Pseudoscientific explanations are generally not analyzed rationally, but only by the yardstick of experience; it is deemed valid what "works and is satisfactory and sufficient for oneself", thus offering a simplistic description of the world and reducing the amount of work required to understand situations and complex events.
The term "pseudoscience" was coined to clear the field of disciplines, presenting itself to the public as scientific, claim to provide results that would have a degree of verifiability and thus of authority equal to that of the sciences, but which refuse to apply the methods required by the rigorous scientific method.
Many supporters of pseudoscience are such because they deem desirable to go beyond the limits that scientific knowledge requires; the clash, however, concerns that the pseudoscience claim to show the label of science without being willing to pay the price, in terms of rigorous method this label requires. But even if science operators were as conservative as they are painted by the followers of pseudoscience, then it would not understand the meaning of such insistence in wanting to be defined as science.
There are very important fields of human life of which science can not say anything, simply because its method is not suitable to ask questions and find answers, science can not state, for example, whether music is beautiful or not.
This is because the concepts of "beautiful" or "ugly" does not belong to science, but to aesthetics, which is not a formal science as it does not adopt the scientific method, but, however, seeks to resolve issues of great interest.
The pseudo-sciences are defined "pseudo" because of their method of search, that is, not on what they search for, but for the way with which they seek. Without the experimental method there is no knowledge of scientific type, so the disciplines that are not based on the experimental method can not aspire to provide results defined as "scientific".
Science makes mistakes, but admits error correction, and if it shows that a certain theory is wrong, the scientific knowledge is corrected. On the contrary, all pseudo-sciences have the characteristic to remain valid and do not change even if it is shown experimentally that the very foundations on which they are based are wrong. It follows that the knowledge that they provide can not be scientific, because for science can be defined as "true" only what is shown: their will be a knowledge similar to that of religion, in which is "true" what is believed, and not what one is able to demonstrate. A true scientist accepts any phenomenon, even if unexplained, provided it is satisfied that such a phenomenon exists.
Then, pseudoscience, despite attempting to mimic the scientific method, they totally or partially miss the essential elements that should characterize a science or scientific integrity, the ability to constantly challenge the initial assumptions based on the results obtained experimentally.
Science is not able to rule out that some or even all phenomena postulated by the pseudo-sciences are "real", since science can only make statements about what is possible experiment. The problem is, if anything, epistemological: to study these alleged phenomena occurs at first to demonstrate that they exist. And this demonstration is up to the supporters of their existence.
In science, the theory of origin and the motivation to research in itself are certainly important but not essential (a wrong starting hypothesis can waste all the time and all the money following false leads): what matters is, in fact, a result that is scientifically verifiable, although in contrast to the assumptions (which will be changed by the new result, if it is proved that it was right after verification). In contrast, in the theory of pseudo-science the starting theory is always more important than the results, to the point that the observations are ‘bent’ in order to adapt them to the theory of departure. Whenever a doctrine does not allow to edit the thesis of departure in case of mixed results, it will be a pseudoscience.
In conclusion, the fundamental problem of pseudo-science is not to "produce results that can not be explained on the basis of traditional science": the problem is to fail to produce results whatsoever in scientifically controlled conditions.
The famous physicist Richard Feynman, in his speech at the inauguration of the academic year 1974-75 at Caltech, coins the term "cargo cult science" to explain the wrong approach to take in the investigation of phenomena pseudoscience. The term "cargo cult" (cargo cult), refers to the rites practiced by some Polynesian populations, which during the Second World War came into contact with Western civilization, benefiting from the goods (clothing, canned food, etc.). which were brought from the aircraft (cargo, in fact) as supply for soldiers. After the war, these populations instituted rituals for groped to evoke again the landing of cargo, building airstrips and fake watchtowers, that is, imitating what they had seen done by the military. Here is a passage from the speech Feynman:
"The educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would call a cargo cult science. In the South Seas lives a people who practice, in fact, the cult of the cargo: during the Second World War this people saw land airplanes full of all good things, and now they would like it to continue. They traced on the ground of the kind of tracks; light fires at their sides; they built a hut in which sits a man with two pieces of wood to mo 'of headphones, and from which protrude of bamboo mo' radio antennas (the man is the flight controller); and expect the aircraft to land. They do everything correctly; The form is perfect and respects the original, but it is not working. Does not land a plane. So I speak of cargo cult science: science are following the precepts and forms of scientific apparent but which, however, lacks an essential element, because the planes do not land. "
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