Building Pseudoscience on Pseudoscience
One of the things that has been observed at various times on sciblogs is that pseudoscientific beliefs often cluster – for example, those who believe in homeopathy may also be antivaxxers, or those who argue against climate change may also argue that the moon landing was faked.
This can lead to rather appalling “mash ups” of different pseudoscientific beliefs/conspiracy theories, for example this website where the author links autism to a global conspiracy where vaccines are the tools of a
“New World Order toward which we are being herded through intentional social, political and genetic manipulation consistent with the genocidal aspirations of the globalists and their horrifying Agenda 21.”
Truly worthy of a double face palm!
In order to prevent too much damage from having to face palm myself too often, I thought it might be useful to try and anticipate future pseudoscience mash ups so I have created the following grid:
|
are |
poisoning |
the |
crops |
causing |
infertility | |
| Aliens | contaminating | food supply | autism | |||
| Big Pharma | bugging | water | cancer | |||
| Government | opposing | vitamins | AIDS | |||
| Skeptics | mutating | energy fields | low IQ | |||
| Scientists | hiding | magnets | birth defects | |||
| Doctors | messing with | homeopaths | Alzheimers | |||
| Men in black | polluting | drugs/vaccines | indigestion | |||
| The CIA | eavesdropping on | internet | climate change | |||
| hiding secret codes in | children | earthquakes |
The one advantage I can see in these sorts of pseudoscience mash ups is that by “doubling up” on the pseudoscience it can make it easier to spot.
3 Responses to “Building Pseudoscience on Pseudoscience”
Someone sent me this link:
http://www.theywantyoudead.com/
It’s truly amazing the extent of delusion that people believe in, a real eye opener in itself.
Andrea,
Well that is an eye opener indeed. I think you have just trumped my example!
Here’s a psychologically “interesting” guy you might like to read his website: http://calodema.com/
But, extremist pseudoscience/conspiracist beliefs do tend to harm the reputation of other, healthy sceptics, who don’t just swallow the orthodoxy that they are fed. How could the U.S. be spying on its own citizens … fantasy!