• Question: What is pseudoscience?

    Asked by to James, Jennifer, Kim, Liam on 25 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: James Taylor

      James Taylor answered on 25 Jun 2014:

      In short – something that pretends to be science. Good science is based on hypothesis testing and scientific method. You have something (a hypothesis) that you wish to test, then you design an experiment (or a series of experiments to test the hypothesis). The experiements must be repeatable and objective. If something it is not repeatable and not objective (i.e. has a bias) but gives the appearance of being a scientific study then I would call it pseudoscience.

    • Photo: Jennifer Stephens

      Jennifer Stephens answered on 25 Jun 2014:

      Hi 12sarsat
      James is correct. As an example Astrology is a pseudoscience. Although we all know what our star sign is and some people may swear by the predictions from their favourite astrologer there is no scientific proof that it works.

      When it was first proposed that the Earth was round, this was an early example of pseudoscience. Up till then it was accepted that the Earth was flat.

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