(PSEUDO)Science

NOTES

How evidence is distorted

1. Authority- Ethos makes us believe silly/irrational ideas

It is crucial to verify the source to establish the credibility/confirm the veracity of an argument.

Claim: Fish oil pills increases productivity in children
3,000 children- 6 pills each, then would compare exam results/performance to what they "predicted" performance to be. The problem with such an experiment is the fact that the data and observations that the treatment results will be compared to are purely fictional and hence eradicate the reliability of the data derived.

Placebo effect: our cultural belief in treatment. Feels like a much more dramatic intervention. Done as our beliefs and expectations can be manipulated.

Rig your data by making the competing new drugs distorted/rubbish to make one drug appear to be better than another

Industry funded trials are 4 times more likely to produce more flattering results than independently funded trials

Publication bias present in publication bias
- whereas the unfit data is withdrawn from data set to skew data to fit the product.

If we remove half the data, we can never know the true impact of the data or come to an accurate conclusive result

Scientific claims:

-Observations
-Predictions
-Experimentations
-Analysis
-Conclusion

Pseudo Science Claims
-Observations
-Predictions
-Generalization
-Expectation
-Conclusion

Claims Evaluation: superstitions often distort reality