What’s the Harm? Pseudoscience Cultivates Wider Ignorance
- Admin
- Aug 29, 2023
- 8 min read
Updated: Jan 29, 2024
Why do I harp on and on about logic, critical thinking, and pseudoscience? You might find it as pedantic and nitpicking as one might think wellness practices are benign. I promise you; it’s as important as pseudoscientific ideas are harmful.
A frown or look of distain will betray my face even when I see pseudoscience on a TV program, even if it’s in passing. Worse than that is when a ‘psychic’ or ‘reiki master’, or something to that effect, is given interview time to weigh in on something instead of a relevant expert in a real discipline.
Obviously, not all individual cases of reiki sessions are going to result in direct harm (apart from to the wallet) – and some are left in the spa with the rest of the woo once done. Likewise, it’s not always appropriate to stop someone mid-anecdote in a party to tell them they’re legitimising bollocks, when people were just waiting for the punchline.
Therefore, I am not writing this to say that people are stupid for buying into pseudoscience and wellness culture. I am very specifically criticising the pseudosciences, wellness culture and mechanisms of thinking, to explain why it’s necessary to cultivate better thinking instead of wilful ignorance.
This piece is inspired by a Guardian article which I think was great in illustrating ‘harmless’ pseudoscience as a gateway to more dangers, in other areas of life. My personal addition is this: that a lack of critical thinking skills is an overall more fundamental hazard than any singular pseudoscience or wellness grift. Hence why it’s a danger all too often overlooked when asking: “what’s the harm?” with letting people crack on with pseudoscience.
The Guardian Article
The article – which is well worth a read – is here. It’s more focused on an individuals’ story of their journey through the pandemic. As part of a seemingly benign wellness group, she – like so many other normal people, didn’t see any harms associated with that kind of world.
Ultimately, she saw a radical change in their attitudes towards her when she was hospitalised with COVID. Based on what? Flawed thinking patterns which underlie wellness culture/pseudoscience; making it easy to sidestep into other logically flawed ideologies linking far right (and left, but politics of the day is right) conspiracies.
What’s the harm in even the most benign pseudoscience? This. The mechanisms are the same, and you get the ‘wellness to fascism’ pipeline. Woo breeds more woo - therefore is it any wonder wellness culture is a gateway to far right conspiracies? Poor logic and flawed reasoning overlaps science denial and conspiracy thinking in numerous ways.
I’ll suggest reading the article first because the more fundamental points I can add to it are set up well by it, and just understated or missed during the article.
What are the ‘Flawed Mechanisms’?
I feel like this term needs a more detailed look, to understand the weight behind those words I often use. In a nutshell, I’m talking about logical fallacies. If you can identify one in a claim about one topic, then you can essentially identify it in any topic – the mechanism is the same. This is why it’s harmful in the long run to legitimise poor logic by extent of wellness fads, and demonstrably wrong modes of thought in the form of pseudoscience – no matter how benign it might look to the individual.
To try and illustrate this as simply and overtly as I can, take the Appeal to Tradition fallacy. One topic might be:
“Acupuncture has been used for centuries, so it must have health benefits.”
Then sliding from a health claim which might only impact a particular individual in that instance; but that individual may reason the same way into politics which affects lots of people:
“Marriage has historically been between a man and a woman. Therefore, we shouldn’t allow gay marriage.”
NOTE 1
NOTE 2
This fallacy asserts that something is good or true because it’s old, or because it’s the way it’s “always been done”. The mechanism for both statements above is the same, and it happens that both resulting conclusions are wrong. But one was confined to an individual’s choice, and the other potentially affects large swathes of the population of a country.
NOTE 3
Without going into the depths or many ways in which this is flawed reasoning, it is this and countless other fallacies or ‘mechanisms’ which underpin flawed reasoning, and ultimately cause harm, leading people to wrong conclusions and giving the perception of strengthening an invalid argument. Even the individual Acupuncture case is not excluded from being harmful in and of itself.
Here is an informative list of fallacies for further interest in the staggering number of ways we can wrongly convince ourselves something is true. These all become tools and tactics of the intentionally deceptive. There’s also a more fleshed out definition of the above Appeal to Tradition fallacy, at number 12 in the list.
Again – while it is an individuals’ choice and may not harm them directly to try CBD oil for their back pain, for example, the same underlying mechanisms for belief in that false claim can easily lead them into more treacherous waters if left unchecked, and if legitimised by everyone turning a blind eye/failure to call it out in the first place.
And, as such, woo breeds more woo…
Nonsense Breeds More of the Same
It’s very difficult as an individual to imagine what harm could come of just trying acupuncture, or a 50p throw away non-invasive Tinnitus patch, or a relaxing ‘energy healing’ session. You may well think to yourself “well that didn’t work for me, I’ll move on – what’s the harm in that?”. The above acupuncture link breaks down how one journalist fell for it and spread it on a huge scale to others – who may now try it also, as appearing in a tabloid will legitimise it for many. The Tinnitus link is to my recent blog post which again reveals a hint of an appeal to tradition fallacy among other fallacies.
This mode of thought may work for you – and yes there’s no immediate harm done for you, but it’s this blind-eye-turning, non-scrutinous attitude that enables those flawed thought patterns to continue, legitimises actual con artists, charlatans and grifters, and fuels the disinformation monsters that continually sew dangerous mistrust into important medical institutions and practices. They are often all inextricably linked by the same flawed thinking and social mechanisms. The same goes for physicians – those who endorse unscientific ‘medicine’ also correlate highly with anti-vax views, and vice versa.
Let’s look at it another way and take the earlier example of the appeal to tradition. If you think it’s ok to use one flawed way of reasoning, or just don’t see the error, then why would you stop and question it the next time you heard an argument based on that fundamentally broken logic? It wouldn’t necessarily be visible to you underneath the change of topic. Ergo a new flavour of erroneous claim or product emerges with a free pass, with as much persuasive power as the last - yet just as invalid. What’s more, you’re back at square one with potential danger to your health and hard earned money.
This is a loop that critical thinking can help to break, and once you understand why it breaks, it’s harder to be fooled the next time – although still possible.
‘Wellness to Woo’ is a Misnomer
Unsurprisingly for me, this phrase used in the Guardian article is an inaccuracy. It’s beside the point of the article and it works well enough in its general purpose (that is to illustrate the path from less to more extreme, through seemingly benign gateways where the intent begins as well-meaning).
I still think it’s important to add to this though, because part of the reason people are led down these logically flawed paths is through subtle phrases like this this one. This presents a slight legitimisation of wellness culture, putting it against ‘woo’ as though wellness is innocent to start with. Generally speaking, wellness comes alongside plenty of woo – and plenty of woo is categorised all too often as ‘wellness’. As such, the terms are almost synonymous. Wellness is brimming with science denial rebranded as novel health interventions. The wellness industry is a damaging and predatory one, particularly for women.
Use of the word ‘wellness’ to some could be perfectly defined and justified through science-based healthcare. To real grifters though, it serves as a gateway word for pseudoscience, into their world of exploitation, marketed nonsense, unproven claims, and social dependence. Nine times out of ten, it is the latter situation you will find when hearing the term ‘wellness’.
There are plenty of grey-area topics within the wellness industry which profit from unproven claims and capitalise on half-truths. That’s the tiny chink in the armour that is needed for pseudo-therapies and products to move into. From there, it’s only a matter of copying and pasting the same logical fallacies and social mechanisms to lever people further down into those cracks and into the rabbit hole. Eventually – or before you know it, you’re rejecting life-saving medical science in favour of ancient Chinese magical water, because all doctors want to kill our children with vaccines.
You might say I’m being dramatic with that example, but it’s exactly where pseudoscience leads to for a lot of people in the worst cases.
What’s the harm? The very term ‘wellness’ is a mask that pseudoscience wears to exploit our ignorance, and more fundamentally as this post is, to normalise the use of logical fallacies through positive-sounding terms. This is the larger threat at play, as it falsely legitimises more quackery.
Propagation Through Social Mechanisms
One of the most powerful and common ways that the harms of pseudoscientific thinking propagate is through tight knit family and friend circles. It’s close to home for anybody when a family member you care about is affected.
This comes briefly back to the ‘woo breeds more woo’ point. Specifically, this can better illustrate the harm of the individuals’ choice to try a pseudo-treatment or ‘wellness hack’. We tend to trust our family and close friends at their word, more than anyone else – that’s normal. So powerful is this evolved trait that we will stick by them – even at great cost. An example of this is the death of anti-vax activist Johann Biacsics, whose family doubled down in the face of his death and blamed everyone credible who tried to save him – except Johann, despite that he was ultimately his own downfall.
This becomes a very easy way for nonsense to spread through not just whole groups of people - but those you care about the most. As such, it’s absolutely a harm to keep casually normalising these cognitive errors. One individual might be fine after trying a Chiropractor, but the next relative who tries it as a result of their trusted sibling dabbling in it may sustain serious harm, or think that it’s ok to try it for a more serious condition, instead of seeking real medical attention. This even extends to beloved pets, as pseudoscience grifts don’t stop at people. One individual can be a gateway for their loved ones to fall into a rabbit hole. Pun intended. For more information on pet quackery and the harms it can cause, the below is a good episode. It importantly covers the importance of the scientific consensus on such matters.
We’re group-creatures, and while we’ve evolved very successfully through group mentality and tribal mechanisms, it’s not perfect. We’re just as capable of putting each other at risk as we are at protecting each other. My personal protective approach happens to be based in reality, and pretty reliable, even if my loved ones don’t want to hear it.
Conclusions
There are deeply fundamental errors inherent in human cognition when it comes to reasoning through information, and that affects our decisions from the trivial to the life changing – this is nobody’s fault. These mechanisms permeate all aspects of life: mental and physical wellbeing, politics, medicine, human rights and equality, friends and family relationships, personal finances etc.
A better understanding of logic and critical thinking is one important and direct answer to improving everyone’s wellbeing, through many areas of life. It is the fundamental level which we can actively improve, to have a direct positive impact on our lives.
Having even a shallow understanding of logic can inoculate your mind from a range of cognitive errors in reasoning, and we all have this capacity. With practice, anybody can improve their capacity for critical thinking – and it becomes empowering, rewarding and even therapeutic.
It’s for the above reasons that I strongly believe we should be taught these skills, not just as a byproduct but specifically, and from a very young age, and throughout education.
What is the harm of staying quiet and enabling wrong ideas to go unchallenged, when we’re surrounded by toxicity caused by poor reasoning? It slows progression. It stunts truthful discourse and reinforces real life harms. It discourages empowerment of ourselves and society through better thought and reliable knowledge.
Changing our thinking for the better begins with understanding the small. That’s why I continue to address it no matter how ‘harmless’, and that’s why I’ll always be ‘that guy’ people roll eyes at.
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