Table of contents

1 Pathological science 2 Criticisms 3 See also 4 External links and bibliography

Pathological science

Pathological science describes a psychological process in which a scientist, originally conforming to scientific method, unconsciously veers from that method, and begins a pathological process of wishful data interpretation. Criteria for pathological science are:

• The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
• The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability, or many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
• There are claims of great accuracy.
• Fantastic theories contrary to experience are suggested.
• Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur of the moment.
• The ratio of supporters to critics rises and then falls gradually to oblivion.

Criticisms

Ironically, Langmuir was a supporter of the cubical atom, a theory that ultimately befell the same fate as N rays.

Mainstream scienctists have sometimes failed welcome or approve of certain approaches and theories that have, later become mainstream. Some of the advocates of such approaches have been labeled pathological. Examples of theories and approaches that have been described as pathological include (some in retrospect incorrectly, others are still unaccepted, others are now widely thought to have been wrong):

• Linus Pauling's work with vitamins (in particular, vitamin C) Pauling was a Nobel Prize winning 20th century chemist
• C. G. Barkla's J-phenomenon (Barkla's 1917 Nobel Prize in physics was for work with X-rays; the J-phenomenon is discontinuities in X-ray absorption at high frequency)
• Sir Arthur Eddington's "fundamental theory" (Eddington was a pioneer in theoretical astronomy)
• Halton Arp's astronomical work in the red-shifts phenonomena (rejecting his contempories theories; wrote "Quasar, Redshifts and Controversies").
• Hannes Alfvén's plasma cosmology Alfvén won the 1970 Nobel Prize for work with plasmas
• Mpemba effect that hot water can freeze faster than cold
• Stanley B. Prusiner's prions were originally ridiculed. Prusiner won a Nobel Prize in 1997 for his discovery.
• Ignaz Semmelweis's innovations in hygiene in the 1840s were ridiculed by the medical establishment. Many thousands of women continued to die unnecessarily in child-birth until cross contamination was unavoidably demonstrated by others. Semmelweis was hounded from his job as a physician. He eventually died in an insane asylum.
• continental drift was not accepted when proposed by Suess and Wegener early in the 1900s, but was accepted when undersea ridges serving as spreading centers were discovered in the 1950s.

• Science
  • Scientific method
    • List of topics
  • Protoscience
  • Pseudoarchaeology
  • Pseudoscience
  • Junk science
  • Bad science
• List of alternative, speculative and disputed theories
• Conspiracy theory