Instructions Read the following article by the author of In the Company of Others. The article was written for a psychology audience--as a chapter in an introductory psychology textbook--but it closely pertains to critical listening material briefly discussed in Chapter 7.

Read the Skepticism and Pseudoscience article

(This article is in Rich Text Format. You can open this article with any word processor such as Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, WordPad, or Simple Text. With Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows, you may need to right-click on this link and choose 'save target as' to save this file to disk. With Macintosh OS X, drag this link onto your Desktop to save this file to disk.)

Discussion

1. Do you agree with the author's explanation of the difference between science/skepticism and pseudoscience/true belief?
2. Is there any therapy or paranormal phenomenon mentioned in this article that has been deemed pseudoscientific that you would defend as truly scientific and valid? Explain your answer.
3. Why do you think pseudoscientific beliefs and practices are so popular when the evidence for their efficacy is so poor?