Agnostic.com

4 5

There are many people out there who think they know what they are talking about and who love using big words to try to impress others. 🙄

I enjoyed reading this article.

[bigthink.com]


How to Use the Feynman Technique to Identify Pseudoscience
Richard Feynman's method for understanding science can also be used for detecting pseudoscience.

In late 2015, a study made headlines worldwide by bluntly demonstrating the human capacity to be misled by “pseudo-profound bullshit” from the likes of Deepak Chopra, infamous for making profound sounding yet entirely meaningless statements by abusing scientific language.

Feynman’s parable about the meaning of science is a valuable way of testing ourselves on whether we have really learned something, or whether we just think we have learned something, but it is equally useful for testing the claims of others. If someone cannot explain something in plain English, then we should question whether they really do themselves understand what they profess. If the person in question is communicating ostensibly to a non-specialist audience using specialist terms out of context, the first question on our lips should be: “Why?” In the words of Feyman, “It is possible to follow form and call it science, but that is pseudoscience.”

[bigthink.com]

Ryo1 8 June 18
Share

Enjoy being online again!

Welcome to the community of good people who base their values on evidence and appreciate civil discourse - the social network you will enjoy.

Create your free account

4 comments

Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.

1

Very interesting!

3

The problem is that not that many people have the horsepower to see nonsense for what it is when confronted with it. Very often, the BS is sprayed as from a fire-hose so that analysis of any part is overtaken by more crap.

Hmm. I am blinkered by my own world view (and I recently learned that I am not a neurotypical). If any claim cannot be expressed mathematically as well as being repeatedly supported by experimental evidence, then I call bullshit on the claim. Anybody tries to fire-hose me with claims gets told to cut the crap.

I long ago dismissed Deepak Chopra as a spewer of nonsense.

5

i've said it before, here it is again: Those of you who Think you know everything are extremely annoying to those of us who do.
Big words ain't gonna help ya!

@TheInterlooper What was….?

3

Interesting. And, the article’s author introduces Feynman with, In a lecture given by Richard Feynman in 1966, the influential theoretical physicist….

Do theoretical physicists use the scientific method?

A delayed add:
And in science what you do with ideas, with guesses or hypotheses or tentative conclusions, is to try to confirm or disprove them. ...................From Digging Dinosaurs by John R. Horner

I am not certain if the following quotation is by Einstein or if it was attributed to him. "If you want to understand the theoretical physicists do not merely listen to what they say observe what they do."

@Ryo1 I once heard someone says that academic scientists suffer from the publish or perish syndrome.

@ASTRALMAX Under “Theoretical Physicist Quotes” I found this attributed to AE:
If you want to find out anything from the theoretical physicists about the methods they use, I advise you to stick closely to one principle: don't listen to their words, fix your attention on their deeds. To him who is a discoverer in this field the products of his imagination appear so necessary and natural that he regards them, and would like to have them regarded by others, not as creations of thought but as given realities.

Write Comment
You can include a link to this post in your posts and comments by including the text q:672368
Agnostic does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any content. Read full disclaimer.