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Building Pseudoscience on Pseudoscience

By Michael Edmonds • 05/09/2013


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.

 

0 Responses to “Building Pseudoscience on Pseudoscience”

  • 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!