Explaining Ghost Sightings (Part 2 – Temporal Lobe Epilepsy)

When I said that pareidolia can explain a lot of ghost sightings, I didn’t mean all of them. Sometimes the environment is bright and clear, you’re fully awake, and yet you still get that “ghostly” feeling. Scary, eh? Well, that may just be a hallucination, and here I shall tackle a common cause for hallucinations – temporal lobe epilepsy.

Defining Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

The temporal lobe would be the part in red. Only the left temporal lobe is shown.

The temporal lobe is separated into 2 parts: right and left. It’s responsible for auditory processing, processing of semantic & lexical information in speech, and long-term memory. On the other hand, epilepsy aka seizure disorder is a common neurological disorder that causes recurrent & unprovoked seizures in patients. These seizures happen when clusters of neurons fire excessively/abnormally/synchronously. Combine these two, and you’ve got temporal lobe epilepsy.

Temporal lobe epilepsy causes simple and complex partial seizures. Simple partial seizures simply cause unusual behaviours and patterns of cognition, including hallucinations and paranormal experiences; complex partial seizures can render the patient disabled and lose awareness temporarily. If one is unlucky though, it may spread and become a tonic–clonic seizure, a type of seizure that affects the entire brain, and is much more lethal.

Causes

Temporal lobe epilepsy may be caused by a variety of factors, including:

1. Hippocampal sclerosis, which is present in 2/3 of patients, and causes mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE).
2. Infections
3. Febrile seizures
4. Malignancies
5. Vascular malformations
6. Idiopathic (genetic), but it’s rare.
7. Trauma producing contusion/haemorrhage that results in encephalomalacia or cortical scarring
8. Difficult traumatic delivery such as forceps deliveries
9. Hamartomas

Symptoms Related to Ghost Sightings/Paranormal Experiences

Since the temporal lobe is responsible for hearing, information processing, and long-term memory, abnormal functioning in the temporal lobes will also cause these brain processes to function wrongly. Complex partial seizures are unrelated to ghost sightings, so I’ve decided not to write about them.

Simple Partial Seizures/Auras

Just to make it clear, the word “aura” in this context is defined as a “warning” before “a complex partial seizure occurs, not the pseudoscientific human/soul aura or whatever it’s called. For patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, they may have a simple partial seizure, which creates an aura, and usually leads to a complex partial seizure.

Somatosensory and Special sensory phenomena

Auras may come in the form of olfactory, gustatory, auditory, and visual hallucinations and illusions. Auditory hallucinations consist of a buzzing sound, a voice/voices, or muffling of ambient sounds. On the other hand, visual hallucinations may take the form of distortions of shape, size, and distance of objects, shrinking (micropsia) or enlarging of things (macropsia), and also tilting of structures.

Psychic Phenomena

Patients may also feel déjà vu, the feeling that’s you’ve seen something before, although you’ve not, and jamais vu, in which one suddenly feels eerie and unfamiliar to the environment, although he/she has been in the same situation before, and he/she knows it.

Patients may also experience depersonalization (feeling of detachment from oneself) or derealisation (surroundings appear unreal). “Out of body” experiences can also happen to the patient, a phenomenon known as dissociation/autoscopy. Plus, if the seizure arises from the amygdala, the patient will become fearful and anxious, sometimes to the point of having “an impending sense of doom”.

Conclusion

Here, I’ve shown that so-called ghost sightings may be caused by temporal lobe epilepsy instead of a real ghost appearing, which goes against Occam’s razor and science too much (violation of the laws of physics, anyone?)

However, I am aware that not everyone has temporal lobe epilepsy, yet many still experience its symptoms. There’s another similar cause for such experiences – electromagnetic disruption of the temporal lobe, and it’s one that I shall address next.

Explaining Ghost Sightings (Part 1 – Pareidolia)

During a debate with my friend on the existence of the soul, he raised ghost sightings as an argument for the soul’s existence. While I quickly refuted his argument, it led me to consider writing a naturalistic explanation for ghost sightings, since they’re frequently used when spiritualists argue against naturalists. I’ll start with pareidolia, a common psychological/neurological phenomenon.

What's Pareidolia?

Did your friends ever said to you: “I saw a ghost when I was walking to the toilet with my own eyes”? Or have you ever heard someone calling your name, but there’s no one around? Meet pareidolia, the tendency to interpret a vague stimulus as something known to the viewer; such as interpreting marks on Mars as canals or seeing shapes in clouds.This phenomenon is extremely common, and can be created easily. Lets see….

That's an alien on Mars...... or is it?

That may be an alien disguising as a tree sticking its tongue towards us... Yeah that's obvious.

In addition to the ghostly female face, I also see the head of an avian-like monster beside the face, and a ghost with eyes, hands and a mouth at the centre-right of the 1st image. Something’s definitely wrong, or I simply have a great imagination.

I bet you saw the faces. And if you did, congratulations, for you're a normal human, and like all of us, susceptible to illusions and pareidolia. So if you see a ghostly apparition, don't worry - it's your mind seeing an image that vaguely resembles something you’re familiar with, in which your brain then exaggerates and modifies to be clearer.

Conditions that Cause Pareidolia

Vague Stimuli (Blurry Images/Sounds)

The brain is a gifted interpreter – it’s capable of responding to blurry face-like images and interpreting them rapidly – in fact this study suggests that it takes only 165ms for our ventral fusiform cortex to be activated, compared to 130ms for a true face. This study shows that pareidolia is an instinctive response, and not a late cognitive reinterpretation phenomenon.

Despite that, our first instincts are often wrong, and when the same object is looked more carefully and with more detail, it’s often revealed that the so-called “ghost” is an illusion after all. The best example for this would be the “Face of Mars” in the Cydonia region.

Here's part of the Cydonia region, taken by the Viking 1 orbiter and released by NASA/JPL on July 25, 1976. And yes, that's the so-called face of Mars near the top.

Upon seeing the “face”, conspiracy theorists claimed that it was “intelligently designed” by Martians, and that it was located next to a city whose temples and fortifications could be seen. On the other hand, NASA and the skeptics explained that it was simply the effects of light, but the conspiracy theorists took that as a sure sign of a cover up. Until the high-res images appeared.

High resolution Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2006-present) image of the "Face on Mars". Taken using the onboard HiRISE camera.

Similar high-res images were took by the NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor (1997-2006) and the European Space Agency's Mars Express probe (2003-present). All wild speculations about the “face of Mars” were put to rest, and the conspiracy theorists went silent (if not embarrassed). However, this is not the first case of pareidolia caused by vague stimuli, and will certainly not be the last.

Examples of pareidolia inducing environments (happens especially, if not only at night):

1. Half-lit hallways.
2. Toilets.
3. Dorms.
4. Camping sites.
5. Highways.
6. Quiet parks.

When You're Half-conscious

Sometimes, the stimuli doesn’t have to vague/blurry -  pareidolia can also happen when you’re aren’t fully self-aware (half awake, fatigued, sleepy etc). When we’re not fully conscious, our brains tend to misinterpret things, and pareidolia can occur easily. That’s why ghosts love to come out at night, or when you’re working overtime, or when you wake up at night. Yeah, makes perfect sense.

Evolutionary Origins of Pareidolia

Since pareidolia is literally hardwired into our brains, there must be a evolutionary advantage for our brains to see "faces" or hear "voices" when there are none. A plausible explanation is the false-alarm hypothesis (or whatever it’s called).

The False Alarm Hypothesis

Let's assume that there're 2 individuals, A & B living in the wilds of yesteryear. A is able to respond to familiar stimuli (faces, animal voices) quickly, but is susceptible to pareidolia; B doesn't respond as well, and thus never have any false alarms. In the prehistoric world (perhaps even in the modern world), A would be much more likely to survive by recognizing familiar patterns quickly, and escape on the first sign of a threat. Even it was a false alarm, it wouldn't affect  A negatively. B, on the other hand, failing to recognize patterns quickly, would be less self-aware, and fall prey to sabre-tooth tigers easily.

On a not-so related side note, I propose that we fear ghosts because they look so damn similar to the predators our ancestors had to escape from at night – blurry, vaguely resembling things we’re familiar with, making all sorts of noises, and yes, their ghastly eyes. Those who were afraid of the predators survived, while the others left offspring. Thus, when we see similar images in our lives, we still invoke a “fight or flight” response and get freaked out.

Conclusion

Here, I’ve put forward pareidolia as the first of my explanations for ghostly encounters, and there’s going to more. I just hope that my friends would try and take a look at my explanations, instead of simply repeating the same-ol’ argument every time. I bet they won’t though.

How about you, my fellow readers? Do you think that pareidolia manages to explain some, if not most ghost sightings? If it can’t, then why is it so?

Problems of the Soul (Arguments from Neuroscience)

The concept of the human soul and life after death is almost universally accepted among the people. One may not accept the existence of gods, deities, or ghosts, but if asked on the validity of souls and spirits, he/she is most likely to answer yes. Yet, to the naturalist, such a concept is very problematic, and being a naturalist myself, I’ll give a few thoughts on why the concept of the soul contradicts neuroscience, and is thus highly implausible.

René Descartes's illustration of dualism. Inputs are passed on by the sensory organs to the epiphysis in the brain and from there to the immaterial spirit.

Neural Development

The soul is eternal, and it controls our body, as mind-body dualists love to claim. Consciousness is retained even after we die, and is passed on to our next body (whether it’s a human, animal, fairy, ghost, demon). But neural development challenges this belief strongly.

Maturing of the Mind

The mind matures as the brain grows, as shown in this picture where our brain achieves full grey matter volume during our 20s.

As we all know, when humans grow up, our thoughts start to mature, and begins to decline once we reach an old age. To the biologist/naturalist, the explanation for such a phenomena couldn’t be simpler: neural development. As we grow towards the adult stage, our brain starts to increase in complexity and amount of grey matter. Then, as we start ageing, our brain begins deteriorating, through a multitude of factors including DNA damage and free radicals damage.

A dualist, however, will find this problematic. If the soul retains our consciousness and thoughts after we die, then one should be reborn with similar thoughts from the previous life. But that’s certainly not the case, as we’re born with almost nothing in our memory, and we don’t act maturely at all until we’re older.

The Beginning of Consciousness

I put forward a simple question to all mind-body dualists: In which stage does the soul enter the body?

Theistic evolutionists face a very problematic question: When did God decide to insert the soul into the human body in the passage of evolution? During the point where Australopithecus lived? Homo hablis? Homo erectus? Homo sapiens? Theistic evolutionists have a hard time agreeing on the exact point. The same problem is there for mind-body dualists. When does the soul enter the body? During the moment of conception? Gastrulation? When we become an embryo? Perhaps the moment of birth? Dualists will have a hard time agreeing on this. While this isn’t a rebuttal to the soul theory, it does present a problem in the soul theory.

The Nervous System

It’s widely accepted to any student of science that our senses are controlled by our nervous system, which sends information to our brain through electrical charges, and our brain will respond accordingly. Such a model doesn’t fit well with the soul theory.

Our Senses

Here’s the 5 traditional senses. Obviously, all of them stop working once the specific nerves get damaged.

If the soul is to retain full consciousness in the material world after death, then it must be independent of our nervous system. The soul must be able to receive information from the material world through another method, if it’s to work as dualists claim. Such is not the case. When a person’s optical nerves get damaged, he/she loses his sight; when his/her auditory nerves stop functioning, he/she becomes deaf etc. It’s very clear that our interaction with the environment is reliant on the nervous system. So either the soul loses all connection with material world once we die, or the soul somehow regains full consciousness the moment we pass away. The first hypothesis requires a radical change in the soul theory; the second hypothesis is simply laughable.

Brain Damage

If the soul is responsible for our consciousness, then why does patients with brain damage suffer from reduced mental abilities?  In fact, neuroscientists are capable of predicting damage in which part of the brain will cause what kind of mental deterioration. The fact that mental abilities are subject to the state of the brain is at odds with common dualist anecdotes which claim that the soul can leave the body, or that the soul can keep on having thoughts in the material world after death.

Conclusion

In this post, I have raised a number of problems that challenge the soul theory greatly. The phenomena above points strongly to the view that the mind and consciousness is the product of the brain, not the soul. Before any dualist manages to explain away those problems, I’m a naturalist. But I’ve only pointed the problems from the neuroscientist’s view. In my next post, I’ll point out why the soul is completely implausible from a physics point of view.

PS: If my anyone finds any logical or philosophical errors in my opinions, please tell me. :-)

Sceptical Towards Pseudoscience – Diamond Water Quackery

It's about time to debunk this company's unfounded and misleading claims.

Don’t you just hate it when some guy comes to you and say: “Hey, we’ve got this new product that can enhance your bio-field and energy vibrations! It has been proven by Japanese/US scientists and passes the Federal standards!” Don’t you? Yet, while sceptics will simply laugh off these pseudoscientific products, many people are unfortunately scammed. This time, I will deal with the great energised water scams so prevalent across the globe, and here’s the leader in Malaysia/Hong Kong – Diamond Energy Water. Let’s look at Diamond's claims.

Smaller Water Clusters for Better Absorption by Cells?!

So after 30 years of research from Japanese scientists (one must wonder where did the funding come from, and how no one knew of it beforehand), they developed the Energy Conversion technology that breaks water clusters into smaller clusters for easier absorption by body cells, which in turn improves our body’s metabolism and absorption of nutrients and allows for more dissolved oxygen. Sounds quite familiar, eh? Time to debunk the pseudoscience.

What Water Clusters Really Mean

In true chemistry, water clusters are defined as a hydrogen-bonded cluster of molecules of water. Let me explain what’s a hydrogen bond.

Hydrogen Bonds

A hydrogen bond is a type of electrostatic interaction between electronegative atoms (fluorine, nitrogen, or oxygen) within a molecule and hydrogen atoms bound to another electronegative molecule. The bond can occur between molecules (intermolecular), or they can occur within the same molecule (intramolecular). Hydrogen bonds are only about 1/10 as strong as normal covalent bonds.

A water molecule can be bonded to 4 other molecules at one time. This is because its 2 hydrogen atoms can be bonded to 2 other oxygen atoms, while its oxygen atom can accept up to 2 hydrogen bonds. As a water molecule can bond with the most number of other water molecules at the same time when compared to similar chemicals, it has a relatively high boiling point, melting point and viscosity.

Here's what I mean: A water molecule with its hydrogen atoms bonded to 2 other oxygen molecules and its oxygen molecule being bonded by 2 other hydrogen molecules.

Waters Clusters Don't Work the Way Diamond Water Implies

Let’s assume that the Energy Conversion technology actually works, and it’s perfectly capable of breaking waters clusters down to the smallest possible cluster (that’s a water dimer, which consists of 2 hydrogen-bonded water molecules). But for the technology to really work, the water cluster’s structure must remain unchanged from the moment it passes through the filter to the time it’s absorbed by our cells. That’ll take minutes, at the very least.

So here’s the fact: that isn’t possible. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Science (that should be a reliable source), water

“… imposes a high degree of structure and current models supported by X-ray scattering studies have short-range ordered regions, which are constantly disintegrating and reforming.”

And, according to these peer-reviewed scientific reports in the “Read More” section below, the lifespan of hydrogen bonds are counted on the scale of picoseconds, or 10^-9 seconds. You read that correctly, those who are interested in buying energised water of any sort. The structure of the water clusters would’ve changed innumerable times before you can even flinch.

But that’s not the end to Diamond’s claims. They say that they have a far-infrared technology that stabilizes energy within the water to allow the structure to be maintained for a longer period. This claim is without scientific evidence, and it’s not sure what they actually mean by “stabilizing energy”. But even assuming that water clusters can actually be stabilized, can it still maintain its structure during the move from the 4th filter to the 5th filter? Since we’re talking about change within picoseconds here, it’s a no.

Conclusion

I’ve made it pretty clear that Diamond’s so-called energy water are full of pseudoscientific bunk. Moreover, Diamond’s act of making false claims about their products is simply unethical, and isn’t justified by the law. Yet, the public is still misinformed on their claims, and it’s still the most famous water filtering company in Malaysia (and perhaps Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan). So if you have any Malaysian friends, inform them of this!

PS: Because of time constraints, I decided not to write on cell hydration in this post, but I’ll address it later. :-)

Read More

Unified description of temperature-dependent hydrogen-bond rearrangements in liquid water

PMR study of the lifetime of complexes with a strong hydrogen bond at low temperatures.

Hydrogen-bond lifetime measured by time-resolved 2D-IR spectroscopy: N-methylacetamide in methanol

Ultrafast Dynamics in Na-doped water Clusters

Sceptical Towards Pseudoscience – The Pseudoscientific Method

What differs science from pseudoscience? Why do we call astrology, numerology, and feng shui pseudoscience? New Age followers frequently claim that science-fans are simply too arrogant and ignorant to look at the evidence, but how true is that? Here, I contrast the scientific method and the pseudoscientific method, and show why we sceptics are justified in labelling them as simply superstition.

Science is Self-correcting; Pseudoscience is Static

Scientific theories are self-correcting, that is, they change in the light of new, contradicting evidence. As a perfect scientific theory should have zero flaws, it is not surprising that what you’ve learned today may be completely wrong tomorrow.

Take the Theory of Evolution as an example. Initially, there was Lamarckism, a theory stating that changes in an individual’s genotype will be inherited by its offspring. Yet, the arrival of genetics on the scene completely rendered the theory wrong, and gave overwhelming evidence for Mendelian-inheritance.

Yet, by the early 21st century, it was found out that organisms don’t follow strict Mendelian inheritance patterns. This can be caused by epigenetics, environmental factors etc. In fact, in 2006, Minoo Rassoulzadegan from the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France, and her colleagues reported the first instance of non-Mendelian inheritance in mammals. They interbred wild-type mice with heterozygous with engineered Kit DNA. The wild-type mice had tails uniform in colour; the heterozygous mice had spotted tails. When they interbreed the mice, they got a litter full of spotted tail mice when Mendelian inheritance expected about half of each mice. They found out that the Kit mRNA in the heterozygous mice and the pups was lower in level and degraded, and the degradation was caused by Kit microRNA. This shows that DNA (RNA in some viruses) is actually not the only biochemical that affects inheritance, and once again, the Theory of Evolution needs to be updated.

It was found out that the damaged mRNA in the heterozygous mice was inherited by the para-mutated pups, giving them spotted tails.(Soloway/Nature, 2006)

But what about pseudoscience? Do they revise their theories in response to contradictory evidence? No, they don’t. Astrology, feng shui, numerology rarely update to reflect new findings, and is virtually the same as what they were thousands of years ago. The failure of Western astrology to address the precession of the equinoxes is a classical example and typical of pseudoscience. See my post - Debunking Astrology (Part 2 – Problems that Astrology Must Answer) for further info.

Science is Critically Peer-reviewed; Pseudoscience Spouts Claims Without Evidence

I don’t dare to say science is without fraud. Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Archaeoraptor etc. are examples we can all remember as embarrassments to the scientific community, a sore reminder that science must be honest to itself, and to be critically peer-reviewed.

A defining feature of science is that any single hypothesis must go through extensive scrutiny from the respective scientific communities before it even has the hope to be published in a scientific magazine, like Nature. With all those different hypotheses coming from everywhere, one has to ensure that they are truly of high quality, and it is the peer review system that allows us to judge whether a hypotheses is honest and truthful.

But, does pseudoscience have similar systems? Definitely no. Pseudoscience goes directly to the relatively uncensored mass media, telling the world of their “great” discoveries and predictions, in which they cannot give any evidence for. But what’s more disappointing is that quite some newspapers will praise their claims without second thought? Perhaps because of psychological and marketing factors? Whatever it is, the conclusion would be: pseudoscience never examines its claims critically, but it speaks louder than true science. Like a duck compared to an eagle.

Science is Objective; Pseudoscience is Subjective/Vague

A theory that explains everything explains nothing.

Science hypotheses, theories and laws must be falsifiable. What do we mean by falsifiability? It means that a theory/hypothesis/law must be specific and objective in its predictions so that they can be test and verified by other scientists. Here’s an example: Mendel’s Law of Segregation predicts that there are dominant and recessive alleles, and when both are present, the dominant allele will be expressed, masking the recessive allele. This was strongly supported when Mendel’s pea experiments showed a 3:1 ratio of 2 different traits, 1 being dominant and the other being recessive. Except in cases where non-Mendelian inheritance is involved, this law has always stood up to the test, and can thus be rightfully called a scientific law.

But pseudoscience never does this. Their claims are usually vague enough to be untestable using the scientific method and generic enough so that the predictions apply to everyone. Take astrology’s sun sign predictions as an example:

Capricorn, the tenth sign of the zodiac, is all about hard work. Those born under this sign are more than happy to put in a full day at the office, realizing that it will likely take a lot of those days to get to the top. That's no problem, since Capricorns are both ambitious and determined: they will get there. Life is one big project for these folks, and they adapt to this by adopting a businesslike approach to most everything they do. Capricorns are practical as well, taking things one step at a time and being as realistic and pragmatic as possible. The Capricorn-born are extremely dedicated to their goals, almost to the point of stubbornness. Those victories sure smell sweet, though, and that thought alone will keep Capricorns going.

That’s for Capricorn. Wow, doesn’t this sound like the perfect employee/employer? Note how does astrology (and also other pseudoscience) prey upon our dreams and visions so that we happily agree with it.  Moreover, the prediction above only explains a part of our life. One can look at a Capricorn sign and say that it fits his/her work-life, and look at an Libra sign and say: “That’s me! Charming, attractive, graceful! After all, that’s what I am in my personal life!” By making predictions which could apply perfectly depending on the situation, pseudoscience manages to be “accurate” in its predictions, when it is simply using the same-old tactic.

Science Uses Clear and Precise Words; Pseudoscience Uses Scientific-sounding Mumbo Jumbo

To allow your theory/hypothesis to be verified accurately by other scientists, what you need to do is to use the most precise, and the clearest words possible. They can then be verified using scienitific experiments, which will determine its validity. That’s needed so that science remains objective and falsifiable.

However, it seems that a lot of people frequently criticise science for using hard-to-understand jargon in place of general, understandable words. But be aware that when I say clear, I don’t mean easily understandable by the general public, but precise enough so other scientists can know exactly what are you referring too. This is how it is in the scientific community; on the other hand, more simple and generic words are used when informing the public.

But pseudoscience also uses the same words, so does that give it the same qualities? That’s a no. Take a look at the some “scientific” mumbo-jumbo used by pseudoscience: “energy vibrations”, “enhanced bio-field”, “non-Hertzian scalar energy”. Despite using scientific sounding terms, such terms don’t exist within the scientific community, as their existence have never been proved. Thus these terms are meaningless, nothing more than a trick to sound genuine to the public.

In other cases, pseudoscience will quote mine true and valid scientific theories to further their case. Take the notorious FusionExcel company as an example. The say that their “quantum pendant” are capable of generating “scalar energy”, which are supposed to improve our wellbeing. But wait! In physics, the word quantum is used to describe quantum mechanics, which is currently the best system for explaining interactions on the atomic/subatomic scale. Are they implying the pendants are created through manipulating molecules on the subatomic scale? And what is scalar energy? They try to use the Maxwell Equations to validate its existence, but I cannot find any link. That’s typical of pseudoscience.

Science Keeps Trying to Verify Its Predictions; Pseudoscience Rely on Confirmation Bias

A scientific theory must stand up to the evidence consistently. It must always match real-world observations, and the whole theory could be dismantled with one contradicting evidence. That’s why scientists constantly test scienitific theories against new observations to ensure its validity. If it doesn’t hold, then try to create a better one.

But pseudoscience never does this! They keep on giving vague, generic predictions, and in the case that even those predictions fails, they usually give some kind of rationalization, such as “The theory is just a guideline”, “Well you shouldn’t rely only on stars signs, there’s more to astrology”, “Maybe you missed something”, “You can’t judge someone from his/her looks” etc. Never do they admit to be wrong.

On the other hand, pseudoscience gets ecstatic when their claims are found to be true. They will declare it as empirical evidence, while ignoring the times when the predictions have failed to hold. It is of course frequently shown that these “evidence” can also be explained through pure chance, which may be why believers don’t look at contradicting observations. In psychology, this is known as confirmation bias, in which people deliberately ignore contradicting evidence, in favour of supporting observations. While commonplace in pseudoscience, confirmation bias in the scientific community is quickly exposed thanks to the peer review process.

Science Relies on Empirical Evidence; Pseudoscience Relies on Anecdotes

The last, and most annoying feature of pseudoscience is its overuse of anecdotal evidence. Science is empirical, requiring strong evidence and repeatable, testable predictions. Just because a well respected scientist or the majority of scientists claim something to be true doesn’t verify a theory/hypothesis. It must go through the peer review system as stated above, and be tested repeatedly to be valid.

But obviously, pseudoscience doesn’t do this. As evidence can’t be found for their claims, they instead rely on anecdotes from customers or supporters. When I asked my friends for evidence of ghosts, they say: “I saw it! It was late night in my camping tree, and I saw a spectre in the trees”, “I hear weird sounds sometimes!” or “My friend them, I saw them, doesn’t that make ghosts true already?”. Classic example of pseudoscience/superstition.

But why not anecdotal evidence, you ask? The problem with anecdotes is that human errors are simply too frequent, we have great imagination, we all have slight confirmation bias, and yes, the placebo effect is quite a powerful force. This problem exists even in mass hallucinations, where the power of suggestion can cause a group of people to have “God” show up in front of them, when spectators see nothing except for a bunch of lunatics. Anecdotal evidence cannot be used as scientific evidence for this reason.

I saw a vaguely-humanoid shaped fog: Evidence for ghosts!

Conclusion

I think I’ve given enough reasons on why pseudoscience is pseudoscience. To sum it up, it’s dogmatic, unverified, untestable, and relies and anecdotes and confirmation bias. So stop claiming that we sceptics are close minded. How about this, believers – review your claims. Perhaps you’ll find out that those superstitions aren’t that factual after all.