Essays on Pseudoscience

Pseudoscience is a belief or the process that attempts to trap the ideas, methodology and techniques from science, but it is not able to achieve them on its terms. On a wider note, the pursuits of the knowledge about in Pseudoscience involve considerable elements of guesswork, intuitions, and the experiments which do not adequately test the theory. Further, in pseudoscience, the results may be incorrectly interpreted or sometimes entirely wrong. The movie “The Chariots of the Gods” by Erich von Daniken uses considerable descriptions and the pseudoscience to the support the thematic ideas as depicted. Von Daniken describes being ...

According to the “science” of astrology, a person has particular personality traits based on the month, day, time, and place of their birth. While astrologers may defend this ancient craft of divination as science, does astrology merit inclusion in the world of science, disciplines of knowledge that include astronomy, chemistry, biology, physics and many other fields that entail rigorous observation, experimentation, and prediction? Clearly, astrology is a pseudoscience, and Imre Lakatos explains the rationale for its exclusion as legitimate science better than scientific philosophers, Thomas S. Kuhn, or Sir Karl Popper. In order to clarify the demarcation criteria between ...

Analysis of a Professional Journal

Analysis of a Professional Journal

Introduction

I am looking into an article that goes by the title: Self-driving Cars Meet Rubber Duckies. This article was published in April 20, 2016, by Adam Conner-Simons. This article got published in the MIT news (Conner-Simons, 2016). I found the article on the internet as I was making a research on the fast modification of cars over the years. I picked this article because it touches on an area that I am so passionate about. It is everyone’s dream to own a self-driving car at one time or the other. According to Conner-Simons ( ...

After seeing the pamphlet on “Ghostblasters,” a business dedicated to remove ghost from the home through a scientific process, it was important to explore how legitimate this claim is. Typically, there is not even proof of ghosts as an actual reality, but rather a myth to frighten young children. Here, there is business advertising and collecting money from individuals who seek their services believing there has been an “ectoplasmic” removal of the ghost materials. Not only has the proof of ghosts been inconclusive from a scientific point, but the possibility to remove something that has not even been proven ...

An Assignment Submitted by

After reviewing the case study, it is possible to claim that there are several inconsistencies with the claims made in the scenario. First of all, the study creates a vivid claim in the title that does not correlate with the study conducted by the researcher. The entire case uses a false attraction for the readers in order to impose its agenda. The title suggests wearing red in order to be noticed in the crowd, but the study evaluates only the de-saturated colors of a narrow range in terms of saliency. Secondly, the study does not provide any hypothesis or ...

Scenario C

Naive realism implies that the world is exactly the way we perceive it (Lilienfeld). This fact brings about mental short cut especially for the Dr in scenario C who has biased assumptions of the effects of cycling. Therefore, with the biased assumptions the researcher will ignore all the background information of the other participants in the research. The problem, in this case, is that the world is not exactly in the manner we want to see it. In scenario C, the doctor has expectations that the participants will have the same results as him and therefore, he relied on ...

Assignment 2: The Major Areas of Psychology

Abstract: Psychology is the study of human behavior and the mind. Unlike pseudoscience, it applies scientific method in comprehending the way of the world. There are five major areas in psychology. Developmental psychology focuses on the life span development of humans. Secondly, cognitive psychology focuses on the use of attention, memory, perception, and the capacity of the brain to think and solve problems. Thirdly, behavioral psychology refers to how humans behave, as a result of what they learn over their lifetime; it can be under classical conditioning, operant conditioning, or observational conditioning. Fourthly, social psychology refers to the behavior ...

- Reasons for scientifically studying psychology

Psychology covers the science of both the behavior of human and nonhuman entities. Because science is a systematized body of knowledge it adds fulfilment to the humanity as it operates in the context of observation thereby leading to a deeper understanding of how a system works.

- Falsifiability

Falsifiability is that property that a hypothesis, a theory or a law may be proven wrong or false. Thus, most scientists expressed their data in confidence interval such as 99.99% certainty about some correlations because there is still a 0.01% that scientist may be wrong with such correlation.

- Confirmation bias

Confirmation bias is defined as the propensity of a researcher to interpret results ...

Abstract

The goal of critical thinking is the development of thinking skills. The ability to make informed decisions, work with information, analyze various aspects of the phenomena, and so on. This technology aims to develop the student basic indicators which are estimates, openness to new ideas, their own opinion and the reflection of their own judgment. 1. Critical thinking is a system of judgment that is used for the analysis with the formulation of valid conclusions and correctly apply the results to the situations and problems. Critical thinking implies the use of cognitive techniques or strategies that increases the probability ...

Education is a conventional mode of receiving knowledge needed for people to pursue professional aspirations. What shape such aspirations are schools that narrow children’s scope of interests, determine the areas of expertise and, most importantly, provide with knowledge. To make school environment better in terms of efficiency, school officials came to introduce class differentiation years ago. The system of single-class schools had not regained its popularity with American parents until 2000s. On paper, single class schools handle the problem of bullying, however, not necessarily. Better school performance and mental skills development are believed to be the case in such ...

Falsifiability refers to the logical possibility that certain physical experiments or observations can prove particular assertions to be untrue. If an assertion is false based on observations or given tests then it is falsifiable. This does not necessarily mean that the assertion is false but rather that its falsehood can be proven. For instance, is a claim is made to the effect that ‘no humans live forever’ one cannot prove it to be untrue. This is because to prove that the truthfulness or otherwise of the statement, one would need to observe a human that lives forever in order to affirm ...

Introduction

Biology and information technology holds many things in common. The two aspects deal with astounding complexity, organism representing biology and networks, computers representing technology. Experts have developed many innovations in the world today that focuses on solving different problems affecting the society. The following paper helps in naming and explaining how a specific scientific method helps solve the problem. The definitions of scientific and pseudoscientific bring many confusion and debates. Pseudoscience refers to the abuse of a certain claim that an individual does not like for any given reason. There exists a concrete difference between science and pseudoscience.

Strengths and limitations of scientific knowledge and the scientific method

One of the ...

The term, ‘Pseudoscience’ denotes one or more assertions, faiths or traditional practices that are presented as science. These practices or claims fail in adhering when measured or tested by methods of science. The reliability of pseudoscience cannot be trusted and it lacks scientific reasonableness. Pseudoscience have different importance and should not be discarded even if there are some issues with them. Pseudoscience may appear valueless in modern society but it has guided and regulated the civilization for a quite long time. This paper intends to discuss pseudoscience and discusses how it is difference from science along with analyzing that pseudoscience ...

The scientific method is based on four basic steps. Firstly there is an observation of a phenomenon. Secondly, a hypothesis is formed which takes the form of an if-then statement. Thirdly, a hypothesis is used to make predictions of what will occur. Finally, those predictions are tested in a series of experiments (What is the “scientific method”?, 1998). The purpose of the scientific method is to create a road map that can be easily replicated by someone if they wanted to test to see if your conclusions were accurate. A hallmark of good science is the reproducibility of results, that is, the results ...

Pseudosciences are practices that masquerade themselves as science but have little or no scientific rigor or cohesion to them. They claim to be factual and scientific, yet do not adhere to scientific methodology and principles (Braithwaite 2006). In simple and lucid terms, pseudoscience is non-scientific and fails to adhere to the basic scientific principles, most importantly and notably the scientific principle of falsability. Pseudoscience lacks empirical and practical evidences and proofs for most of its claims and practices and hence discarded as misleading and false by leading scientists and scientific organizations. But the proponents of different pseudosciences claim them ...

Pseudo means false or something that is not genuine whereas science signifies knowledge that is gained through observation, experimentation and investigation hence Pseudoscience as a word is quite paradoxical. Similarly the basis of Astrology is considered to be paradoxical and conflicting. Astrology is a belief system that the movements of celestial bodies have a certain influence on human beings and certain outcomes are predicted on the basis of these movements. Planets are held responsible for the physical and mental traits of a person. Additionally, it is also believed that a person’s fortunes can be amplified and performing certain rituals can alter misfortunes. ...

Background

Recent behavioral studies have shown the clinical relevance of meditation in the treatment of stress-related physiological and psychological illnesses. Kabat-Zinn et al. (1998) found that audio-induced mindfulness meditation reduced stress and increased the rate of healing of psoriatic lesions in patients with psoriasis. Krisanaprakornkit et al. (2006) reviewed a variety of meditation techniques on the effect of stress-related anxiety disorders and found that most meditation approaches can help patients self-regulate anxiety symptoms in a variety of anxiety conditions. In an extensive literature review comprising hundreds of studies conducted in the past 20 years, Jacobs (2001) also found that relaxation techniques and ...

Q1. What is the effect of VLSM therapy on state anxiety levels, as measured by the STAI?

Q2. What is the effect of VLSM therapy on perceived stress levels, as measured by the PSS? Research Method

This will be a prospective, randomized, controlled clinical trial designed to examine the effects of VLSM meditation therapy (Solfanelli, 2010) on state anxiety levels and perceived stress levels. As previously noted, state anxiety will be operationally defined as scores on Spielberger’s State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), whereas stress will be operationally defined as scores on the Perceived Stress scale (PSS).

Audio-visual stimulation (AVS) ...