What is Pseudoscience?

Let's talk about the Science of Covid.

1) The scientists tell us that covid is caused by a virus.
2) Science measures (objectively) the transmissibility of the disease and the seriousness.
3) Science measures objectively the usefulness of masks and social distancing.
4) Science was used to develop vaccines.
5) Science tell use that the vaccines are safe and effective.
6) Science monitors case numbers and tracks variants and informs public policy.

The power is that it is objectively testable. For each of these points, I can explain the experiments that test these facts. From the detection of the pandemic, to the reaction to the tracking to the development and use of vaccines and treatments... science is the best way for all of this; the power of science is it's ability to objectively test and confirm the conclusions.

If you look at the anti-science when it comes to covid... the objections to vaccines (and even to the reality of the virus) are philosopical.

1) People are objecting to vaccines because they are artificial, and philosophically artificial is bad.

2) People are claiming that disease is natural, and therefore a pandemic is not to be feared because philosophically natural is good.

The power of science is that it is objectively testable. When people choose what seems right to them, what they want to believe, or how they want the world to work rather than how experiments show it actually works, you lose the ability of science to respond rationally to a crisis.

Science was very much founded on claims of "true" knowledge on the positivist movement that knew its height back in the XIX century.

These days the discourse is apparently more humble specially since the foundations went out of the window, but the practice, specially to get the funding is as much positivist as it always was!

So in conclusion Science says that it has no claims to Truth but always speaks about truer knowledge when it goes for funds...I just won't criticize it more because I want Science to be funded as much as possible.

That set aside and granted it doesn't mean I eat all the metaphysical bullshizz some scientists sell without questioning for consistency when the case presents itself!
Lawrence Kraus is a particular idiot that comes to mind when I want to present a good example of what scientists ought not to do.

You keep saying each water molecule is "identical".

This is the most ridiculous made up stuff. There is no test to prove each water molecule is identical. Atomic weight is only precice down to the accuracy of the instruments we employ to weigh an atom.

The fact that each molecule is a separate entity in itself proves it is not identical.

Like you are applying a blanket axiom that "things similar are identical".

That is not known or proven to be the case. They may have identical properties that place them in a set but they are not identical in the pure sense of the word.

To imply that they are identical in the pure sense is to make an assumption that is not testable by science. Who is "making stuff up that is pleasing to them"?

Even each atom of an element is not identical they may have they same properties but each occupy a different time and space. That in itself proves your claim false.

They are perhaps more similar on a magnitude scale than say, humans are, but even that is unknown because we do not know how deep the sub atomic strata of matter and antimatter and energy i.e dark energy goes.

So no, they are not proven to be "identical". They are similar to a great magnitude, is that magnitude infinite? Most likely, if not predictably, not.

If each atom is not provable to be identical than how can each water molecule be identical?

Your pure atomic science falls apart the moment you factor quantum physics into the equation and even gravity is still for the most part theoretical science.

There is no cohesive unifying theory of everything yet.

This is why superlatives like identical should not to be bandied about, they are counter intuitive to the discovery process.

They are identical to a certain magnitude and beyond that magnitude their similarity is unknown.

Beyond that magnitude their sameness becomes quantum science.

How general relativity and quantum field mechanics fit together is still a mystery of science.

Google
Does quantum theory contradict relativity?
What is it about quantum mechanics that is incompatible with general relativity? ... Quantum mechanics is incompatible with general relativity because in quantum field theory, forces act locally through the exchange of well-defined quanta.

Comment
This is science.
And this science says your claims of identical particles is not testable to the point of mathematical proof.

Can the human body change the essence of the atoms in water? That also remains to be proven but that theory has not been proven false either.

The theories stating that atoms are identical are also pseudoscience.

It is unknown how infinitely similar atoms are, the answer lies on a level imperceptible to science.

Many highly educated people mocked the idea when bacteria was first proposed too...

...and electrical signals being sent through thin air, impossible!

Making stuff up... lol. This is often also called theoretical discovery.

What?! There are particles smaller than atoms?!!! (cynical)

I have an advantage here in this argument. I have a Physics degree and have taught Chemistry. I have done the experiments in the labs, and have worked through the math through countless problem sets. I know what I am talking about when it comes to science.

I guess that is the point. There are correct answers in science. In science you learn the right answers through studying and conducting experiments. You don't just make stuff up.

There are experiments to test the claim that each water molecule is "identical" (of course we have to define the word "identical" to set up the experiment. As any good scientific experiment, each test has a result that if seen will disprove the hypothesis.

I have personally created water in the lab and confirmed that each resulting water molecule has the same mass (this is something done in high school chemistry). I have also confirmed the charge of water molecules and electrolysis.

You are correct to challenge my assertion. If I am "making stuff up" then I will be unable to explain the experiments to test my assertion.

However I am not making stuff up. I have studied the science and personally done many of the experiments in the lab. That is why I what I am saying is science.

I am telling you what the science says. You can accept it or not, but there is a correct answer and I am giving it to you.

If anyone here wants to understand science, I recommend starting at a local university. You would learn this particular science (about atoms and molecules) in a first year Chemistry class.

That is the way that all of us learn science. If you are impressed with the competence of the scientists who gave you that covid vaccine, or design the chips in the computer you are using, or send robots to the news.

We all learn science as it is taught in the University.

This is a weird thread...

You started a thread to ask the difference between science and pseudoscience.

Now you seem to be arguing that there is no difference between science and pseudoscience.

You are calling good science "pseudoscience" and posting pseudoscience as examples of science.

Yes, we know a lot about the structure of water, we can predict with great accuracy how it reacts with other chemicals, how the isotopes work, how it interacts with magnetic fields. We know how it boils, how it condenses, how much energy is required to change its state at different temperatures and pressures, etc. Saying "but you don't know this little thing" is disingenuous.

No, all humans are not the same. Diseases impact different populations with different frequencies, some humans have genes that make them susceptible to different cancers, some humans clearly have advantages over other humans in terms of strength, speed or intellectual capability that extend beyond what can be accounted for with training. We know these things because science has studied them. Even tall and short humans are not interchangeable in capability. You ignore that at your own peril. To even say "we all bleed red" is to ignore the different blood types that we need to understand before giving someone a transfusion.

Have those claiming to do science made mistakes, sometimes egregious, in the past? Absolutely. Doing good science is hard and it is easy to let personal biases cloud scientific judgment. Does that mean we should say "science is crap, my pet hypothesis is just as good as what the scientists with years of experience and training say?" No.

You have good points made all across the border as the knowledge of "what works" is good enough for normal conditions of "truth bearing".

You have a bad point if you really believe we do know anything at all in its "ultimate nature" because it is simply false!

While the numbers don't change your experience of water is an Anthropic one.
If you turned into an intelligent mosquito the all experience of water tension would change and accordingly the very perception of what water would be to "you".

Worse, we can take it a couple of steps further down and state that the very concept of water as per language and our specific need of water as per our biological nature is totally specific to us. Say an artificial intelligence would have a total different "perception" on the very concept of water and its position in its own language modus operandi.

You see man to be quite frank you don't know **** and so I do not also, but I am fairly aware of it...

"WHAT WORKS" and its numbers has NOTHING to do with WHAT IS in all domains of relationship. We have access to one domain the Anthropic one.

And let me be clear about this I am not saying our domain is false, rather a specific incomplete picture, what I am saying is that there is no good reason to believe our domain is the only one which is legitimate.
That would be scientifically unverifiable!

The absolute worst thing about scientists is their lack of awareness when they are doing naive philosophy and label it as facts...

For the spectators.

Albuquerque is trying to start an argument about "Truth". Other than a few words that he defines in a strange way, there is nothing that he is saying that is incorrect in any scientific way (I have never found arguing over the definitions of words to be either useful or interesting).

Science is only about what can be objectively testable. There are lots of very important things that aren't objectively testable (such as beauty and morality and the meaning of life). Science can't answer these things. I think that engineer and Albuquerque and I are all in agreement about these things.

What science can do is send robots to Mars, and provide safe effective vaccines for a global pandemic and build miniaturized semiconductor based devices that you can use to read this post. That isn't nothing.

If what you mean is that Science is super important you won't find any disagreement from me quite the opposite!

I agree Albuquerque, I am of the same mind, I reverence and I am in awe of science.

But I have believed in many scientific things that were rock solid and years later turned out to be untrue.

Some of those things have to do with atoms. Many of the things I was taught in high school about atoms turned out to not be true.

And back then we had no idea that dark energy even existed.

And today we have no way of weighing dark energy and calculating its mass.

Is there any dark energy in water? ...and water does have gravitational properties.

According to someone on Quora, "in fact, water has multiple gravities."

Google
Dark energy is thought to be very homogeneous and not very dense, and is not known to interact through any of the fundamental forces other than gravity. Since it is quite rarefied and un-massive—roughly 10−27 kg/m3—it is unlikely to be detectable in laboratory experiments.

Comment:
I am not against science, I am against "certainty"; be it used to justify religion, atheism or (even in some cases) science.

Even rock solid science can be pseudoscience, when it turns out later that it was false.

On QI a while back Stephen Fry said about 50% of what we think we know is wrong. What we know changes as science progresses.

When did you go to high school? We have known about dark energy since at least the 1930s. The quantum-mechanical model of the atom was developed in 1926.

This is a very anti-science point of view.

The claim that science is often proved "wrong" is a misunderstanding of how science works. Science is based on experiment. As new mathematical models are developed, it doesn't often invalidate the older models.

Isaac Newton's theories were replaced by Einstein's relativity... but Newton's laws are still valid (and any undergraduate Physics student can explain why). When you fly in an airplane, the engineers used Newton, and you don't have to worry. Newton's laws are still correct.

Google
1998
Dark energy was discovered in 1998 with this method by two international teams that included American astronomers Adam Riess (the author of this article) and Saul Perlmutter and Australian astronomer Brian Schmidt.Dec 15, 2021

Comment:
I went to high school in the 70s.

What is anti science is saying something is "known" before it is discovered.

I can't talk for America, but secondary school kids wouldn't have been taught about dark matter over here.

From what I remember is was mostly density, the movement of waves and electricity.

Quantum mechanics and the like are studied at a much higher level.

Since we are discrediting science on this thread, exactly how far are we going to go?

- Do you fine people accept evolution?
- How certain are you about Climate Change?
- How confident are you that Covid is caused by a virus?

If you are really willing to say "science is pseudoscience" because anything can be wrong, then don't have to reject all science?

It seems to me that people reject science based on their politics rather than anything else. Conservatives reject science on climate change and Liberals reject science on Genetically modified food.

I am discrediting absolute certainty in science, just like I do with religion and atheism.

Evolution has been proven to a reasonable level of surety.
The same with climate change and Covid (vaccines)...

Every water molecule is absolutely, positively, no wiggle room "identical" is not proven and I am fairly certain that will not be proven for quite some time, if ever.

All disciplines require honesty, especially science.

You remind me of the cult I was once in, absolute adherence to the leader and their principles. When fault is found it does a number on the mind and soul. Leaves people damaged and disillusioned.

This is why I do not trust easily with blind faith.

I don't need ultimate proof of things to come onboard, but I also am cautious of ultimate claims of proof...

Since you are "discrediting science" by insisting on superlatives on unknowns, who is more detrimental to the validity of science?

"Absolute Certainty" is your phrase. I didn't use it.