Pseudoscience and Science

Environmental & Science Education, STEM, History of Science, Nature of Science

Ed Hessler

Theoretical physicists Sabine Hossenfelder introduces the video, "How I Learned to Love Pseudoscience," with these words. "On this channel, I try to separate the good science from the bad science, the pseudoscience. And I used to think that we’d be better off without pseudoscience, that this would prevent confusion and make our lives easier. But now I think that pseudoscience is actually good for us. And that’s what we’ll talk about today."

It is a wonderful video (13m 14s) and begins with her definition of pseudoscience, the relationship between pseudoscience and science--Hossenfelder notes "You can't have one without the other," and as you will see pseudoscience often leads to improvements in methods. She discusses the work of Franz Mesmer and homeopathy in some detail then closes with some short examples of how pseudoscience "resulted in scientific and societal progress, including philosophy of science. Hossenfelder closes with some comments on the continuing fight against pseudoscience.

Here it is, the talk and the transcript which you can also access on YouTube.