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Pseudoscience Bingo

By Michael Edmonds • 13/11/2010


A while ago I was shown how to play psychic bingo. This is where you have a bingo card made up of the many different stock phrases used by psychics such as “a name beginning with M” or “sensing back problems” etc. An example of such a card can be found here. Then when one watches the performance of a psychic the first person to tick off a line (or even a whole card!) yells bingo.

I thought it would be amusing to create a card that covered the wider ranging stock phrases of pseudoscience that one occasionally encounters on here. That way during the flurry of exchanges that may occur between scibloggers and the more persistent peddlers of pseudoscience we may at least be able to be able to alleviate the frustration with the occasional call of “bingo”.

Pseudoscience Bingo

‘crystals”

 Denial of germ theory ‘quantum’ Cherry picking data ‘conspiracy’
‘science doesn’t know everything’ ‘chemical free’ Denial of Evolution Misuse of the word ‘energy’ Molecules are ‘killed’ or ‘mutated’
‘toxic overload’ ‘pharmaceutical shills’ ‘You just have to believe/think positively’ Science used to ‘support’ religious beliefs ‘other ways of understanding’
‘ancient or lost knowledge’ Can’t be tested by science Aliens Age of Earth is 6000 years ‘vibrations’

Government or mind control

 Personal attacks Mothers/parents instinctively know best

‘literature’ turns out to be alternative magazine articles

Alternative or complementary ‘medicine’

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