The Social Psychology of “Pseudoscience”

A Brief History

Bibliographic Data

ID8975994
AuthorsArthur Still (corresponding author), Windy Dryden
Year2004
Volume34
Issue3
Pages265-290
Publication date2004-08-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal for the Theory of Social Behaviour (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8308 • E-ISSN: 1468-5914
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.0021-8308.2004.00248.x
OpenAlexW2000177472
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited28

The word ‘pseudoscience’ is a marker of changing worries about science and being a scientist. It played an important role in the philosophical debate on demarcating science from other activities, and was used in popular writings to distance science from cranky theories with scientific pretensions. These uses consolidated a comforting unity in science, a communal space from which pseudoscience is excluded, and the user's right to belong is asserted. The urgency of this process dwindled when attempts to find a formal demarcation petered out, and the growth of social constructionism denied science any special access to truth. The reaction to this led to the science wars, which ushered in a new anxiety in the use of ‘pseudoscience’, especially from the least secure branches. But recent writings on the disunity of science reveal how the sense of support drawn from it may be based on an illusion, creating a disunity of pseudoscience as well as of science

Cognitive psychology · Epistemology · Illusion · Pseudoscience · Skepticism · Social science · Sociology · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Psychology

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