Pseudoscience & Science

Analysis Paper I
Spencer Allen
Philosophy of Science: Capstone
Dr. Elizabeth Sperry


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 The distinction between science and pseudoscience has continued to be a subject of

heated debate among philosophers of science. Most have focused on the development of a

demarcation principle that allows for a distinction to be made, while others have rejected the

concept of a demarcation principle altogether. In either case, there does seem to be a consensus

among philosophers of science that distinguishing between science and pseudoscience is a

fundamental obstacle, and that such a distinction holds substantial political and ethical

implications. In what follows, I will present several formulations of the demarcation principle

and critically analyse the proponents and limitations of these various formulations. From the

discussion that follows, I hope to evince the proposition that there does not exist necessary and

sufficient criteria by which one can definitively distinguish all of science from all of

pseudoscience.

For the purposes of this paper, the history of the debate that I intend to outline begins

with Sir Karl Popper and his falsification principle. Popper highlights the key features of his own

attempt to develop a demarcation principle in his article Science: Conjectures and Refutations.

For Popper, his attempt to distinguish science from pseudoscience began with his exposure to

“Marx’s theory of history, Freud’s psycho-analysis, and Alfred Adler’s…’individual

psychology’”1. Each of these theorists claimed to use empirical investigation to establish the

validity of their individual theories. However, after further investigation, Popper began to doubt

this validity. His doubt originated with the realisation that the proponents of each of these

1All works cited are from the anthology: Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues by Martin
Curd, J.A. Cover, and Christopher Pincock. Future citations will simply provide the original
author and page number.

Popper - 4

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theories claimed to be capable of explaining any observation. They identified confirmations at

every turn. It was this very ability that Popper used to develop his demarcation principle. Popper

outlined seven conclusions that followed from this realisation. He summarised these seven

conclusions with the following statement: “the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its

falsifiability, or refutability, or testability”2. Popper, thus, suggested that the distinction between

science and pseudoscience rest in the fact that a scientific theory can be, and to a certain degree

seeks to be, falsified. He highlights a novel prediction of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in which

the prediction was made prior to any observation of the predicted phenomenon. Thus, Einstein’s

theory did not seek confirmation from known observations, but predicted a possible observable

phenomenon that was eventually tested and verified. The theory opened itself up to refutation,

which Popper contends is a hallmark of genuine science3. Before I move on to a review of

Popper’s critics, it is necessary to highlight the fact that Popper was careful to suggest that his

demarcation principle was neither a means of identifying meaningful theories nor a means of

identifying empirical theories. Rather, Popper’s intent was simply to draw a line between

scientific statements and non-scientific statements4.

The temporal position of Popper’s falsification principle in this debate has resulted in

many philosophers of science positioning their own theories in opposition to Popper’s. Many

have criticised Popper for the prescriptive nature of his theory. For many, the rejection of a

theory based on a false prediction would rule out the majority of genuine scientific theories. In

2 Popper - 7
3 Popper - 6
4 Popper - 8 - 9

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the early days of a theory’s development, there may be many experiments that contradict the

theory. However, these theories may be developed further to explain these early refutations in a

scientific manner (as opposed to a marxist or freudian like explanation). Thomas Kuhn built on

this criticism in his article Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research. Kuhn suggests that

Popper focused too much attention on the ideal structure of scientific discovery and ignored the

historical reality of scientific discovery. Scientists rarely reject a theory on the basis of a single

false event, and as such the falsification principle fails to describe the activities of actual

scientists5. It was Kuhn’s contention that the philosophy of science ought to concern itself with

the actual structure of scientific investigation and the scientific community.

In light of this contention, Kuhn separated science into two distinct forms: normal

science and revolutionary (extraordinary) science. In the periods of normal science, scientists

take for granted the theories in which their experiments operate. The individual scientists are not

investigating the validity of accepted canons (e.g., physicists are not attempting to falsify the

laws of thermodynamics) but instead concern themselves with the puzzles that the current

scientific paradigm6 presents. In this sense, scientists focus on using the accepted and available

theories as a means of solving puzzles, rather than doubting and investigating those theories.

Additionally, and contrary to Popper, the failure of a theory to provide an explanation for a

5 Kuhn - 11-13
6 Kuhn describes a paradigm in a multitude of ways. The sheer number of definitions offered by
Kuhn makes the term the most complex of all terms involved in this discussion. However, it
might best be described as a scholarly matrix that contains the fundamental theories,
instruments, techniques, values, and understanding of reality that scientists accept as canon. A
scientist may operate under one overarching paradigm and within several smaller sub-
paradigms (e.g., a scientist studying aerodynamics may operate under general laws of physics
that all other physicists operate under, but he or she may also operate under paradigms that are
specific to his or her specialty).

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puzzle is viewed not as a failure of the theory but as the failure of the scientist7. However,

normal science does not provide an adequate definition of science on its own, since it lacks

analysis of the instances in which theories are re-evaluated, paradigms are rejected, and the

scientific community radically alters its understanding of the world and its own practice. It is in

these instances that Kuhn suggests science becomes revolutionary. Science undergoes

revolutions as a consequence of many failed attempts to explain a puzzle under the current

paradigm. Kuhn refers to these particular puzzles as anomalies. As the quantity of anomalies

increases, scientists may begin to question the overarching paradigm of their time. For the

purposes of this paper, I will not be analysing this process further. However, from what has been

discussed thus far, we can develop an accurate account of Kuhn’s attempt to separate science

from pseudoscience. Whereas Popper suggested that the distinction rested in the fact that the

proponents of pseudosciences emphasise confirmations and actively avoid potential

falsifications, Kuhn suggests that the distinction rests in the puzzle-solving nature of science.

Pseudosciences, for the most part at least, lack fundamental theories, agreed upon standards and

techniques, and puzzle-solving traditions that are characteristic of normal science. Among these

characteristics of normal science, it is the puzzle-solving tradition that Kuhn suggests is most

responsible for the distinction.

In the tradition of philosophical investigation, Kuhn’s theory was also heavily criticised

(although it is arguably the most accepted theory among scientists today). Kuhn’s theory relies

upon a community of scientists that may be subject to social values and expectations, and many

criticise this reliance as being too subjective. However, it is worth noting that membership into

7 Kuhn - 15

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this community requires extensive education and practice, and as such Kuhn’s theory can most

certainly escape such criticism. Additionally, others have suggested that Kuhn’s definition of

science simply amounts to that which scientists do. The circularity of this definition can make

some uneasy. For those that hope for an absolute standard by which to distinguish science from

pseudoscience, Kuhn offers little assistance.

In response to Kuhn’s lack of assistance on this matter (as well as other issues), Imre

Lakatos developed his own theory of scientific research. Before we dive into the demarcation

that Lakatos defends, it will be necessary to quickly summarise Lakatos’s theory. Lakatos

focuses on what he calls research programmes. These programmes are separated into the hard

core, protective belt, and heuristic. The hard core houses the fundamental laws of a scientific

programme (e.g., Newton’s four laws are the hard core aspects of the Newtonian Research

Programme) — the aspects of the individual programme that are not debated. The protective belt

is formed by auxiliary hypotheses that reinforce the accepted laws of the hard core. These

auxiliary hypotheses absorb attempts to falsify the hard core, and may be reformulated to explain

anomalies. The heuristic acts as a guide that assists scientists in identifying potential

experiments, investigating anomalies, and developing additional support for both the protective

belt and the hard core8.

From this description of science, Lakatos develops his own demarcation principle. He

rejects Popper’s notion that science may be defined in terms of its falsifiability, but accepts

Popper’s rejection of verifiability. Lakatos suggests that the true distinction between science and

pseudoscience is that science is capable of producing “dramatic, unexpected, stunning

8 Lakatos - 23

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predictions”9 and continues to be progressive within its programme. However, this description of

science, while exciting, does not seem to distinguish science from pseudoscience completely. It

is possible that a pseudoscientific programme might accurately predict future observations (albeit

a limited chance), and as such the programme might be considered scientific. Additionally, Paul

R. Thagard has suggested that a lack of progress does not necessarily make a programme

pseudoscientific10.

Borrowing Lakatos’s concept of research programmes and degenerative science11 and

Kuhn’s analysis of the historical and social dimensions of science, Thagard developed a

demarcation principle that relies upon three necessary conditions, which if all true define a

programme as pseudoscientific. First, the programme must claim to be scientific, or at least be

considered scientific. Second, it must have been less progressive than alternative theories over an

extended period of time and must “face many unsolved problems”. And thirdly, in light of these

problems and lack of progress, the community has, nevertheless, made little attempt to develop

solutions to these problems, avoided “evaluat[ing] the theory in relation to others, and is

selective in considering confirmations and disconfirmations”12. However, even Thagard’s

demarcation principle has not escaped criticism. Most notably, his conditions define a

pseudoscience only in relation to other theories and not on the content of the theory. Thus, a

theory can only be considered pseudoscientific if there exists a competing theory. Thagard later

9 Lakatos - 25
10 Thagard - 32
11Degenerative science can be roughly defined as a science that fails to predict observations,
have a limited protective belt (or a weakened one), and can no longer defend the hard core
aspects of the enterprise.
12 Thagard - 32

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added that a theory is pseudoscientific if its adherents rely upon complex, ad hoc hypotheses and

disregard statistical correlations in their attempts to validate the theory. Unfortunately, even these

additional conditions do not provide the necessary and sufficient criteria for distinguishing

science from pseudoscience. Thagard’s attempt does allow for the possibility of a spectrum in

which certain theories are completely pseudoscientific, others completely scientific, and others

still somewhere in the middle. However, even on this spectrum, one would be incapable of

identifying the point at which something becomes pseudoscientific or scientific.

Thus far I have presented four different attempts at establishing the demarcation of

science from pseudoscience. Each philosopher, from Popper to Thagard, seems to agree that

certain theories are not scientific in nature (e.g., modern astrology, creation science,

pyrimadology, etc.). However, the reasons that each provide for rejecting one theory as

pseudoscientific and accepting another as scientific differ wildly. Furthermore, not a single

attempt to formulate a demarcation principle has escaped valid and detrimental criticism.

It was in light of this realisation that I began to develop the thesis of this paper. The lack

of success among philosophers of science in identifying a demarcation principle implies one of

two options: either (1) an absolute demarcation between science and pseudoscience does exist or

can exist, and philosophers have simply failed to identify it thus far but may do so in the future,

or (2) an absolute demarcation does not exist or cannot exist, and as such philosophers will never

succeed in identifying one. In what follows, I intend to defend this second option, understanding,

however, that both options rely on relatively limited inductive reasoning.

If we accept that philosophy, as of yet, has failed to successfully identify the distinction

between science and pseudoscience, which, considering that the debate still exists, I suggest as a

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given premise, then one might contend that future attempts will also be unsuccessful. Others may

counter such a claim by suggesting that the solution to this problem is simply a matter of time.

However, the problem, itself, does not seem to be one that can be solved. Though the philosophy

of science is a study of science, it is not itself a science, and it is most certainly not of the type of

puzzle-solving science that Kuhn described. There is no given solution that our philosophical

theories illuminate and make discoverable. There is no established methodology, expected

results, etc. As philosophers, we simply lack the tools necessary for identifying an absolute

distinction between science and pseudoscience. Nevertheless, I do not want to suggest that this is

a limitation of philosophy. Philosophy may have many limitations, but the problem of

demarcating science from pseudoscience, I believe, is internal to the question. The question

assumes that a distinction does exist. It implies that science is at all times sound, and that

pseudoscience is at all times unsound. It implies that all science is of the same validity, and all

pseudoscience of the same invalidity; that the scientific community is always well founded in its

beliefs, and the pseudoscientific community ill founded in its beliefs; that there is an absolute

distinction between the members of the scientific community and the members of the

pseudoscientific community; that such communities even exist wholly and completely. Each of

these implications is susceptible to counter examples, criticisms, and fundamental contradictions.

There are times in which scientific beliefs are not sound, are not well founded, and in which the

community does not exist wholly. Similarly, there are instances in which pseudoscientific beliefs

are sound, relatively well founded, and the community does exist wholly. This is evident in the

historical analysis provided by Kuhn13. For example, there was a time in which society might

13This is provided most heavily in Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but can also be
found throughout his Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research.

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have viewed the ptolemaic explanation of the heavens as scientific, while today we reject such a

claim (i.e. what society considers to be the science of its day can change with society).

From a historical perspective the distinction between science and pseudoscience has not

served to actually distinguish between the two, but rather to control the privilege of being a

science. It has not been a matter of preserving the validity of a culture’s knowledge, but rather to

preserve the right knowledge. In the last century, philosophers of science returned to this

question, in the hopes that they would now be capable of providing a solution. However, in doing

so they have taken up the torches and pitchforks once more. Popper’s theory would have

eliminated the majority of young scientific programmes prior to maturation. Kuhn’s theory, if

Lakatos’s criticism is accepted, does not provide a strong distinction at all. Lakatos’ theory has

the unfortunate side effect of identifying an enterprise deserving of the term scientific as a

pseudoscientific, simply because it has stopped being progressive. And Thagard’s theory

provides a spectrum at best, but it cannot provide an absolute demarcation. Both our

contemporary and historical attempts to demarcate science from pseudoscience have at best left

the question unanswered and at worst applied an unnecessary and unrealistic epistemic invariant

to science (in whatever form the philosopher chooses define it).

Assuming that the above is historically and philosophically accurate, I feel it safe to

suggest that the problem of demarcating science from pseudoscience is one that the philosophy

of science ought not be concerned with. The rhetoric behind the term pseudoscience is more

fitting of politics and economics, not philosophy. As philosophers we should be concerned with

the actual validity of an argument, and not whether an argument originates from a science or a

pseudoscience. Philosophers of science have the unique opportunity to act as the gatekeepers not

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of science but rather of sound knowledge. It is that position that philosophy is uniquely and

historically qualified to pursue. Whether a distinction between science and pseudoscience

actually exists (i.e., the first option listed on page 8), such a distinction remains philosophically

irrelevant. The distinction does not, itself, provide evidence of the validity or soundness of a

claim. At best it would merely suggest that a scientific claim is more likely to be valid or sound,

but “likelihood” is not an absolute measure by any means. A similar claim might be made in

opposition to my own suggestion (my suggestion being that philosophy of science focus on

separating sound beliefs from unsound beliefs), and such a claim would be justifiable. However,

it is not my intent to suggest that there is an absolute demarcation between sound beliefs and

unsound beliefs, nor is it my intent to suggest that such a demarcation could ever be identified.

Rather, it is my intent to suggest that the absolute demarcation of sound and unsound beliefs is a

question for philosophers and logicians, and it is a question that holds actual philosophical and

epistemological significance. In focusing on the demarcation of sound beliefs from unsound

beliefs, philosophers will need to concern themselves with identifying evidentiary criteria (i.e.,

identifying the line between acceptable and unacceptable evidence), criteria of scope (i.e., the

criteria that separates vague claims from precise claims), etc. Each of these related problems are

also uniquely suited to the philosopher, because it is in the arena of epistemic significance that

philosophy can be said to hold the title.

I began this paper with an analysis of several attempts by philosophers to identify an

absolute demarcation between science and pseudoscience. On all fronts, these attempts have not

been successful. This lack of success led me to the tautology that either a future attempt will be

successful or no future attempts will be successful; the latter being my own opinion. In either

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case, however, I have suggested that the demarcation between science and pseudoscience holds

little, if any, epistemological significance, and as such little philosophical significance. Imre

Lakatos concluded his article, Science and Pseudoscience, with the following statement: “…the

problem of demarcation between science and pseudoscience is not a pseudo-problem of armchair

philosophers: it has grave ethical and political implications” 14. While Lakatos would not support

my interpretation of his words, I feel it fit to suggest that the demarcation problem between

science and pseudoscience is not a philosophical problem but rather an economic, political, and/

or social problem. The alternative that I have suggested (stemming from Larry Laudan’s

Commentary) is that philosophers of science concern themselves with establishing criteria by

which to evaluate the soundness of a belief, the strength of the evidence in support of that belief,

and the precision that is necessary for a belief to be considered sound. It is these questions that I

believe the philosopher is properly equipped to answer. 


14 Lakatos - 26

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 Works Cited

Kuhn, T. (2013). Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research. In M. Curd, J. A. Cover, & C.

Pincock (Comps.), Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues (2nd ed., pp. 11-19). New
York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company. (Original work published 1970)

Kuhn, T. (1996). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. (3rd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press. (Original edition published 1962).

Lakatos, I. (2013). Science and Pseudoscience. In M. Curd, J. A. Cover, & C. Pincock

(Comps.), Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues (2nd ed., pp. 20-26). New York,
NY: W.W. Norton & Company. (Original work presented through radio in 1973)

Laudan, L. (2013). Commentary: Science at the Bar - Causes for Concern. In M. Curd, J. A.
Cover, & C. Pincock (Comps.), Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues (2nd ed., pp.
47-51). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company. (Original work published 1982)

Popper, K. (2013). Science: Conjectures and Refutations. In M. Curd, J. A. Cover, & C. Pincock
(Comps.), Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues (2nd ed., pp. 3-10). New York, NY:
W.W. Norton & Company. (Original work published 1963)

Thagard, P. (2013). Why Astrology Is a Pseudoscience. In M. Curd, J. A. Cover, & C. Pincock

(Comps.), Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues (2nd ed., pp. 27-36). New York,
NY: W.W. Norton & Company. (Original work published 1978)

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