Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Master of pseudoscience …

… Why Freud Should Be Dead - Scientific American Blog Network. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

As the late philosopher Frank Cioffi convincingly maintained, a pseudoscience can be recognized not by its false claims but by the behavior of its proponents when one of their beliefs is disconfirmed or shown to be vacuous. Then the defenders will either dispute the refutation, cite imaginary proofs, slander the critic, co-opt the criticism by attaching ad hoc provisos to their doctrine, or pretend that their theory meant something else altogether. 
Three cheers to John Horgan for bringing this to our attention.

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