geologia: Pseudoscience

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be scientific but are inherently incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims; reliance on confirmation bias rather than rigorous attempts at refutation; lack of openness to evaluation by other experts; absence of systematic practices when developing hypotheses; and continued adherence long after the pseudoscientific hypotheses have been experimentally discredited. It is not the same as junk science, which is spurious or fraudulent scientific work. The demarcation between science and pseudoscience has scientific, philosophical, and…

Evidence: 65 • authority: 92

Authority Brings Responsibility: Feedback from Experts Promotes an Overweighting of Health-Related Pseudoscientific Beliefs.. The popularity and spread of health-related pseudoscientific practices is a worldwide problem. Despite being counteracted by competent agents of our societies, their prevalence and spread continue to grow. Current research has focused on identifying which characteristics make us more likely to hold pseudoscientific beliefs. However, how we hold these beliefs despite all the available information against them is a question that remains unanswered. Here, we aimed to assess if the development of health-related pseudoscientific beliefs could be driven by a positive bias…

Evidence: 53 • authority: 72

A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from the norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, and irrationality. While cognitive biases may initially appear to be negative, some are adaptive. They may lead to more effective actions in a given context. Furthermore, allowing cognitive biases enables faster decisions which can be desirable when timeliness is more valuable than accuracy, as…

Evidence: — • authority: 88

Popular epistemically unwarranted beliefs inventory (<scp>PEUBI</scp>): A psychometric instrument for assessing paranormal, pseudoscientific and conspiracy beliefs. Abstract Studying epistemically unwarranted beliefs (EUB) is relevant at basic, applied, and social levels. However, EUB scales validated in Spain are scare. Consequently, we aimed to develop and validate a scale of this kind. One thousand four hundred and sixty participants answered to a preliminary version of the questionnaire. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed the final form of PEUBI: a 36‐item instrument with five related factors (Superstitions, Occultism and Pseudoscience, Traditional Religion, Extraordi…

Evidence: — • authority: 88

Random Sequences, Experienced Coincidences, and Pseudoscientific Beliefs. ABSTRACT Previous studies have found a positive link between endorsement of paranormal beliefs and experiencing more “meaningful” coincidences (e.g., thinking of someone and then meeting them unexpectedly) and a stronger repetition avoidance bias. We tested if these effects also apply to pseudoscientific beliefs. Volunteers completed a pseudoscience endorsement scale, reported the frequency and explanations for experienced coincidences, and performed random sequence generation tasks. Higher pseudoscience endorsement was associated with more frequent meaningful coincidences and attributing them to non‐chance causes. Be…

Evidence: — • authority: 88

Willingness to transmit and the spread of pseudoscientific beliefs. Summary Pseudoscientific beliefs are widespread and can be damaging. If several studies have examined the factors leading people to accept pseudoscientific beliefs, no attention has been paid to the factors contributing to people's willingness to transmit these beliefs. To test whether the willingness to transmit pseudoscientific beliefs contributes to their spread, independent of their believability, we asked participants to rate statements corresponding either to pseudoscientific beliefs (Myths), or to their (correct) negations (Non‐Myths). Statements were rated on believability, on how willing participants would be to tr…

Evidence: — • authority: 88

The Illusion of Causality: A Cognitive Bias Underlying Pseudoscience. In the last decades, cognitive Psychology has provided researchers with a powerful background and the rigor of experimental methods to better understand why so many people believe in pseudoscience, paranormal phenomena and superstitions. According to recent evidence, those irrational beliefs could be the unintended result of how the mind evolved to use heuristics and reach conclusions based on scarce and incomplete data. Thus, we present visual illusions as a parallel to the type of fast and frugal cognitive bias that underlies pseudoscientific belief. In particular, we focus on the causal illusion, which consists of peop…