What Defines Science and Pseudoscience

Considering whether a certain phenomenon is scientific or not has been a controversial subject since the entertaining industry has been supporting the public' science illiteracy by promoting a branch of fictions as scientifically proven facts. Movies, nowadays, are full of a tremendous number of paranormal phenomena, such as extraordinary perception, ghosts, haunted houses and other forms of pseudoscience. Yet, mass media is still an essential part of our life whether we like it or not, and so its toxic ideas in which claims are presented as a scientific in the eye of public. However, some people still argue that miracles can happen, and that scientists deny reality just because they cannot justify it.

On the other hand, scientists say that the majority of paranormal phenomena have their natural explanations, while the others are just a fraud. “Gifted people' who claim that they have the abilities to read minds, emotions, and even heal them are just gifted in performing under “The Red Lights' or in other words the disordered notes. In 2012, movie called ' The red lights' shows the battle between science, which is represented by the psychologist and paranormal investigator Dr. Margaret Matheson, who mentioned to one of her students that after thirty years of investigation all kinds of phenomena she has not yet witness a single miracle, and her assistant Dr. Tom Buckley a physicist whose mother was a victim of psychic's wrong diagnosis that costed her life, and pseudoscience, which is represented by Simon Silver, who worked as psychic thirty years ago and decided to come back and stun the audience with his outstanding level of healing that scientists, from his view, could not understand or even interpret it.

The psychologist Dr. Margaret used the scientific methods to solve many claims and phenomena. From the first senses of the movie the psychologist and her assistant attend an experimental sitting, whereby they were sitting around a table and holding each other hands on the top of the table with other three people who claimed that their house was haunted, during their empirical experience the table legs come off the ground, the psychologist and her physicist assistant were observing and questioning themselves and they concluded that the house was not haunted in fact there is a scientific hypotheses behind it, when someone presses hard on the top of the table and draw his/her hand toward their bodies the table legs are going up as well. Also, sticking the edge of a show under one of the table legs and pressing down by hands and lifting the foot at the same time can make the whole table come off the ground.

While the psychologist and the physicist were trying to clarify phenomena, the psychic Simon Silver was hypnotizing the audience by telling them what they came for, which was that they get cured due to his outstanding miracle. However, that claims did not last so long when the physicist faced the psychic in one of his performances and proved that his miracle was nothing except a fraud. Not only sciences might be harmed due to the false facts, agents of socialization share, but societies as well. Humankind in its early ages used to justify the events around them by following simple steps called “Scientific method”. This process includes four steps which are observing the phenomenon, making hypothesis that explains the observation, experimenting the hypothesis, and concluding by creating law for that phenomenon.

However, people in the modern world are more likely to be deeply influenced by the widespread pseudoscience thoughts via media platforms. Communication with dead, for instance, is a likeable idea for the audience who strive for any kind of communication with their loved one, or just because in their unconscious level of thinking they want to feel safe by believing in life after death. Pseudoscience is a fraud that relies on the entertaining fiction media provides and the misusing of human psychology. Frankly, close examination of the pseudoscience foundation can reveal that it is nothing more than a parodies. Pseudo fact lacks supporting evidences, and believing it indicates lacking the critical thinking skills, which require a careful judging to the quality of an evidence. In addition, most pseudoscience forms secretly focus on self-hypnosis, placebo effects, and distraction to prove their abilities to cure others pains and problems. As a result, pseudoscience claims have always been an active subject to debate not only from scientists’ view but sometimes public as well. People who have a profound belief on pseudoscience forms are often associated with delusion due to their nonsense belief that lacks any sort of valid proof.

Moreover, pseudoscience base would only use ignorant evidences to define themselves, saying that a belief or idea has not been disproved, for instance. Pseudoscience supporters and believers are under “Galileo effect” by that I mean those people are deeply impacted by the idea that what is not proven or even ignored now, would become accepted one day. Pseudoscience hallmarks are used to be the attendance to rely on the ancient wisdoms and belief systems rather than the empirical evidences and the researches based on these evidences. Ancient astronauts, as an example, which pseudoscientific belief that extraterrestrial visitors, whom considered as gods, visited Earth and made contact with humans in a prehistoric times, and this kind of thought does not have any logical explanations or experimental evidences. So, being skeptical is completely logical toward those kind of suspicious ways of thinking. Debates can be easily made against illogical claims, pseudoscience promotes.

To sum up, pseudo means “fake”, and the best way to prove a nonsense idea is by being informed more about what is real and logical. In this case, it is “Science”, which not only creates a hypothesis and publishes it, as pseudoscience does, scientists would examine these hypotheses and go through serious of a scientific process. The aim of science is to confirm or disconfirm an explanation of a phenomenon, while pseudoscience just wants to hold their false beliefs and widespread their misunderstanding.

The Distinguishing Science and pseudoscience, however, is an easy to tall apart. The only concern scientists have is the public, who is mostly still ignorant for the real definition of a theory, for instance. Overall, science efforts in educated people to knowledge which is scientific or fraud fact have noticeably increased due to the large number of scientific organizations that fight to tell the truth about the claims pseudoscience and media represent as a scientific.