsifiable given the tools available at a particular time. It may be considered unscientific at that time. Then someone may come up with ways of falsifying the hypothesis. It then becomes a scientific hypothesis. If the hypothesis is then falsified, it would have been unscientific because it was unfalsifiable _and_ falsified.
For example, the multiverse of cosmology and many worlds of quantum mechanics are unscientific, as of today, because there is no way to falsify them.
If tomorrow someone proposes a way of falsifying them, they become scientific hypotheses and may end up being falsified.
@@conscious_being I suppose OP’s quibble is that it isn’t possible to be simultaneously both unfalsifiable and proven false.
It’s technically correct, but I’m not sure it’s a great revelation. It certainly doesn’t make the unfalsifiable any more meaningful right now.
Very good video!
I think one of the major challanges of science communication right now is fighting network effects (echo chambers like Facebook that amplify divisve massages as part of their business model).
One means to fighting the network effect is of course regulation, for instance of the use of so-called engagement algorithms that lie behind the amplification of divisive message.
It would be intriguing though to find means to fight disinformation avalanches with scientifically designed counter-measures. I am not aware of any. If you are, please let me know.
Thanks Brain and Sabine your wonderful!
I love your style of communicating science to regular people.
That's because she is a regular woman.
Great video as usual! Maybe you could discuss the deviations form the scientific method some philosophers of science are proposing. I'm thinking for instance about the book "String theory and the scientific method" by Richard Dawid. I understand there have even been meetings on the subject.
She reminds me of what human robots will be like. Helpful, informative with a personality set to default.
No one would watch someone like that
I definitely improved my own understanding of things by engaging with pseudoscience-proponents. It forces you to revisit the basics and to properly formulate why the state of science offers the better explanation.
That said, pseudoscience clearly causes far more harm than good and even has power to endanger democracies by estranging people from a shared reality. Democratic dialogue requires people to at least agree on the basic facts, which won't work with pseudo-scientists.
The old saying: every person has a purpose. Even if it's only serving as a bad example.
On the other hand: we have way to much bad examples for my taste...
Thanks for this. You're wonderful.
Can't wait for Sabine to advertise hyperdimensional energy crystals that ward off demon vampires.
They didn't ward off mine
Where can I buy these? I'm hoping they'll work on my Ex.
@@kellanaldous7092 Oh no ... for an ex - you'd need an energy crystal personally blessed by Deepak Chopra himself.
What about advertise to turn off trusted energy solutions for others not proven, and that doesn't bring enough energy when it's needed.... Feels good because it's "ecological"
@@SerendipitousProvidence are you sure? She has to be a vampire, she totally drained all my vital essence. 😆
I like pseudoscience just as entertainment, like sci fi, such as Ancient Aliens theories or Cryptozoology; But believe in pseudoscience enough to make real life affecting policies esp for the masses; that's downright madness.
I agree completely. You have to draw a line somewhere.
Indeed! Sadly, the quacks are using their political influence to silence skeptics rather than prove the soundness of their own unscientific methods.
@@alexandertownsend3291 But who decides where to draw the line? Each of us should be free to draw our own line.
@@stevenverrall4527 someday we will rediscover why religions exist, and it will become a rational certainty why they are needed.
What is "pseudoscience" anyway? And what is "science"? Is "dark matter" science? Some famous people at Stanford and Harvard claim it to be, and so -- people as well scientists often enough being no better than sheep -- the rest of the community also claim it to be "science". I think that almost every parent has had the experience that, in one form or the other, they had instantly "felt" it when her/his child had an accident or the like. Can this form of "telepathy" be considered a field of science? Some famous people at Stanford and Harvard say "no", and because of this ... you know how the story goes. What science is -- or is not -- is a question of definition. And the ones who define are the people with the loudest voices, and not neccessarily the ones who are right
I LOVE YOUR CHANNEL. THX.
At first I thought someone had spiked Sabine's beer, but it makes sense now that I watched it through.
I would have preferred the title of this video as “How pseudo-science created modern science”
Surprisingly flawless Dutch! Often hard for foreigners. What a great video again, worth sharing.
Thank you for a constructive (if not too generous) view on the role of a big part of the videos on this platform. Not being a scientist myself, I am faced with the following questions:
1. I believe that the problem with pseudo-science is, that it is presented in a way that makes sense to those not trained in identifying fallacies. Your videos make sense to me. How can I be sure that they are not pseudo?
2. I assume that we are not more intelligent than the generations before us. For them, proof within a specific framework would suffice. We use a different framework. As the framework has changed before, how can we be sure that it will not change again?
P.s. - I am a musician and have watched your music videos as well. Those, I prefer not to comment though 😊
"The society of truth-loving men no longer exists." So sad, yet so true...
not really true though is it? it's more like something we like to say after we meet "stupid" people to affirm us of our superority, like we're an interlectual lost cause or something
Since you posted this twice, I'll post my reply twice:
I look at all the academic societies of the world and I disagree.
"Truth-loving men." No doubt what pronouns they preferred.
Time for a reboot
Excellent video, Sabine! Thanks a lot! 😊
I participated in an event against homeopathy a few years back, I don't know its name in English... Either way, what I took wasn't homeopathy, but Bach's floral... 😬
The result is that I almost got drunk! 😂
Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
My favourite is the limited heartbeat theory, where exercising is discouraged because your heart only has a set amount of beats.
I have congestive heart failure. My cardiologist told me my heart is only capable of a certain number of beats. He just couldn’t tell me how many.
That is a theory not yet proven or disproven. Who knows as cardiology advances there may be a way of calcualating the number of beats a heart has in it. Engineers can work out closely the live-span of mechanical pumps so you never know.
@@darrellturner560 But heart cells reproduce, it's a self-repairing mechanical pump. DNA drives how cells reproduce, as long as your DNA is good, your heart keeps repairing itself. DNA gets damaged with age over time, or by outside damage. Knowing how it works, theres no good reason to think it has a fixed number of beats from birth.
@@jackcreek Unfortunately it’s not just my heart that’s failing. My brain is too. On a bad day it can take me 20-30 seconds to recall Kurt Gödel’s name even though I can recall the incompleteness theorem almost immediately. My GP said: “Welcome to the real world the rest of us live in!”
@@jonathansturm4163 reality is a bitch hahaha
Absolutely loved this history of psuedoscience (and the scientific method), so much I didn't know. Sabine is amazing. Share this far and wide, guys!
This was great!
Hello Sabine, great video, but i've got kinda curious about the part that you said that the "falsification is not the best way to go about it". Could you (or anyone else that feels like it) discuss more about this specific point ? What are the problems with the falsification criterion stablished by Popper ? And what are other possible alternative approaches when it comes to define an hipothesis as scientific ?
Thanks, love your job !!!
Falsification was criticised mostly on philosophical grounds. Like: "criteria is idealistic, but regulating things from materialistic domain", "criteria is not rooted in inductive reasoning" and some other nonsense. (I'd love to hear from people more knowledgable on this topic though)
What I find more valid is that some people say that, when put into extreme interpretation, string theory is unscientific because of this criteria. Also some applied physics for modelling and such doesn't fit it. But I'd argue that there's a difference between the scientific apparatus and scientific hypothesis. I mean you can make a valid apparatus for unscientific hypothesis. For instance, what if the probability of an invisible dragon's existence is a complex number? Then can you construct valid math for complex probabilities, while the initial hypothesis is still unscientific
Falsification is a necessary property for a claim to be scientific : without a way to infirm it you may as well take it or its opposite as an axiom. However in practice it can be hard to know what you falsify when conducting an experiment : is it the way you conduct and interpret the experiment or the hypothesis you want to test ?
This has troublesome consequences when it comes to dealing with competing hypothesis on the same domain of validity. You can try to modify failing hypothesis to account for the inconsistencies, but that can be quite problematic, adding parameters allows to fit pretty much anything after all, but that does not exactly look like great science, does it ?
Beyond self consistency, you need stuff like parsimony or computational complexity to compare competing scientific paradigms.
@@jeanf6295 I think I understand. But I don't see how these problematic tendencies can be rooted out using any definition of the scientific method
EDIT. Especially "hard to know" part. It's kind of inevitable anyway
@@evennot the way I see it, paradigms/theories/models are not so much insights into the true nature of things as they are a form of compression algorithms that try to exploit underlying hidden structures in empirical data. And as such they are not always intrinsically superior to one another, because they have several desirable properties that are subject to various trade-offs.
String theory, is trying to improve the domain of validity of our best paradigms, at the cost of computational complexity, and quite a bit of parsimony. As such it is still a scientific theory : it has to be compatible with all the empirical data we have got until now, but even if it works, there is no guaranty that there isn't another way to do that at a lesser cost.
@@jeanf6295 I'd argue that the string theory is just a not fully formulated theory. So any criteria won't work with it. There are several mutually exclusive routes to describe quantum gravity in ST.
ST is not in the unique position with that. For instance, in medical research scientific propositions first go through a "shut up and do the math" phase when people are just modelling countless proteins for the proposed task of curing something/understanding how the biological system might work. Of course, math there is different and the tests can be performed in an observable period of time, but the notion of "incomplete scientific proposition" or "undeveloped proposition in progress" is real. Falsification criteria doesn't deal with them until they are fully formed
"it's a psychological effect, not an actual one" - well ACTUALLY, the placebo effect has been shown to induce actual physiological changes VIA the psychological effect, via so far extremely insufficiently examined neuroendocrine mechanisms. And THAT is why the placebo effect is so freaky! And what's even more freaky is that the same applies to the nocebo effect
mind over matter... Intuition can be quite useful to science. Science is not religion, it's not faith, it's a process. And it's not even necessarily correct. Say for example some one slaps me; then, after that, nobody believes that they slapped me. Furthermore, they begin to think I'm crazy for going on about it. I can't prove that said person slapped me, and now, I have the reputation of being crazy; when, in fact, the truth is that I was slapped in the face by some douche bag. Science itself, I think, has come to be a sort of, 'ideal,' that ideal being, that we share a common reality. Clearly we do. However, the reality on the top of mount everest is different than the reality in the marianas trench. That's relativity.
Obviously the common man is not privy to what lies beyond the event horizon, or how man can travel to the stars and other planets; things like this are beyond our horizon of understanding; but, just like mind over matter has scientific evidence to back it up, perhaps, 'where there is a will there is a way,' will prove to be quite statistically significant as well. To be a hardened skeptic and an adherent to the scientific method, is to concede, you perpetually don't know, way more than you know; and that is philosophy, for the truly wise, know, they are not wise.
I think your confusion stems from the idea that psychological processes aren't a part of your physiology. I never understood why people attempt to separate the brain from the body. It's pseudo scientific in nature and leads to conclusions that harm people.
@@blackriver2531 the point is actually about locality. Think of 'the psyche' as a Markov blanket. Then consider whether a given effect crosses the boundary of the blanket or not.
@@sageinit there is no boundary that isn't arbitrary in any shape form or fashion
@@blackriver2531 …do you know the definition of a Markov blanket?
Sabine is amazing!!! Thank you for making your videos!!!
Thanks for sharing! I hadn't really thought about the positive aspects of "pseudoscience". I agree with your views.
And pseudoscience can capture the imagination which may lead to learning actual science. For instance when I heard we may be holograms I learned a ton about actual physics through science communicators. My science teacher in highschool was so, so very boring. He was so bad it effected my development as a person. Today I respect science and math.
The government should hire a couple high paid talented science communicators, kinda like Kurzgesagt team, and commission them to make efficient, entertaining and intuitive video learning material, and replace 90 mins a week with science video watching class as a passive learning section.
when Soddy discovered the mutation of Thorium into Radium ....he exclaimed to Rutherford " this is transmutation"
Rutherford replied “For Christ’s sake, Soddy, don’t call it transmutation. They’ll have our heads off as alchemists.”
The perfect channel to be recommended while starting a career in research
brilliant examples and important point.
Wat leuk. Your Dutch "G" is on point.
Mooi
Dear Sabine, you mention in the video (in reference to Popper) that falsification isn't the best method to do science. Maybe you could do a video about scientific methods and explain what is the "gold standard" used in science today (if it isn't falsification).
Had to scroll so far for this comment! Falsification not being the best approach was complete news to me.
Enlightening. I used to think that ALL pseudo science was bad but your arguments for it are good.
Your Dutch was fine, if it wasn't on the screen to read I would have understood it ;) Stumbled onto your page yesterday, really enjoy your shows, funny and educating... Thx!!
Science Fiction - the greatest boon to scientific discovery, ever.