Science, Pseudoscience, and Science Falsely So- Called 299pseudoscience to the illegitimate mixture of science and religion. Charges
of pseudoscience aimed at a wide variety of targets, from creationism to
UFOs to federal standards for organic food, all of which were denounced
as involving religious motivations rather than scientifi c ones. By the turn
of the twenty- fi rst century, particularly in the context of a number of po-
litically charged debates involving science, there was also a pronounced
tendency to see pseudoscience as arising from the intrusion of political
concerns onto scientifi c ground. In controversies over global warming,
stem- cell research, intelligent design, and even the demotion of Pluto
from planetary status (because the fi nal decision was made by vote), par-
tisans depicted their opponents as proceeding from political motivations
and thus distorting pure science. In reaction to the comments of President
George W. Bush that appeared to open the possibility of including infor-
mation on intelligent design in public schools, critics charged him with
raising a “pseudoscience issue” and “politicizing science,” which “per-
verted and redefi ned” the true nature of scientifi c knowledge. Assertions
of a “Republican war on science” from the Left of the political spectrum
echoed this sentiment.^66
The most dramatic development in portrayals of pseudoscience after
midcentury was the emergence of what we might call “Pseudoscience”
with a capital “P” and without a hyphen. This refl ected a growing sense
during the 1920s and 1930s that pseudoscientifi c beliefs were not simply
scattered errors to be exorcized from the boundaries of science, but rather
a complex system of notions with their own set of boundaries, rather like
an “alternative” version of science. The loss of the hyphen was a subtle
indication of this transition, insofar as it weakened a seeming dependence
on the scientifi c and suggested something more than simply false science.
From the late 1960s on, many skeptical scientists and popularizers explic-
itly depicted links among a large collection of unusual topics, including
“everything from PK (psychokinesis, moving things by will power) and
astral projection (mental journeys to remote celestial bodies) to extra-
terrestrial space vehicles manned by web- footed crews, pyramid power,
dowsing, astrology, the Bermuda triangle, psychic plants, exorcism and
so on and so on.” In the midst of public debate over intelligent design,
journalist John Derbyshire blasted the “teaching of pseudoscience in sci-
ence classes” and asked “why not teach the little ones astrology? Lysenko-
ism?... Forteanism? Velikovskianism?... Secrets of the Great Pyramid?
ESP and psychokinesis? Atlantis and Lemuria? The hollow- earth theory?”
Though lists differed, they often revolved around a similar core of unor-
thodoxies, including what one author characterized in 1998 as the “arche-
typical fringe theory,” namely, belief in UFOs.^67