WHENCE PSEUDOSCIENCE? AN EPIDEMIOLOGICAL APPROACH

Document Type : Translation

Author

Ph.D. student of Social Communication Sciences, Tehran East Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

In this paper, we develop an epidemiological approach to account for the
typical features and persistent popularity of pseudoscience. An
epidemiology of pseudoscience aims at explaining why some beliefs
become widely distributed whereas others do not and hence seeks to identify
the factors that exert a causal effect on this distribution. We pinpoint and
discuss several factors that promote the dissemination of pseudoscientific
beliefs. In particular, we argue that such beliefs manage to spread widely
because they are intuitively appealing, manage to hitchhike on the authority
of science, and successfully immunize themselves from criticism

Keywords


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