Philosophers, natural and social scientists teach and publish text books about the causes and pitfalls to avoid, and how to spot problems when conducting research or examining the results of other people's work. This contributes to a significant body of knowledge that we have amassed about the veracity of evidence, which includes what is known to be harmful, bad or simply weak research practice and how to avoid faulty inference.

Psychologists lead the field in helping to identify, explain and understand irrational thinking; myth-busting researchers in many different disciplines and areas - from the philosophy of science to journalists and amateur essayists - have authored works on fallacies, myths, conspiracy theories, hoaxes, frauds, downright lies, deliberate and hidden bias.

This all adds up to a widely spread body of disparate knowledge from distinct disciplines, different levels of expertise along with a wealth of examples and case studies. But these potential knowledge treasures have never been the subject of comprehensive and systematic scholarly research. Might such a massive endeavour empower the recognition of fallacies and myths? Would it help us to better examine, understand and explain what is behind orthodox knowledge and various beliefs in what and is and is not so?

Science defined

In 1991 Michael Shermer set out the broadly agreed core principles of science in an incredibly good article in the journal of Science, Technology and Human Values. His work is important. Let me explain.

When examining some pragmatic compromises, on a spectrum ranging from slightly shoddy all the way to down right fraud committed by some scientists, it is important to keep this “back in the real world” knowledge of “what some scientists do” separate from the distinct definition of what defines science. Shoddy scientists do not turn their own discipline into pseudoscience – they only run the risk of conducting it themselves.

This distinction between (1) what we know about real world scientific practices and (2) the broadly agreed principles of science is important.

Unless we keep our analysis of scientific practices separate from what we define as the core principles of science our blending of the two allows uninformed social-scientists, sociologists, and criminologists to believe and widely promote the commonly held misconception that: ‘Science is a rhetorical and relative concept to be viewed through a rhetorical cultural-lens.’ This results in a proliferation of ‘made-up’ explanatory rhetoric, with arguments made along the lines that we are all now living in a late-modern world where we can all re-invent ourselves to define who and what we are. Such arguments are supported by assertions that what scientists do varies so greatly between themselves and their disciplines that no scientific authority or orthodoxy agrees on exactly what science is.

The danger of such intellectual relativism is that it facilitates anyone who wishes to call themselves a scientist to re-define their identity in order to seek to operate under the radar of real science scrutiny. Arguably, this common failure to distinguish between scientific practices and principles fuels an enabling environment in which pseudo-sciences such as, for example, Creation Science or the more recent Crime Science can be set up, attract funding, and flourish. Crime Science – like Creation Science before it – was launched on the unscientific failure to understand the importance of keeping explanatory principles separate from the data it seeks to explain. This is, arguably, one of the most important of the core scientific principles outlined by Shermer from those agreed by 72  Nobel laureates.

 I think that if we wish to keep the growth of pseudoscience at bay, we might be wise to explain that these scientist’s shortcomings do not define what their own scientific discipline is and most importantly they do not define what science is. Real scientists and philosophers of science will continue to debate and seek to re-define what science is, but pseudo scientists are mistaken if they believe this makes real science a mere rhetorically constructed label that will cheaply signal gravitas and safely camouflage poor scholarship.

With such a large body of disparate, but important, knowledge about science, bad science, pseudoscience and the scholarly creation of fallacies and myths do we need to develop a specialist field comprising the study and understanding of veracity? If so, should we work towards developing a multi-disciplinary science named dysology?