the.com/pseudoscience
Science's cosplay: all the jargon, none of the peer review.
means A claim or practice that dresses itself up as science — with jargon, confident charts, and an air of authority — but doesn't actually follow the scientific method of testing, evidence, and being provable wrong.
from Bolted together from Greek 'pseudes' (false, lying) and 'science,' itself from Latin 'scientia' (knowledge), rooted in 'scire,' to know. 'Pseudo-' has long been English's go-to prefix for exposing fakes — pseudonyms, pseudo-intellectuals — and by the 19th century it was pinned onto 'science' to call out ideas that borrowed the lab coat but skipped the lab work: phrenology, astrology, and their modern descendants.
- key tell
- unfalsifiable claims dressed up as settled fact
- favorite trick
- cherry-picks evidence, ignores contradicting data
- classic example
- homeopathy, diluted past the point of chemistry
- real danger
- borrows just enough credibility to delay real cures