On the Fringe summary

Rather than a consistent bank of knowledge, science is constantly evolving. Much of what is published as cutting-edge science today will likely be rendered wrong or irrelevant in the near future. For example, Pluto was considered a planet from its discovery in 1930. But on August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union changed its classification to dwarf planet, shocking all who had grown up believing Pluto to be an official planet.

The archives of science are filled with discarded doctrines. The author calls such doctrines vestigial sciences, or theories and beliefs once held up as science but later rejected by the mainstream. Today, expired doctrines of science such as alchemy and astrology are recognized by many as classic pseudosciences. But that hasn’t stopped some people from upholding their tenets.

All science has the potential to be political. During the Cold War, the United States’ policy of demonstrating the superiority of American democracy over Soviet communism led to the sponsorship of many scientific projects. And in today’s battle for abortion rights, for instance, reproductive health has come to involve highly politicized science.

But in some cases, scientific doctrines have been hyperpoliticized to serve a particular political ideology. The best-known case of this was Hitler’s Germany, where physiology, genetics, medicine, and anthropology were employed to serve Nazi racial policies. The Nazis used science to support the mass genocide of millions of Jewish people as well as thousands of Roma and Sinti, homosexuals, and people with mental and physical disabilities.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a pseudoscientist who labels himself as such. More often, adherents of pseudosciences position themselves against the so-called “establishment” of contemporary science. In the crop of pseudosciences known as counterestablishment sciences, adherents believe that they are the proponents of real science.

Unlike vestigial sciences or hyperpolitical sciences, which fall out of the mainstream, counterestablishment sciences such as belief in Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster have been deemed to be pseudoscientific from their outset. This is also true when it comes to speculation about alien civilizations.

Have you ever had the feeling that something terrible has happened to a loved one, and then found out that it was true?

While most people disregard telepathy or psychokinesis, even the American philosopher and psychologist William James, known as the father of American psychology, felt that there was something to be said for the extensive anecdotal evidence of people who sensed the death of a loved one. James was one of the first to experiment in the field that became known as parapsychology, or the study of unusual mental powers.

Scientists might roll their eyes at contemporary astrologists or parapsychologists. But, for the most part, pseudosciences are harmless. Since time and resources in the sciences are limited and only go to the projects that are deemed most worthwhile, pseudoscience projects are naturally fringed out from the mainstream.

But in some cases, fringe sciences can cause considerable public harm. This is the case with groups such as HIV denialists, climate-change denialists, and the anti-vaccination movement. Unlike counterestablishment sciences, denialists don’t aim to establish their own propositions about the world. Instead, they seek to cast doubt on the consensus of the mainstream.

In the past century, science has progressed more rapidly than at any time in history. We now know more than ever about the natural world. Major discoveries in fields such as neurology and molecular biology are made on a monthly basis. In the face of all of this scientific knowledge, why are pseudosciences so persistent?

Answering this question requires us to investigate the nature of modern science itself. The term scientist was first coined in 1831, around the time that studying nature started to become an occupation. The new term implied someone who earned a living from research, published in recently founded scientific journals, and participated in a vibrant community of other science professionals.