After our lecture last night talking about experts and analysing risk in our controversies, I was thinking about how this applied to mine. So coming up in the next few posts, expect to see some of these ideas cropping up. I think the 'risks' as we discussed them (which I'll probably explain if I remember) are still in my controversy, but in a different way to normal. I'll be bringing in some of the discussion on experts too, questioning the legitimacy of both sides on the debate. I guess I'll probably give an overview of what the whole controversy seems to be at some point soon too.
For now, I'll explain a bit why things such as Intelligent Design are often considered pseudoscience by 'experts'.
Things that are classed as pseudoscience, such as astrology or ghosts, find themselves within this category because they often fail one part of the scientific method. You can't falsify them. A key part of the scientific method is being able to say something is wrong or untrue. It's very difficult to prove something is true ALL the time, but if something can be falsified, then we can assume that it's not right. These pseudosciences can make a lot of claims which seem to follow the scientific method, but once you actually scrutinize them you can see they fall short.
For example, I could say that there's no such thing as Tinnitus. Instead what is really happening is that a tiny invisible unicorn is dancing around inside your ear canal singing happy songs. Unicorns are magical creatures too, so they can't just be washed out or blown out. Now while this may seem like a good proposition, you can't *really* prove it wrong. There's no way to test it, because I can just keep saying "The unicorn is invisible, you can't see it" or "It's magical and hiding from you". So unless you can then explain to me how magic (something else that doesn't exist) works, and how we can counteract it to make the unicorn visible and catch it to prove it is/isn't there, this isn't really a scientific theory.
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