Top 4 most interesting 'fake sciences'

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mom in the streets, sugar in the sheets

4 years ago

In community: World Today(70ff)

If you haven't been living under a rock, or maybe on a deserted island with a lighthouse (as nice as that would be), then you probably know what horoscopes are. Astrology - the study of constellations and their impact on a person's character, tendencies and their future - has made it into modern Western culture, and therefore our daily lives, and is seemingly here to stay. As interesting of a subject as it may be to read about in celebrity gossip magazines, on social media and creepy-looking magic websites (seriously, check out so-called natal charts, guys, they make for a curious Sunday afternoon), astrology posseses, according to the exisitng scientific consensus, little to no claim to being objectively true.

Here are four other pseudosciences that you might have heard about and, which are, though they might seem exciting, a bit of a lie.

Phrenology - the study of skulls

Some believed that one's character and inclinations may be studied via examining the shape of one's skull. So, a phrenologist would look at all the different dents, dimples, shape, width and length of your skull. Facial features, such as the shape of the forehead, or the size of one's nose would also be of importance to make a conclusion. It is quite easy to undestand, therefore, why some Nazi scientists used it to justify the system's racist attitudes towards specific nationalities and groups of people that were deemed undesirable, above all the Roma people and German citizens of Jewish faith... This goes to show that even pseudoscience can be a dangerous tool in the wrong hands.

Alchemy - the study of elements

Alchemy is based upon the belief that you could turn an element into another element using a specific method. I have spent many an hour playing the Alchemy game on my first smartphone: back in the day, around 2010, it was THE stuff, believe you me! In some ways, it was a precursor to modern-day chemistry, with one crucial difference: achemists were zealously pursuing one particular element - gold. Methods ranged from experimental to plain weird: some even tried to turn their own pee into gold. Imagine if they would have succeeded! I wonder if this is where that one expression regarding showers comes from? Furthermore, according to some sources, alchemy was so wide-spread during the Middle Ages, that Isaac Newton himself, the father of calculus, died from mercury poison that was caused by his alchemy experiments.

EVP - the study of ghosts' voices

According to this paper, almost half of all Americans believe in ghosts. Perhaps it was the early colonisers carrying their belief in paranormal across the ocean, or the curious blend of European and Native American cultures, but one way or another extensive ghost lore, such as the famous Headless Horseman, started gradually appearing in popular culture. It is of no wonder, therefore, that the 19th and even 18th centuries were shaped in part by secret societies attempting to tell the future, perform magic rituals or even communicate with the spirits through the so-called "seances". With the discovery of magnetic tape and recording devices, "research" into all things ghostly had taken a new form: it was believed that if one was to arrive to a specific location, roll the tape and ask a question outloud, then, playing the tape back, you would hear a recorded answer! Despite Thomas Edison himself being one of the most famous participants and believers in this "science", research into something called "confirmation bias", as well as into the human psyche has since revealed that, unfortunately (or fortunately, who knows?) people hear what they want to hear. So if when started reading this point you decided to ask your favourite historical figure a burning question, it will sadly have to wait.

Cryptozoology - fantastic beasts and where to find them

Oh, this is probably the juciest one. I was absolutely fascinated by Dr Ernest Drake's
"Dragonology" when I was younger. In that book, this made-up traveller, ship captain and mystery beast researcher recollects his encounters with various fantastic creatures all across the globe, from the Yeti to the Chimera, a two-headed fire-breathing creature, and from dragons (did you know that there are many species of them?) to, naturally, the Loch Ness monster. To add to the "scientific" style of it, the book featured many beautifully made pieces of evidence, such as letters, describing many a mythical creature, as well as photos and even skin samples. No dragon, of course, was hurt in the making of the book, or I should at least hope so.

Back when the mankind started travelling across seas and oceans, visiting various continents and getting a hint of what life was like in other places, journeys there and back were long and hard. It was not uncommon for travellers, especially sailors, to hallucinate (perhaps from the critical lack of food and water and abundance of alcoholic beverages) or at least exercise in wishful thinking. This is exactly where the "mermaids" come from - it is believed that some particularly lonely sailors could mistake a manatee for a beautiful woman. Here's a picture of a manatee - they must have been really thirsty if you catch my drift.

And naturally, when back to terra firma (the shore), they would have the open ear of the rag-tag port folk, whose affection was easy and whose bewilderment was sincere. Furthermore, the world around those travellers, so big and so dangerous was practically filled with inexplicable mysteries, like, for instance, the zebra, or even the platipus. If creatures like those existed, the people must have thought at the time, then truly God's creative power and imagination had no limits, and anything at all was to be expected.

the Yeti footprint

Bonus: the Hollow Earth theory

This one is short and sweet: E. Halley (the dude who got a comet named after him) and C. R. Teed, a physcian who lived almost 200 years after Halley, both believed that the Earth was actually hollow! And not just hollow, to be precise, but also choke-full of stars, planets and all that. You see (check out the diagramm above), they considered the Earth to be much bigger sphere than it is, and suggested that we live not on its surface, but rather on the inside of it, and what we see when we look up in the sky is actually right in the middle of the sphere. Crazy, isn't it? Though Halley had data regarding Earth's magnetic fields to back that up, the Teed guy came to realise this cosmic truth after he got electrocuted. So don't touch any wires and stay safe, people!