How to protect Science from religious pseudo-"sciences"?

Question

I don't believe that Science can explain "everything", but personally, I only trust grounded scientists.

How to neutralize pseudo-scientists from interfering in Science?

Thx Happy-Atheist :-)

It seems indeed that Real Science protects itself, whatever it seems :-)

Thx everyone for your reassuring replies :-)

It appears to me that scientists believe in pragmatic observations, then build up theoretical models based on what they observe.

I see 2 kinds of scientists:

- those who dare to modify their theoretical models when unexpected observations contradict them;

- those who deny unexpected contradicting observations because they are afraid their theoretical models become obsolete.

Answer 1

Point out why what they are doing isn't science. Science is naturally protected from these people through the scientific method. Protecting our science classrooms is the issue.

Answer 2

Science itself doesn't need protecting from pseudo sciences.

The trouble occurs when people use bad science (specifically bad RESEARCH) as a basis for more science ... and when people believe them.

Then we go on the wrong track.

Actually, science self corrects because we should continue to do more research - especially when we come across some new phenomenon that is inexplicable to current thinking.

Consider science in the time of Newton ... when if you knew the speed, direction and mass you could calculate anything. Light was a particle and you could calculate it bouncing off reflective surfaces like a billiard ball.

THEN we found you couldn't. Light could go through two slits and cause an interference pattern like a wave.

Later we found that when things get really small, we can know the position but not the velocity of a particle... or vice versa ...

We can build quite a big amount of theory on some assumptions only to discover later that some of the assumptions are not quite correct and our theory collapses. But that is the process of science - approaching truth bit by bit... asymptotically

Religious people go for the truth by the throat. They jump there and believe.

We just hope they believe the right thing.

Answer 3

I agree that we do not need to protect science against pseudo-scientists, because one of the beauties of Science is that it is self-correcting. Even if every scientist in the world is on the wrong track about something, some clever guy comes along and, through well designed, executed and controlled experiments, turns the theory on its head and the Truth emerges. What is important is that scientists don't believe in something dogmatically as religious people do. All that should matter is scrutiny, scepticism and listening to what the data is telling you.

Fortunately, pseudo-scientists are not in positions of power in the scientific community since pretty much all of academic science is peer reviewed. What is much more important to protect is an uninformed public from bad information and unsubstantiated claims. The public tends to blindly accept anything that comes out of a person's mouth as long as they have a PhD or MD, and, when issues are ethically complicated like to pick and choose the results that suite their belief system. It is very important for scientists to clarify, explain and inform the public as to the details and importance of work being done. This automatically guards bad information from working its way into the minds of the most vulnerable. Otherwise, the anti-science trend in leadership of our country will be allowed to intensify.

Answer 4

Protecting science from religious pseudoscience
is a social, political and educational problem, not
a scientific one. Check out the book titled Creationism's Trojan horse to see how a well financed group of creationists is conducting a
massive public relations campaign to push what
they call intelligent design. These people are
scary, they would push us back into a religion
dominated Middle Ages if they could. See also
books by Martin Gardner and James Randi, both
of whom deal with a lot of pseudoscience and
how to expose it.

Answer 5

i don't think pseudo-sciences interfere rather they help like many apparatus were given by alchemists.
ALSO BEFORE THE DISCOVERY OF MAGNETISM, ATTRACTING AN OBJECT TO A METAL WAS CONSIDERED MAGIC. BUT WITH THE DISCOVERY OF THEORY MAGNETISM, THIS MAGIC BECAME PART OF SCIENCE