Pseudoscience Quotes

“You know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work? - Medicine.”
― Tim Minchin

“deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Praxeology is a theoretical and systematic, not a historical, science. Its scope is human action as such, irrespective of all environmental, accidental, and individual circumstances of the concrete acts. Its cognition is purely formal and general without reference to the material content and the particular features of the actual case. It aims at knowledge valid for all instances in which the conditions exactly correspond to those implied in its assumptions and inferences. Its statements and propositions are not derived from experience. They are, like those of logic and mathematics, a priori. They are not subject to verification or falsification on the ground of experience and facts.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

“Sheep used to have wings. One flew into the sky and all the others followed. They took their wings off while feeding in the warm sun but the wind blew away their wings so they couldn't fly anymore. They had to return to earth by drifting to where the sky curves down and touches the land, and then walk round the long way.. i like that..”
― Richard Adams, The Plague Dogs

“Why does Alexander the Great never tell us about the exact location of his tomb, Fermat about his Last Theorem, John Wilkes Booth about the Lincoln assassination conspiracy, Hermann Göring about the Reichstag fire? Why don’t Sophocles, Democritus, and Aristarchus dictate their lost books?”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Treating Abuse Today 3(4) pp. 26-33
TAT: No. I don't know anymore than you know they're not. But, I'm talking about boundaries and privacy here. As a therapist working with survivors, I have been harassed by people who claim to be affiliated with the false memory movement. Parents and other family members have called or written me insisting on talking with me about my patients' cases, despite my clearly indicating I can't because of professional confidentiality. I have had other parents and family members investigate me -- look into my professional background -- hoping to find something to discredit me to the patients I was seeing at the time because they disputed their memories. This isn't the kind of sober, scientific discourse you all claim you want.”
― David L. Calof

“Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience promptly fills. If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience. But a kind of Gresham’s Law prevails in popular culture by which bad science drives out good.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Treating Abuse Today 3(4) pp. 26-33
Freyd: The term "multiple personality" itself assumes that there is "single personality" and there is evidence that no one ever displays a single personality.

TAT: The issue here is the extent of dissociation and amnesia and the extent to which these fragmentary aspects of personality can take executive control and control function. Sure, you and I have different parts to our mind, there's no doubt about that, but I don't lose time to mine they can't come out in the middle of a lecture and start acting 7 years old. I'm very much in the camp that says that we all are multi-minds, but the difference between you and me and a multiple is pretty tangible.

Freyd: Those are clearly interesting questions, but that area and the clinical aspects of dissociation and multiple personalities is beyond anything the Foundation is actively...

TAT: That's a real problem. Let me tell you why that's a problem. Many of the people that have been alleged to have "false memory syndrome" have diagnosed dissociative disorders. It seems to me the fact that you don't talk about dissociative disorders is a little dishonest, since many people whose lives have been impacted by this movement are MPD or have a dissociative disorder. To say, "Well, we ONLY know about repression but not about dissociation or multiple personalities" seems irresponsible.

Freyd: Be that as it may, some of the scientific issues with memory are clear. So if we can just stick with some things for a moment; one is that memories are reconstructed and reinterpreted no matter how long ago or recent.

TAT: You weigh the recollected testimony of an alleged perpetrator more than the alleged victim's. You're saying, basically, if the parents deny it, that's another notch for disbelief.

Freyd: If it's denied, certainly one would want to check things. It would have to be one of many factors that are weighed -- and that's the problem with these issues -- they are not black and white, they're very complicated issues.”
― David L. Calof

“Una de las lecciones más tristes de la historia es ésta: si se está sometido a un engaño demasiado tiempo, se tiende a rechazar cualquier prueba de que es un engaño.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“A sedução do maravilhoso embota nossas faculdades críticas.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“If we teach only the findings and products of science – no matter how useful and even inspiring they may be – without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish science from pseudoscience?”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Treating Abuse Today (Tat), 3(4), pp. 26-33
Freyd: You were also looking for some operational criteria for false memory syndrome: what a clinician could look for or test for, and so on. I spoke with several of our scientific advisory board members and I have some information for you that isn't really in writing at this point but I think it's a direction you want us to go in. So if I can read some of these notes . . .

TAT: Please do.

Freyd: One would look for false memory syndrome:

1. If a patient reports having been sexually abused by a parent, relative or someone in very early childhood, but then claims that she or he had complete amnesia about it for a decade or more;

2. If the patient attributes his or her current reason for being in therapy to delayed-memories. And this is where one would want to look for evidence suggesting that the abuse did not occur as demonstrated by a list of things, including firm, confident denials by the alleged perpetrators;

3. If there is denial by the entire family;

4. In the absence of evidence of familial disturbances or psychiatric illnesses. For example, if there's no evidence that the perpetrator had alcohol dependency or bipolar disorder or tendencies to pedophilia;

5. If some of the accusations are preposterous or impossible or they contain impossible or implausible elements such as a person being made pregnant prior to menarche, being forced to engage in sex with animals, or participating in the ritual killing of animals, and;

6. In the absence of evidence of distress surrounding the putative abuse. That is, despite alleged abuse going from age two to 27 or from three to 16, the child displayed normal social and academic functioning and that there was no evidence of any kind of psychopathology.

Are these the kind of things you were asking for?

TAT: Yeah, it's a little bit more specific. I take issue with several, but at least it gives us more of a sense of what you all mean when you say "false memory syndrome."

Freyd: Right. Well, you know I think that things are moving in that direction since that seems to be what people are requesting. Nobody's denying that people are abused and there's no one denying that someone who was abused a decade ago or two decades ago probably would not have talked about it to anybody. I think I mentioned to you that somebody who works in this office had that very experience of having been abused when she was a young teenager-not extremely abused, but made very uncomfortable by an uncle who was older-and she dealt with it for about three days at the time and then it got pushed to the back of her mind and she completely forgot about it until she was in therapy.

TAT: There you go. That's how dissociation works!

Freyd: That's how it worked. And after this came up and she had discussed and dealt with it in therapy, she could again put it to one side and go on with her life. Certainly confronting her uncle and doing all these other things was not a part of what she had to do. Interestingly, though, at the same time, she has a daughter who went into therapy and came up with memories of having been abused by her parents. This daughter ran away and is cutoff from the family-hasn't spoken to anyone for three years. And there has never been any meeting between the therapist and the whole family to try to find out what was involved.

TAT: If we take the first example -- that of her own abuse -- and follow the criteria you gave, we would have a very strong disbelief in the truth of what she told.”
― David L. Calof

“The origin of science is in the desire to know causes; and the origin of all false science and imposture is in the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.”
― William Hazlitt, New Writings by William Hazlitt: Second Series

“It's cloaked in cultural mumbo jumbo, but I assure you that it is very hard science.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dead of Night

“Spirituality is supposed to be an act of self awareness – an act of self-discovery - instead it has become a domain of new-age superstitions.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch

“I used to use 'manifest' as taking charge, till I realized, it evoked new-age stupidity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Divine Refugee

“[...] The statement "Botticelli's Birth of Venus is stunning", for starters, is an unfalsifiable hypothesis, because there is no experiment that might show this statement to be false. Parallax method and equations conventionally determined that the average distance between the Earth and the Moon is 384 400 Km (238 855 miles). Now, if we were to conduct hands-on investigation for its validation or an audit to demonstrate its falsification, direct testing of such a distance measure would require a scientist to physically travel the space with a giant ruler to calculate the scale between the two points. [...] The problem that scientific certainty is a myth still struggles to brush past the academic prejudice of most scientists who are green on critical analysis for its alleged pedagogical irrelevance.”
― Vincent Bozzino, Philosophy Trips: A Naive's Guide

“Anatomy of Conspiracy
(Sonnet 2094-2095)

The biggest conspiracy
in the world is to make people
think that there is a conspiracy,

because when people believe
in conspiracy, they get paranoid,
and a paranoid population is the ideal
consumer for various soothsaying items,

from guns, bombs and nuclear weapons,
to crystals, chemtrails, chakras,
magnets, gemstones, ouija, racial purity,
and plots of land in the afterlife.

Now, some of these items and ideas may be
harmless, others downright villainous,
but they are all part and parcel of
an insecure primate's pursuit for control -
delusional though such control may be.

Conspiracy, superstition, conventional
or newage, it's all about control,
either self-inflicted or institutionalized -
you are searching for order where there
is none, so your brain cooks up one,

just to keep you satisfied - and you
start seeing faces in the clouds,
or patterns in your star charts.

Keep your mind open, just not so open
that your brain starts leaking -
an empty attic is a primate's olympus.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neurosonnets: The Naskar Art of Neuroscience

“To bow like sheep or bend like goat, is sign of neither sanctity nor awakening.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“Remove guilt from mass, and control from yoga, and both can be equally therapeutic, but to bow like sheep or bend like goat, is sign of neither sanctity nor awakening.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“Superstition in Our Marrow (Sonnet 2428)

Earth is a planet of apes,
ivory tower apes diss faith out of reason,
pulpit apes diss reason out of faith -

then there are the newage apes,
chasing goat yoga, chakra penetration,
fortune cards, and aura farming,
who diss both conventional religion
and science, for they've found a more
self-absorbed method of hallucination.

Superstition runs through the marrow
of the human race, with each new generation
it merely changes costume.
Religion is superstition,
intellect is superstition,
newage spirituality is superstition -

from the sharpest of reason to the blindest of faith,
eventually all end up in superstition,
because in pursuit of a meaning higher than life,
we get disconnected from simple miracles of nature.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“In pursuit of a meaning higher than life, we get disconnected from simple miracles of nature.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“My favorite answer of all is, 'I don't know' - in the absence of rigorous investigation that's the answer I fall back on the most.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“La ciencia es más que un cuerpo de conocimiento, es una manera de pensar.
Tengo un presagio de la época de mis hijos o mis nietos, cuando Estados Unidos sea una economía de servicios e información; cuando casi todas las principales industrias manufactureras se hayan ido a otros países; cuando los increíbles poderes tecnológicos estén en manos de muy pocos, y nadie que represente el interés público pueda si quiera comprender los problemas; cuando la gente haya perdido la capacidad de establecer sus propias agendas o cuestionar sabiamente a los que tienen autoridad; cuando, abrazados a nuestras bolas de cristal y consultando nerviosamente nuestros horóscopos, con nuestras facultades críticas en declive, incapaces de distinguir entre lo que se siente bien y lo que es verdad, nos deslicemos de vuelta, casi sin darnos cuenta, en la superstición y la oscuridad. La caída en la estupidez de Norteamérica se hace evidente principalmente en la lenta decadencia del contenido de los medios de comunicación, de enorme influencia, las cuñas de sonido de treinta segundos (ahora reducidas a diez o menos), la programación de nivel ínfimo, las crédulas presentaciones de pseudociencia y superstición, pero sobre todo en una especie de celebración de la ignorancia.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“X
"La ciencia es más que un cuerpo de conocimiento, es una manera de pensar. Tengo un presagio de la época de mis hijos o mis nietos, cuando Estados Unidos sea una economía de servicios e información; cuando casi todas las principales industrias manufactureras se hayan ido a otros países; cuando los increíbles poderes tecnológicos estén en manos de muy pocos, y nadie que represente el interés público pueda siquiera comprender los problemas; cuando la gente haya perdido la capacidad de establecer sus propias agendas o cuestionar sabiamente a los que tienen autoridad; cuando, abrazados a nuestras bolas de cristal y consultando nerviosamente nuestros horóscopos, con nuestras facultades críticas en declive, incapaces de distinguir entre lo que se siente bien y lo que es verdad, nos deslicemos de vuelta, casi sin darnos cuenta, en la superstición y la oscuridad. La caída en la estupidez de Norteamérica se hace evidente principalmente en la lenta decadencia del contenido de los medios de comunicación, de enorme influencia, las cuñas de sonido de treinta segundos (ahora reducidas a diez o menos), la programación de nivel ínfimo, las crédulas presentaciones de pseudociencia y superstición, pero sobre todo en una especie de celebración de la ignorancia.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Beginner's Guide to The East
(Naskaristana 2758-2760)

Even when the west does embrace the east, it ends up drawing from superstitious fringes, and rebrands it as self awareness and spirituality - thus catholic guilt gets replaced with chakra cleansing, and christian afterlife is substituted with karmic justice -

for once in your life grow the brain and backbone to look at life as a living being, not as shape shifting vegetable, trading one gullibility for another, one fanaticism for another, one dogma for another -

there's no point in denouncing domestic dogma, if you end up importing your prejudices and blind faith from elsewhere.

Problem is, the race of apes have a stronger affinity to superstition than common sense, no matter the country or culture - westerners are drawn to eastern superstitions, just like easterners are drawn to western superstitions like ultraindividualism.

However, there is one little caveat here, while western ultraindividualism is rather straightforward and easy to detect, superstitions of the east, or in fact, any of the civilizations of global south, are often too complex for western comprehension -

so be very careful while calling out superstitions of the global south, in fact, put your caucasian cleverness aside, and take your cues from actual native thinkers, otherwise chances are, you'd be continuing your filthy ancestral habits of calling the natives savages, brainwashed by your subconscious colonial mindset, while believing yourself to be the voice of reason, not unlike how many of the brilliant militant atheists behave.

Remember one thing, the entire colonial terrorist lot not only believed that God was on their side, they also thought they were the voice of reason - so no matter how sure you are about your sense of truth, dehumanization always comes bearing the badge of religion, and waving the flag of reason.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“Even when the west does embrace the east, it ends up drawing from superstitious fringes, and rebrands it as self awareness and spirituality - thus catholic guilt gets replaced with chakra cleansing, and christian afterlife is substituted with karmic justice.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“If you cannot distinguish religion from fundamentalism, if you cannot distinguish spirituality from superstition, if you cannot distinguish science from insensitivity, if you cannot distinguish psychology from manipulation, do not call yourself human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“Sacred Without Supernatural
(Monk Scientist Diary, 2706)

Sacred stripped of supernatural
becomes astronomically potent -
blasphemy that ends prejudice is holy,
the divine is just human at full voltage.

Theology, philosophy, all are vanity -
bow to the breeze, submit to the soil.
Enlist as disciple to the original masters,
being awakens braving the heat of turmoil.

Soil is forever illiterate,
soil is eternally humble,
yet it contains the wisdom of the universe,
for it's made of the same stuff as the heavens.

What good to me are academic walls,
what good to me are church ceilings!
Mountains are my classroom, sky, my blackboard -
nature is my canon, cosmos is my kin.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“My spirituality has to do with equality, ethics and accountability, not aura, incense and vibration.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace