Despite the fact that it is relatively easy to identify a pseudoscience, there are still many people who trust them or who, in any case, consider it appropriate to investigate them thoroughly to see if they really are a pseudoscience or not .
In the meantime, we have the list of shame in effect, and we must even be careful not to call a pseudoscientist a scammer on pain of being fined. And the anti-vaccines are opening gaps in public health so that all of us go back to the Middle Ages, when it seems that we have already forgotten how bad people lived a while ago, when the teaching profession of science had a subsidiary, marginal or directly null role. .
That is to say, that pseudosciences are introduced in the academic field. But why should we exclude them? Why should we stop investigating them? Is it the most appropriate if we take into account that science progresses finally refuting hypotheses?
Lack of criticism
In the first place, opening the doors of pseudoscience (that is, a belief system that has not passed the demanding protocols of science) can not only lead us to a public health problem, but also to a critical one. If we accept the pseudosciences uncritically, we could also start accepting many other things that way.
Pseudosciences seriously harm people because it contributes to making a society more credulous and less critical.
Most parapsychologists, when they claim to carry out scientific research on supernatural phenomena, the most they do is get there, fully believe what the eyewitnesses say, gather a handful of circumstantial evidence, and construct a narrative that they pass off as a scientific conclusion. That is not science . And, just as we request all kinds of evidence when purchasing a second-hand car to avoid scam, we should proceed in the same way when faced with a new, anomalous, supernatural phenomenon or one that contravenes established scientific knowledge.
It is true that this way many phenomena are left out of science, but it is the only way that science continues to be a useful tool.
It is true that this way many phenomena are left out of science, but it is the only way that science continues to be a useful tool. That is the reason why parapsychology, in all its history, has never tested absolutely any of its approaches under the scientific prism .
Probably the most serious and comprehensive attempt to conduct an experiment on supernatural phenomena was made at Princeton University, which is where the Princeton Engineering Laboratory for Anomaly Research (PEAR) was opened. In 2007 it closed its doors. The founder of the laboratory, Robert Jahn , had to admit that for 28 years they had done everything they wanted, and that there was no reason to continue getting more negative results. Robert Park , author of Voodoo Science , was more restrictive: he called that laboratory a disgrace for science and for Princeton.
To investigate or not to investigate?
Science progresses if any phenomenon is allowed to be investigated, but that does not mean that we should investigate everything (especially if a priori we start from hypotheses that are too risky or lacking the slightest evidence). The reason is simple: lack of time. There are too many pressing issues for science to focus on. Resources are finite, time is too. We cannot uncritically invest them in what the neighbor of the fifth says .
Scientific research cannot waste time with testimonies, circumstantial evidence, sensations, hues and so on, because these occur by the millions every day, and there are not enough time or resources to examine them all.
Scientific research cannot waste time with testimonies, circumstantial evidence, sensations, hues and so on, because these occur by the millions every day, and there are not enough time or resources to examine them all. Extraordinary information requires the endorsement of equally extraordinary evidence . The rest is like asking all the people in a city, all very democratically, if they believe that the main pillar of the building that is built on X Street should be eight or ten inches in diameter.
We have enough with the goofs or dishonesties of the scientists themselves, with the errors in the filters at the time of publishing academic works, with the commercial interests of those who finance certain investigations to, in addition, add to the equation any idea that passes through the head of the first Illuminati to knock on the doors of the Science Building. Amending the aluminosis of said building happens precisely by putting a more demanding doorman, not an open day .