Pseudoscience Quotes

“You know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work? - Medicine.”
― Tim Minchin

“deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Praxeology is a theoretical and systematic, not a historical, science. Its scope is human action as such, irrespective of all environmental, accidental, and individual circumstances of the concrete acts. Its cognition is purely formal and general without reference to the material content and the particular features of the actual case. It aims at knowledge valid for all instances in which the conditions exactly correspond to those implied in its assumptions and inferences. Its statements and propositions are not derived from experience. They are, like those of logic and mathematics, a priori. They are not subject to verification or falsification on the ground of experience and facts.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

“Sheep used to have wings. One flew into the sky and all the others followed. They took their wings off while feeding in the warm sun but the wind blew away their wings so they couldn't fly anymore. They had to return to earth by drifting to where the sky curves down and touches the land, and then walk round the long way.. i like that..”
― Richard Adams, The Plague Dogs

“Why does Alexander the Great never tell us about the exact location of his tomb, Fermat about his Last Theorem, John Wilkes Booth about the Lincoln assassination conspiracy, Hermann Göring about the Reichstag fire? Why don’t Sophocles, Democritus, and Aristarchus dictate their lost books?”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Treating Abuse Today 3(4) pp. 26-33
TAT: No. I don't know anymore than you know they're not. But, I'm talking about boundaries and privacy here. As a therapist working with survivors, I have been harassed by people who claim to be affiliated with the false memory movement. Parents and other family members have called or written me insisting on talking with me about my patients' cases, despite my clearly indicating I can't because of professional confidentiality. I have had other parents and family members investigate me -- look into my professional background -- hoping to find something to discredit me to the patients I was seeing at the time because they disputed their memories. This isn't the kind of sober, scientific discourse you all claim you want.”
― David L. Calof

“Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience promptly fills. If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience. But a kind of Gresham’s Law prevails in popular culture by which bad science drives out good.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Treating Abuse Today 3(4) pp. 26-33
Freyd: The term "multiple personality" itself assumes that there is "single personality" and there is evidence that no one ever displays a single personality.

TAT: The issue here is the extent of dissociation and amnesia and the extent to which these fragmentary aspects of personality can take executive control and control function. Sure, you and I have different parts to our mind, there's no doubt about that, but I don't lose time to mine they can't come out in the middle of a lecture and start acting 7 years old. I'm very much in the camp that says that we all are multi-minds, but the difference between you and me and a multiple is pretty tangible.

Freyd: Those are clearly interesting questions, but that area and the clinical aspects of dissociation and multiple personalities is beyond anything the Foundation is actively...

TAT: That's a real problem. Let me tell you why that's a problem. Many of the people that have been alleged to have "false memory syndrome" have diagnosed dissociative disorders. It seems to me the fact that you don't talk about dissociative disorders is a little dishonest, since many people whose lives have been impacted by this movement are MPD or have a dissociative disorder. To say, "Well, we ONLY know about repression but not about dissociation or multiple personalities" seems irresponsible.

Freyd: Be that as it may, some of the scientific issues with memory are clear. So if we can just stick with some things for a moment; one is that memories are reconstructed and reinterpreted no matter how long ago or recent.

TAT: You weigh the recollected testimony of an alleged perpetrator more than the alleged victim's. You're saying, basically, if the parents deny it, that's another notch for disbelief.

Freyd: If it's denied, certainly one would want to check things. It would have to be one of many factors that are weighed -- and that's the problem with these issues -- they are not black and white, they're very complicated issues.”
― David L. Calof

“Una de las lecciones más tristes de la historia es ésta: si se está sometido a un engaño demasiado tiempo, se tiende a rechazar cualquier prueba de que es un engaño.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“A sedução do maravilhoso embota nossas faculdades críticas.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“If we teach only the findings and products of science – no matter how useful and even inspiring they may be – without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish science from pseudoscience?”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Treating Abuse Today (Tat), 3(4), pp. 26-33
Freyd: You were also looking for some operational criteria for false memory syndrome: what a clinician could look for or test for, and so on. I spoke with several of our scientific advisory board members and I have some information for you that isn't really in writing at this point but I think it's a direction you want us to go in. So if I can read some of these notes . . .

TAT: Please do.

Freyd: One would look for false memory syndrome:

1. If a patient reports having been sexually abused by a parent, relative or someone in very early childhood, but then claims that she or he had complete amnesia about it for a decade or more;

2. If the patient attributes his or her current reason for being in therapy to delayed-memories. And this is where one would want to look for evidence suggesting that the abuse did not occur as demonstrated by a list of things, including firm, confident denials by the alleged perpetrators;

3. If there is denial by the entire family;

4. In the absence of evidence of familial disturbances or psychiatric illnesses. For example, if there's no evidence that the perpetrator had alcohol dependency or bipolar disorder or tendencies to pedophilia;

5. If some of the accusations are preposterous or impossible or they contain impossible or implausible elements such as a person being made pregnant prior to menarche, being forced to engage in sex with animals, or participating in the ritual killing of animals, and;

6. In the absence of evidence of distress surrounding the putative abuse. That is, despite alleged abuse going from age two to 27 or from three to 16, the child displayed normal social and academic functioning and that there was no evidence of any kind of psychopathology.

Are these the kind of things you were asking for?

TAT: Yeah, it's a little bit more specific. I take issue with several, but at least it gives us more of a sense of what you all mean when you say "false memory syndrome."

Freyd: Right. Well, you know I think that things are moving in that direction since that seems to be what people are requesting. Nobody's denying that people are abused and there's no one denying that someone who was abused a decade ago or two decades ago probably would not have talked about it to anybody. I think I mentioned to you that somebody who works in this office had that very experience of having been abused when she was a young teenager-not extremely abused, but made very uncomfortable by an uncle who was older-and she dealt with it for about three days at the time and then it got pushed to the back of her mind and she completely forgot about it until she was in therapy.

TAT: There you go. That's how dissociation works!

Freyd: That's how it worked. And after this came up and she had discussed and dealt with it in therapy, she could again put it to one side and go on with her life. Certainly confronting her uncle and doing all these other things was not a part of what she had to do. Interestingly, though, at the same time, she has a daughter who went into therapy and came up with memories of having been abused by her parents. This daughter ran away and is cutoff from the family-hasn't spoken to anyone for three years. And there has never been any meeting between the therapist and the whole family to try to find out what was involved.

TAT: If we take the first example -- that of her own abuse -- and follow the criteria you gave, we would have a very strong disbelief in the truth of what she told.”
― David L. Calof

“It's cloaked in cultural mumbo jumbo, but I assure you that it is very hard science.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dead of Night

“Even when the west does embrace the east, it ends up drawing from superstitious fringes, and rebrands it as self awareness and spirituality - thus catholic guilt gets replaced with chakra cleansing, and christian afterlife is substituted with karmic justice.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“If you cannot distinguish religion from fundamentalism, if you cannot distinguish spirituality from superstition, if you cannot distinguish science from insensitivity, if you cannot distinguish psychology from manipulation, do not call yourself human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“Sacred Without Supernatural
(Monk Scientist Diary, 2706)

Sacred stripped of supernatural
becomes astronomically potent -
blasphemy that ends prejudice is holy,
the divine is just human at full voltage.

Theology, philosophy, all are vanity -
bow to the breeze, submit to the soil.
Enlist as disciple to the original masters,
being awakens braving the heat of turmoil.

Soil is forever illiterate,
soil is eternally humble,
yet it contains the wisdom of the universe,
for it's made of the same stuff as the heavens.

What good to me are academic walls,
what good to me are church ceilings!
Mountains are my classroom, sky, my blackboard -
nature is my canon, cosmos is my kin.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“My spirituality has to do with equality, ethics and accountability, not aura, incense and vibration.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace

“All the problems of organized religion and newage spirituality could be solved with one little change in mindset - never declare as fact what works as metaphor, metaphor is mightier than magic.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“Curse of Spirituality (Sonnet 2537)

Why is it that 90% of modern spiritual
population are just newage nutters,
what's the point in surpassing religious
fundamentalism, if you end up being
sucked into superstitions with glitter!

Why can't you be spiritual
without being superstitious,
why can't you be religious
without being a fundamentalist -

the day you could, that's the beginning
of civilized spirituality and human religion.

I'm not asking for cold, cantankerous logic
all the time, all I'm saying is, why does
spirituality have to depend on superstition -

if your spirituality crumbles without superstition,
you were never spiritual, just underdeveloped.

There is no spirituality except kindness,
there is no religion but service.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“If your spirituality crumbles without superstition, you were never spiritual, just underdeveloped.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“Why can't you be spiritual without being superstitious, why can't you be religious without being a fundamentalist - the day you could, that's the beginning of civilized spirituality and human religion.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“Why is it that 90% of modern spiritual population are just newage nutters, what's the point in surpassing religious fundamentalism, if you end up being sucked into superstitions with glitter!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“No telepathy, no clairvoyance, human presence is the miracle.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“Look up from your gypsy tea cups, outside your make believe starcharts, shake off the spell of hollow algorithms, reality speaks through human tears.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“No mind reading, no brainwashing, eagerness unlocks the oracle.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“In the absence of common goodness, spirituality is just cosplay with incense.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“Medicine is the most potent form of miracle, but when medicine prioritizes money over care, people flock to quacks and influencers. When science fails in service, people look up to the stars for answers.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“Prompting is not art,
prompting is not poetry,
prompting is not literature,
prompting is not music,
prompting is not cinema -

but then come the bigger fakes
you've been normalizing for ages
without batting an eyelid -

influencers are not physicians,
filmstars are not psychologists,
politicians are not peacemakers,
militant atheists are not humanist,
evangelists are not holy beings.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tierra Carta: Naskar Charter of Earth

“No manifestation, just perspiration.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tierra Carta: Naskar Charter of Earth

“No manifestation, just perspiration. No vibration, just aspiration. No bending like goat, no bowing like sheep - no bleating, only revolution.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tierra Carta: Naskar Charter of Earth