See also this internet classic.
Detecting Pseudo-Science
Michael Tobis
Michael Tobis, editor-in-chief of Planet3.0 and site cofounder, has always been interested in the interface between science and public policy. He holds a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences where he developed a 3-D ocean model on a custom computing platform. He has been involved in sustainability conversations on the internet since 1992, has been a web software developer since 2000, and has been posting sustainability articles on the web since 2007.
A guest post at Bart's blog relates, and reminds me that the first point on this list is a little trickier than simple "willingness to change with evidence". Actually - for good reason - bodies of scientific knowledge are quite resistant to change in the short-term. They're made up of webs of interconnected concepts; hence why paradigm shifts are hard to come by.
Though to qualify that: paradigm shifts never invert previous scientific knowledge - or rather, they can invert the way science views something fundamental about the structure of reality (Newton vs Einstein) but the actual physical predictions won't be largely different between paradigms.
Lewandowsky LOG12 = pseudo science..?
Methodology not as stated (LOG12), conclusions of diverse audience and wide readership unsupported by any evidence..
When ask for proof of this claim, say I had the url, but lost it.. (mere incompetence)
Then it transpires that this must be a lie (or really really bad incompetence) as the survey was not posted (even SkS colleagues confirmed this, as does wayback evidence)
Ignore people reporting error, then attack then in science papers labeling them with psychological defects?
all this before the 1st paper gets published, and when it does, the error remains uncorrected.
All Lew has do do is answer a simple question.
Did you publish your survey (as claimed in LOG12|) at Skeptical Science and to Prove IT.
Big +1 on that.
The items on your list wouldn't be recognised by mainstream (peer-reviewed!) philosophers of science. This looks to me like pseudo-philosophy-of-science.
Philosophy of science is not concerned with detecting people who are only pretending to be serious. It's more of a practical skill than a serious epistemological challenge.
It is amazing how often denial contains the very behaviors that the denial is denying, isn't it?
Also I think our community might come up with a different list based on the characteristics of the pseudoscience we are typically presented with. This one appears to come from the life and health sciences. But there is certainly a lot of overlap.
Krugman stole my point.
Thanks Dan for the pointer. I've dropped in some remarks at Krugman, which reminded me of Gavin Schmidt's recent TED talk. PWA is very hot on reductionism, and it appears GS has picked up on the difficulties:
Emergent Patterns of Climate Change
Things should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. As Einstein really did say. Maybe.