Pseudoscience is a collection of nonfiction essays analyzing the origins and methodologies or various pseudoscientific practices against the backdrop of events from the narrator's life that mirror those practices in some way. Pseudoscience is unverifiable. Pseudoscience is unverifiable. / by Mike Shier. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

We describe an exercise involving the power balance wristband (PBW) designed to enhance students’ ability to design scientific tests. An instructor demonstrated that the PBW improved a student’s balance, strength, and flexibility and invited students to design and conduct a brief scientific test of the PBW. Research methods students who participated in the exercise significantly improved their ability to design scientific tests of the PBW and another pseudoscientific practice (i.e., Healing Touch); students enrolled in the control sections of the course showed no improvement. Incorporating this single-class exercise into research methods courses has the potential to not only improve students’ critical thinking about pseudoscience but also improve their research-design skills.

En France, les chiropracteurs sont autorisés à pratiquer des actes conservateurs, incluant la manipulation vertébrale, afin de prévenir ou de remédier à des troubles neuro-musculo-squelettiques. La profession apparaît toutefois composite, certains chiropracteurs proposant de prendre en charge également des troubles non-neuro-musculo-squelettiques, sur la base d’approches aux théories diverses.La Neurologie Fonctionnelle (NF) en constitue un exemple contemporain. Il s’agit d’une approche attractive, présentée comme scientifiquement fondée. Elle fait cependant l’objet de vives critiques, la qualifiant parfois de pseudoscience.Cette thèse a pour but de contribuer à une meilleure compréhension de ce qu’est la NF ainsi qu’à une meilleure connaissance des faits scientifiques pouvant la sous-tendre, plus particulièrement dans un contexte chiropratique. Pour ce faire, une scoping review et deux revues critiques de la littérature ont été réalisées.La scoping review a montré que la NF est une approche thérapeutique conservatrice qui compterait de nombreuses indications, notamment non-neuro-musculo-squelettiques. Les “neurologues fonctionnels” recourent à de multiples outils thérapeutiques, dont la manipulation vertébrale, dans le but de stimuler le système nerveux, particulièrement des zones du cerveau. En NF, de nombreux éléments de langage sont empruntés aux neurosciences et différentes procédures diagnostiques et différents outils thérapeutiques sont issus de la médecine conventionnnelle. L’ensemble que forme sa théorie et ses applications cliniques lui apparait cependant propre et peu plausible.A travers une revue critique d’articles obtenus via un journal spécialisé en NF, aucune évidence scientifique probante n’a été trouvée à propos du bénéfice ou effet de la NF. A l’issue d’une revue systématique critique de la littérature, aucune évidence montrant que la manipulation vertébrale a un effet clinique via un effet sur l’activité cérébrale n’a été trouvée.Ces travaux nous ont amené à conclure que la NF, utilisée dans un contexte chiropratique, relève probablement d’une pratique pseudoscientifique. / In France, chiropractors are allowed to provide conservative care, which typically includes spinal manipulation in order to manage neuro-musculoskeletal conditions. However, some chiropractors also propose to manage non-neuro-musculoskeletal conditions. This alternative proposal is justified by using various approaches based on various theories.Functional Neurology (FN) is a contemporary example of one such approach. FN is an attractive method within the chiropractic profession, presented as scientifically based. However, FN is also vividly criticized, stated by some to be pseudoscientific.The aim of this thesis is to better understand what FN is and the scientific evidence available on this approach, especially in a chiropractic context. For this, a scoping review and two critical review of the literature were conducted.According to the scoping review, FN is a conservative approach, using a multitude of therapeutic tools, including spinal manipulation, used to stimulate the nervous system, especially brain areas. Many symptoms and conditions are supposed to benefit from FN, including in the non-neuro-musculoskeletal area. While “functional neurologists” use many terms belonging to neurosciences and several diagnostic procedures and therapeutic tools from conventional medicine, the theoretical concepts and clinical applications of FN do not appear plausible in general.A critical review of articles obtained through a search of a specialized scientific journal that purported to report on the benefit or effect of FN did not bring any robust evidence on this topic. Also, through a systematic critical review of the literature, no scientific evidence was found in relation to any clinical effect of spinal manipulation via an effect on brain function.This work led us to conclude that FN, when used in a chiropractic context, is probably a pseudoscientific approach.

An analysis of the production of the University of New Orleans thesis film, Shape Matters, a period film, written and directed by Thomas Baumgardner. The film is concerned with the practice of Phrenology and follows a nervous preacher who becomes entangled in the bizarre "science" and a local murder. This paper describes the director's experiences and details the challenges encountered, and lessons learned, from attempting to bring the project to fruition.

This dissertation examines the cultural role of three controversial yet popular heterodox sciences of nineteenth century Spain: phrenology; animal magnetism and hypnosis; and spiritualism or spiritism. It assesses the relationship between the development of phrenology and early Catalanism, the connection of animal magnetism and hypnosis to both Catholicism and emergent medical discourse, and the flourishing of spiritism in the context of the production of a national genealogy. The project draws on myriad sources like literary works, daily newspapers, specialized journals, dissemination pamphlets, and case histories, to argue that these heterodox sciences were an integral part of the social and cultural history of the nineteenth century. It rethinks not just the relationship between science and cultural production that scholars like James Secord, Gillian Beer, and others have studied but also what we understand as nineteenth-century scientific heterodoxies, seeking to understand them as a broad socio-cultural phenomenon in the way they helped construct cultural practices of the time. Alternative Presence contends that phrenology, animal magnetism and hypnosis, and spiritism expanded rhizomatically away from the confines of canonical institutions and yet contributed to early political regionalism, practices of medical and religious healing, and national historiography. To study such mediations, I look both at these sciences’ main actors — heterogeneous individuals and groups who disseminated them — and at a series of narrative and expressive strategies visible in the discourse through which they flourished. As the term “science” evolved and gained social authority through the appearance of increasingly demarcated fields of expertise, heterodox sciences’ tessellated networks lost ground and were ultimately relegated to the sphere of pseudoscience or popular belief. However, during their lifetime they served to generate alternative ideas of the subject and the nation. Their crucial role in the nineteenth-century Spanish cultural field has been ripe for rediscovery, and this dissertation probes their imbrication with mainstream ways of imagining the paths to modernity.

Purpose: To refute the alleged practice of "pseudoscience" by P. Finn, A. K. Bothe, and R. E. Bramlett (2005) and to illustrate their experimental and systematic bias when evaluating the SpeechEasy, an altered auditory feedback device used in the management of stuttering. Method: We challenged the experimental design that led to the seemingly predetermined outcome of pseudoscience rather than science: Limited preselected literature was submitted to a purposely sampled panel of judges (i.e., their own students). Each criterion deemed pseudoscientific was contested with published peer-reviewed data illustrating the importance of good rhetoric, testability, and logical outcomes from decades of scientific research. Conclusions: Stuttering is an involuntary disorder that is highly resistant to therapy. Altered auditory feedback is a derivation of choral speech (nature's most powerful stuttering "inhibitor") that can be synergistically combined with other methods for optimal stuttering inhibition. This approach is logical considering that in stuttering no single treatment is universally helpful. Also, caution is suggested when attempting to differentiate science from pseudoscience in stuttering treatments using the criteria employed by Finn et al. For example, evaluating behavioral therapy outcomes implements a post hoc or untestable system. Speech outcome (i.e., stuttered or fluent speech) determines success or failure of technique use, placing responsibility for failure on those who stutter.

Myths, misinformation, and sensationalism. These are common enemies that directly inhibit the public understanding of science. In particular, the media is often responsible for mishandling or otherwise misrepresenting scientific information, historically and presently speaking. Many sources can combat the public understanding of science through pseudoscientific means. This includes but is not limited to religion, the media, politics, or just simple hearsay. For example, Young Earth creationism is deeply rooted in Christian theology, but the beliefs hold no scientific basis. Yet, almost half of Americans still believe in Young Earth creationism. Another such example is anti-vaccination campaigns due to fears of autism-spectrum related disorders. In this case, falsified claims were given illegitimate credibility through the media, and the claims are widely and erroneously contentious to this day. The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between an individual's ability to dictate science from pseudoscience and their exposure to sensationalized media. Through means of surveying the university level population, relationships were drawn between how many pseudoscientific beliefs an individual may have versus how they interact with science and the media. The results of the survey showed a general lack of interest or care for science with more pseudoscientific beliefs, yet failed to draw a relationship between pseudoscientific beliefs and a sensationalized media.

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Todd F. Simon / The debate over human origins was a prominent fixture of U.S. news coverage during the first decade of the 21st century. During this period, U.S. news media featured regular portrayals of an all-out culture war between supporters of biological evolution and advocates of so-called “rival theories” of human origins. In the end, this war would cost American taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees, confuse science students, divide communities with unparalleled animosities, and alter public policy at the city, county and state level. While there have been previous content analyses performed on U.S. newspaper coverage of evolution and its primary challenger, an idea called "intelligent design," these analyses have tended to be somewhat informal (Mooney & Nisbet, 2005) or lacking (Martin, et al., 2006). The following study addresses these gaps in the literature. Using content analysis, the following study examines hard news coverage of intelligent design presented in 12 U.S. newspapers of varying circulation size and storytelling influence. A final sample of 421 newspaper articles originally published between the years 2000 and the end of the year 2009 is analyzed herein. Results demonstrate that U.S. newspapers initially framed intelligent design as primarily a religious / unscientific concept, but that intelligent design was increasingly framed as a scientific / unreligious concept leading up to, during and after the landmark 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. Additionally, this study finds no significant differences in framing intelligent design as a religious / unscientific or scientific / unreligious concept by dedicated science reporters and non-science reporters.

<p>Syftet med uppsatsen är att genom att belysa teorin om ”Fourth Generation Warfare” (4GW) ur två perspektiv, dels vetenskap och dels propaganda, tydliggöra i vilken utsträckning 4GW kan förstås som ett arbete grundat på vetenskaplighet eller ett arbete som nyttjar propagandistiska tekniker i sitt budskap.</p><p>Uppsatsen är utformad som en kvalitativ analys, med hjälp av definitioner på vetenskaplighet respektive propaganda, av de texter som William S. Lind skrivit i ämnet.</p><p>Syftet med uppsatsen är inte att bevisa att begreppet 4GW är propaganda i ordets egentliga bemärkelse, utan endast att visa att de tekniker och argument som används av Lind är ovetenskapliga och har mer gemensamt med tekniker som används i propaganda än med vad som kan betecknas som vetenskaplighet</p> / <p>The purpose of the paper is that by highlighting the theory of "Fourth Generation Warfare" (4GW) from two perspectives, science and propaganda, clarify the extent to which 4GW can be understood as a work based on science or a work that uses propaganda techniques to further its message.</p><p>The essay is designed as a qualitative analysis, by applying the definitions of science and propaganda on three papers written by William S. Lind on 4GW.</p><p>The purpose of the paper is not to prove that the concept of 4GW is propaganda in its true sense, but only to show that the techniques and arguments used by Lind is unscientific and has more in common with techniques used in propaganda than with what could be called scientific.</p>

Syftet med uppsatsen är att genom att belysa teorin om ”Fourth Generation Warfare” (4GW) ur två perspektiv, dels vetenskap och dels propaganda, tydliggöra i vilken utsträckning 4GW kan förstås som ett arbete grundat på vetenskaplighet eller ett arbete som nyttjar propagandistiska tekniker i sitt budskap. Uppsatsen är utformad som en kvalitativ analys, med hjälp av definitioner på vetenskaplighet respektive propaganda, av de texter som William S. Lind skrivit i ämnet. Syftet med uppsatsen är inte att bevisa att begreppet 4GW är propaganda i ordets egentliga bemärkelse, utan endast att visa att de tekniker och argument som används av Lind är ovetenskapliga och har mer gemensamt med tekniker som används i propaganda än med vad som kan betecknas som vetenskaplighet / The purpose of the paper is that by highlighting the theory of "Fourth Generation Warfare" (4GW) from two perspectives, science and propaganda, clarify the extent to which 4GW can be understood as a work based on science or a work that uses propaganda techniques to further its message. The essay is designed as a qualitative analysis, by applying the definitions of science and propaganda on three papers written by William S. Lind on 4GW. The purpose of the paper is not to prove that the concept of 4GW is propaganda in its true sense, but only to show that the techniques and arguments used by Lind is unscientific and has more in common with techniques used in propaganda than with what could be called scientific.