Pseudoscience

Pseudoscience is not simply “science that turned out to be wrong.” Being wrong is the ordinary condition of science and indeed error, honestly acknowledged and corrected, is the very engine of the whole enterprise. Nor is pseudoscience merely “stuff I find implausible.” The distinction is that pseudoscience is a body of claims that borrows the costume of science, the vocabulary, the confident tone, the gestures toward data and studies, while at the same time lacking its substance: genuine responsiveness to evidence, openness to disconfirmation, and the machinery of self-correction.  Pseudoscience characteristically cherry-picks confirming cases, insulates its core claims from refutation with endless ad hoc rescues, mistakes the accumulation of anomalies for the persecution of heretics, and treats the scientific consensus not as a provisional best estimate but as a conspiracy to be exposed. Not one of these is decisive, but together they form a recognizable syndrome.

In France widespread use of graphology, numerology and astrology by personnel managers and employment agencies as a means of revealing character or analysing business opportunities. Studies indicate that in 1993 most private or state-owned corporations routinely used graphologists. Unknowingly a significant portion of the French population has been subjected to an invasive procedure that has no established scientific value. Applications for senior management positions are routinely sent off for analysis by specialists in such disciplines.

Black Hebrew Israelites, a black supremacist group in the US, typify the use of numerology from the Book of Revelation. They believe group members will comprise the 144,000 people who are saved by God in the second coming that is outlined in Revelation (7:1-17). In the Book of Revelation, John is shown a vision of 144,000 martyrs who have survived and did not submit to Satan. This number is derived from the assertion that the twelve tribes of Israel consisted of 12,000 people each.