Incorrigible Science and Doctrinal Pseudoscience

ABSTRACT

I respond to Sven Ove Hansson’s [2020. "Disciplines, Doctrines, and Deviant Science." International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 33 (1): 43-52. doi:10.1080/02698595.2020.1831258] discussion note on my (Letrud 2019) critique of his (2013) pseudoscience definition. My critique addressed what I considered to be issues with his choice of definiendum, the efficiency of the definition for debunking pseudoscience, and a problematic extensional overlap with bad science. I attempted to solve these issues by proposing some modifications to his definition. I shall address the four main points of the discussion: whether the primary definiendum ought to be ‘pseudoscience’ or ‘pseudoscientific statement’ (I make a moderate case for ‘pseudoscience’), whether ‘discipline’ is an apt category for the definiens (it is, extensionally), and how to go about debunking pseudoscience (it is complicated). And, perhaps most importantly, whether Hansson’s definition of pseudoscientific statement subsumes examples of bad science, and thus science. I present a case study of efforts at correcting unreliable models proliferating in the research literature. This case demonstrates how bad science can satisfy Hansson’s criteria for pseudoscientific statement, including the criterion of deviant doctrine.

KEYWORDS:

• Pseudoscience
• demarcation
• definition
• pseudoscientific

Acknowledgements

I owe thanks to Lars Christie, Hedda Hassel Mørch, Anna-Sara Malmgren, and the two anonymous ISPS reviewers for helpful comments, questions, and corrections.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 ‘ … both the – ic and – ical endings have the basic meanings “of or pertaining to”, “relating to”, “resembling”, “having the quality of” or “characterised by” … ’ (Kaunisto 2007, 30).

2 This work was done in late 2019.