Using the term pseudoscience, then, leads to unnecessary polarization, — Pseudoscience

"Although cloaked in scientific language…the leaden heart of pseudoscience is its imperviousness to evidentiary challenge."

"There is an important lesson in this. All so-called pseudoscientists believe they are simply scientists, albeit ones with heterodox views marginalized by the mainstream. (They arent necessarily right—many people have mistaken self-conceptions.) But to be a scientist, you need to behave like one, and one thing scientists do constantly is, well, demarcate. Velikovsky and his peers knew there was an edge to legitimate science, and they policed it very carefully, just like "establishment" scientists did and continue to do. I have come to think of pseudoscience as sciences shadow. A shadow is cast by something; it has no substance of its own. The same is true for these doctrines on the fringe. If scientists use some criterion such as peer review to demarcate, so will the fringe (creationists have peer-reviewed journals, as did Velikovskians). The brighter the light of science—that is, the greater its cultural prestige and authority—the sharper the shadow, and the more the fringe flourishes."

"Understanding the scientific fringe as a necessary shadow of the professional scientific consensus not only emphasizes the intimate connection between the sciences and those doctrines variously labeled pseudosciences, it also refocuses our attention on the causes of the phenomenon. When someone makes shadow puppets on the wall, our eyes are naturally drawn to the striking, cleanly outlined shapes of rabbits and ducks, but that is not where the action is. Similarly, I suggest the pseudosciences are not real in themselves; they are defined by external projection. The important thing to watch is not the shadow, but the hand. It not only is the source of the shadows; it is also the more fascinating and complex phenomenon of the two. The fringe not only shadows the core, it is continuous with it, and the most effective way to deal with attacks from the latter is to ensure that the former is in good working order."

"Through certain vagaries of history, some of which I have alluded to here, we have managed to conflate two quite distinct questions: What makes a belief well founded (or heuristically fertile)? And what makes a belief scientific? The first set of questions is philosophically interesting and possibly even tractable; the second question is both uninteresting and, judging by its checkered past, intractable. If we would stand up and be counted on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like "pseudo-science" and "unscientific" from our vocabulary; they are just hollow phrases which do only emotive work for us. As such, they are more suited to the rhetoric of politicians and Scottish sociologists of knowledge than to that of empirical researchers. Insofar as our concern is to protect ourselves and our fellows from the cardinal sin of believing what we wish were so rather than what there is substantial evidence for (and surely that is what most forms of "quackery" come down to), then our focus should be squarely on the empirical and conceptual credentials for claims about the world. The "scientific" status of those claims is altogether irrelevant."

"Although pseudoscience is a fairly common epithet, it is not exactly universal. Scientists do not just call anything they do not like “pseudoscience.” They are perfectly happy to declare many of their peers’ work to be “bad” or “substandard” science. “Pseudoscience” is used in a targeted way, at certain times, and against specific enemies. This implies that there is no unified pseudoscience; the various doctrines labeled “pseudosciences” over the last two centuries actually have very little in common with one another besides being hated by assorted scientists."

"“Pseudoscience” is an empty category, a term of abuse, and there is nothing that necessarily links those dubbed pseudoscientists besides their separate alienation from science at the hands of the establishment."