How do we determine what is science and what is just bunk and what is actual science? There are tools and methods that are used in science that help us draw the line.
The first step is to make a prediction or hypothesis. I hypothesize that if we shoot a laser through two slits in a piece of paper that we will see two points of the laser on the other side.
Now, we set up an experiment. This is easy enough to do in this case. It is a famous physics experiment called the double slit experiment. (Please note the poster in the background of the video is for a movie called “What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?” I recommend NOT watching that movie as it actually has very little to do with science, and much more with pseudo-science)
Well the experiment proved that my hypothesis was wrong, then comes the next phase. I need a hypothesis that explains the results of my experiment. I might come up with several hypotheses and will need to narrow it down, we do that by finding how each one could be tested and find what things might prove one more plausible than another. We then run those experiments and the hypothesis that is left standing is then sent to another person.
Why another person you ask? Well it is important to rule out that maybe your experiment is flawed or that the equipment you are using is not contaminated in some way. So you would send it to other labs to be tested there. If they can confirm your results then comes the peer review process.
We publish our results in a scientific paper or journal and let our colleagues tear it apart. Although human nature is to want our ideas to succeed, we must be willing to accept when they have been found to be flawed. Many pseudo-scientists fail at this step, then claim that the “scientific establishment” wants to keep out new ideas. This was popular among intelligent design proponents a couple of years ago, and even got Ben Stein to make a movie about it.
Once you have made it through peer review then congratulations… well maybe. There is still work to be done and it is possible that later evidence will turn up showing that your hypothesis is wrong or that it still does not explain everything regarding it’s subject. there may even be a competing hypothesis that made it through the same process and is trying to explain the same things. (Although it can be argued that the two are actually really looking at the same underlying principle from two angles… it could also be said that neither is truly falsifiable at our current state of technology)
That is how we narrow down what is scientific from what is not scientific. But what about things that cannot be tested? For those we have another set of tool aside from the scientific method.
Logical fallacies are used to determine when you are not making a logical argument. Some of these have their niche that they get used in most. In politics (especially talking head opinion shows) the Ad hominem fallacy and the Straw man rear their head at short intervals.
In pseudo-science we see a lot of "Moving the goalpost” (Stating that gaps need to be filled in the evolution of man before you would accept evolution then when those gaps are filled just switching to a different gap or saying that the fossil is simply not good enough.), “Special pleading” (ESP, ghost phenomena, and telekinesis all use special pleading commonly.), and “Argument from popularity” (Millions of people wouldn’t believe in astrology if it wasn’t real)
There is simply too much to talk about fallacies in one post. there is a lot of good information on them on the internet, as well as an unending list of examples of them (see the comments section of any video on YouTube or a political blog for all the logical fallacies you need)
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