Research Methods for Social Work (Empowerment Series)

by Allen Rubin

Common Warning Signs for Detecting the Possibility of Pseudoscience Pseudoscientific proponents of an intervention will: • Make extreme claims about its wonders • Overgeneralize regarding whom it benefits • Concoct unusual, speculative explanations for its effectiveness • Concoct pretentious jargon for aspects of their intervention that sounds scientific but really is not • Base their claims on • Testimonials and anecdotes • Authorities or gurus • Tradition • Sloppy or biased research • The popularity of their intervention • Selective observation of a few cases • Portrayals of their intervention in the popular media (such as movies or TV shows) • React to disconfirming evidence by • Ignoring it, citing only those sources that support their intervention • Explaining it away through ex post facto hypothesizing • Engaging in an ad hominem attack on those who cite the disconfirming evidence • Exaggerating the importance of minor flaws in the source of the disconfirming evidence • Exaggerating the rigor and superiority of the studies that support their intervention • Engaging in a straw person argument in which they distort the arguments of those who question them so as to make those arguments easier to attack • Citing a historical scientist (such as Galileo or Freud) whose contemporaries were wrong in questioning them (and thus implicitly comparing themselves to the historical luminary) • Attributing it to the vested interests of those who are threatened by their intervention ...