Science Denialism and Pseudoscience

Even though we live in an age where we understand more about the natural and human world than ever, and have taken as much advantage of it as possible to improve our quality of life, there has been and always will be various groups of people who reject what it says. This may be done out of distaste for science and scientists, unwillingness to hear what it says, or simply just refusing to understand it.

Pseudoscience

Science is all about trying to understand and figure out the natural world as objectively as possible, but it's evil counterpart, Pseudoscience, seems to be much more attractive for the majority of people.

Pseudoscience comes in all forms, and basically all demographics can fall prey to it (yes, even across the political spectrum).

Real science is hard. It's complicated and hard to understand. It might even make us uncomfortable.

How people misunderstand how science works

There's a pervasive view in circles for all sorts of pseudoscience supporters (creationists, TFES, Vaccine Denialism) that sees the science that goes against their views as a religion in and of itself (which is a major case of projection). What is meant by this is that they think scientists treat what they think (the scientists) as a religion; They think that scientists have their own quasi-religion where they never question well-established principles. Nothing could be further from the truth.

[Science] has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts, no matter how fond of it we are, must be discarded or revised. -Carl Sagan

(For the record, the quote warns against scientists using arguments from authority to support their position, since it's their jobs to get the evidence for it; When applied to a scientific authority, it has significant value for the layman)

What these pseudoscience endorses fail to realize is that science is all about proving each other wrong. Falsifiability is paramount in science. If something can not be demonstrated to be false, then it's not given consideration.

If you were to say that all the well-established concepts in science, such as e=mc^2, the Earth not being flat, evolution were false, how come not one person who has attempted to debunk these concepts has ever won a Nobel Prize for their amazing discoveries? That's actually one of the main motivators of disproving popular scientific ideas. Imagine for a moment how famous and revered you would be by not only scientists but by the general public for being the person who was able to prove that Einstein or Darwin were wrong about the discoveries that made THEM famous and revered? Why WOULDN'T anyone try to achieve that with THAT level of motivation?

Scientists just don't bother trying to refute these things because they know they can't because they're so well-proven it's impossible to disprove them. If these things were wrong, they would've shown to be as such a long time ago. And similarly, scientists don't really spend any time trying to refute the "evidence" that goes against science, not because they are unable to, but because the arguments that presented are so profoundly idiotic that it's not even worth the time trying to address it, since the pseudoscience promoter in question is obviously not bothering with gaining an understanding of the basics before making their claims on the subject. If someone is going to insist that 2+2=3, would you bother trying to show that person why he or she is wrong, or would you just give up trying to convince them? What hope does this person have of understanding anything in mathematics even slightly more sophisticated than basic addition? That may sound like an unfair comparison, but that's more or less what for example evolutionary biologists think when creationists regurgitate arguments such as "If people came from monkeys, den why are dere still monkeys????" or "There ain't no transitional fossils!!!"

As applied to Veganism

As meta-activists, we are unfortunately all too well aware of all the bad science that comes from both Vegans and anti-Vegans alike, and both tend to be equally frustrating.