For some words like "conspiracy" and
"pseudoscience" are just "mere pop-culture pejoratives"
with no "empirical measures". This is like saying fallacies and
biases don’t exist, when they are subject of scientific research, and have been
so for decades.
Actually, pseudoscience, grand conspiracy thinking and denialism have common, recurrent, identifiable features. Let me present you with a list of some features in each category and you’ll see some of them overlap. Keep in mind this is just a summary.
Pseudoscience in general:
1. Motivated reasoning: starting with the
conclusion, making evidence fit into preconceived notions, cherry-picking
evidence.
2. Shifting the burden of proof, confirmation bias, special pleading.
2. Shifting the burden of proof, confirmation bias, special pleading.
3. Anecdotal evidence: uncontrolled, or
ad-hoc observations, implausible low-grade evidence, preliminary evidence, or
even a single anecdote. This is the hasty generalization logical fallacy.
4. Emotional appeal.
5. Grandiose claims (Galileo syndrome):
based upon preliminary evidence. Far-reaching claims overturn entire portions
of well-established science.
6. Alternative science: all of science is replaced with an alternative version.
7. Absolute claims, bold claims way beyond the evidence.
8. Hostility: censorship, playing the victim card, claiming to be victims of a conspiracy.
6. Alternative science: all of science is replaced with an alternative version.
7. Absolute claims, bold claims way beyond the evidence.
8. Hostility: censorship, playing the victim card, claiming to be victims of a conspiracy.
9. Vagueness: vague terms and words to
obfuscate, so they can shift the definition around.
10. Stagnation: failure to progress,
ad nauseam trying to establish their theory rather than build a body of
evidence for it.
11. Anomaly hunting: searching for
anomalies trying to establish a conclusion, which does not seek to refute or
explore other alternatives.
Grand conspiracy thinking:
1. Pattern Recognition: the cognitive
form of pareidolia, a pattern imposed upon disconnected
events or on random data, hyperactive pattern detection.
2. Confirmation bias.
3. Fundamental attribution error:
tendency to blame other people’s behavior on internal, rather than situational,
factors; all actions and outcomes are deliberate and intended, there’s
no coincidence or chance.
4. Closed-belief system, insulated from
external refutation from facts and evidence, disconfirming evidence is part of
the conspiracy itself; absence of evidence means having been removed or covered
up.
5. Shifting the burden of proof.
6. Anomaly hunting.
7. Naive assumptions about how things
should happen to fit they own idea how events should have unfolded.
8. False dichotomy: either the standard explanation of events is
true or their conspiracy is true; poking holes through naive anomaly hunting
and casting doubt with no burden of proof upon themselves; false choice.
9. Widening the conspiracy: another
tactic to render a conspiracy immune to contradictory evidence.
10. Monological belief system: people who
believe in one conspiracy theory tend to believe in many others; default
explanation for any given event.
Denialism:
1. Moving the goalpost: when burden
of evidence is met, the goalpost is moved and more evidence is demanded. The
process is repeated indefinitely.
2. Unreasonable demand for evidence.
3. Pointing out disagreements: disagreements
within a discipline are explored, often small details, as if the science in
question is not solid.
4. Denying entire categories of evidence: observational
evidence, epidemiology...
5. False dichotomy: argument from
ignorance, offering no positive evidence for their claims.
6. Campaign of doubt: Little factoids are
gathered and taken out of context to sow doubt, uncertainty, and distrust,
focusing on apparent inconsistencies, or gaps.
7. Conspiracy theory: allows them to
dismiss all the evidence and rationalize it away.
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