On the Fringe

On the Fringe Plot Summary

Introduction

Have you ever wondered how we determine what counts as legitimate science versus pseudoscience? Perhaps you've encountered claims about astrology, homeopathy, or Bigfoot and questioned their scientific merit. These boundaries are far more complex than they first appear. Determining what belongs in the realm of science and what resides on its fringes has puzzled philosophers, scientists, and the general public for centuries. This book explores the fascinating borderland where mainstream science meets its controversial counterparts. We'll examine how doctrines once considered scientific—like astrology and alchemy—gradually lost their scientific status, while other theories fought for legitimacy against established institutions. Through historical cases ranging from Mesmerism to cold fusion, from eugenics to UFOlogy, we'll discover that the line between science and pseudoscience is not simply about truth versus falsehood. Rather, it reflects complex social, historical, and philosophical factors that shape how knowledge is created, evaluated, and sometimes rejected. By examining these fringe doctrines, we gain valuable insights into how science itself operates and evolves.

Chapter 1: The Demarcation Problem: Drawing Lines Between Science and Pseudoscience

The demarcation problem—the challenge of distinguishing science from pseudoscience—sits at the heart of our discussion. Without some proposed solution to this problem, the term "pseudoscience" lacks meaningful definition. If we had a universally accepted criterion for demarcation, our task would be simple: doctrines passing the test would be "science," and those failing would be "pseudoscience." Unfortunately, the demarcation problem has thus far resisted definitive resolution. The philosopher Karl Popper proposed the most widely known solution: falsifiability. Born in Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century, Popper developed his criterion partly in reaction to what he saw as the unfalsifiable claims of Marxism and psychoanalysis. According to Popper, a theory is scientific only if it makes predictions that could potentially be proven false through observation or experiment. Einstein's theory of relativity, which risked refutation by making specific predictions about light bending around the sun during an eclipse, exemplified scientific courage. In contrast, Popper argued that psychoanalytic theories could explain any possible observation, making them impossible to disprove and therefore unscientific. Appealing as falsifiability seems, philosophers quickly identified its flaws. First, determining when a theory has actually been falsified is surprisingly difficult. When experiments produce unexpected results, scientists rarely abandon their theories immediately—they might question the experimental setup, the equipment calibration, or propose modifications to the theory. Second, falsifiability would classify as "scientific" many fringe doctrines widely considered pseudoscientific, as long as their proponents specify some observation that would change their minds. Conversely, it struggles to accommodate historical sciences like evolutionary biology, which build explanatory narratives rather than falsifiable predictions. This explains why Popper's criterion gained prominence through an unusual route: legal battles over teaching creationism in American schools. In the 1982 case McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, Judge William Overton cited falsifiability as one standard for determining whether creation science qualified as science. The ruling influenced textbooks and public understanding, despite philosophers' recognition of falsifiability's limitations. The Supreme Court reinforced this precedent in Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), though later legal decisions moved away from Popper's criterion. Rather than seeking a single bright-line demarcation, many philosophers now suggest more nuanced approaches. Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci, for example, proposes a two-dimensional space where scientific disciplines vary in their empirical content and theoretical understanding. Other scholars advocate for "local demarcation criteria" addressing specific families of fringe doctrines without claiming to solve the entire problem. The boundaries of science remain contested, but this contestation itself reveals much about how scientific knowledge develops and changes.

Chapter 2: Vestigial Sciences: When Yesterday's Knowledge Becomes Fringe

Many doctrines labeled as pseudoscience today were once considered legitimate sciences. These "vestigial sciences" were gradually displaced by newer theories but continued to attract adherents even after mainstream science moved on. By examining how scientific ideas fall from grace, we gain insight into how scientific knowledge evolves. Astrology offers perhaps the most striking example. For millennia, it ranked among the most empirically grounded and mathematically sophisticated sciences, attracting generous patronage from wealthy and powerful figures. In Renaissance Italy, every princely court required horoscopes to guide decisions about marriages, battles, and political alliances. Leading astronomers of the era, including Galileo and Kepler, practiced astrology either out of financial necessity or genuine conviction. Astrologers took observational data, calculated planetary positions at specific moments, and interpreted these "genitures" according to complex systems of houses and aspects. This wasn't haphazard fortune-telling but a structured discipline undergoing continuous refinement. Astrology began falling from scientific favor during the seventeenth century, partly due to the shift toward heliocentric astronomy and broader religious transformations. By the late eighteenth century, it had largely faded from learned discourse, replaced by positional astronomy grounded in Newtonian mechanics. Though it never vanished completely from popular culture, its status as a science was decisively revoked. Alchemy underwent a similar transformation. Throughout medieval and early modern Europe, the terms "chemistry" and "alchemy" were used interchangeably until the eighteenth century, when chemists rebranded their work as modern science and demonized "alchemists" as frauds. Yet recent historical research has revealed that alchemists were conducting serious laboratory investigations of material transformations. Even scientific giants like Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle devoted substantial efforts to alchemical research, though they kept this work secret. The fringing process is rarely instantaneous. When Einstein proposed in 1905 that the "ether"—a medium thought to carry electromagnetic waves through space—was "superfluous," physicists took about a decade to abandon the concept. Today, "ether physics" persists only among fringe theorists. Similarly, the Chinese geomantic practice of feng shui, once legitimate knowledge in its cultural context, has been relegated to the periphery of contemporary science. This historical pattern reveals something important: what counts as science changes over time. If you advocated divine creation of species in 1820, you were doing biology; advocate the same in 2020, and you might be labeled a crank. Many pseudosciences are simply resurrections or survivals of ideas that once counted as science but no longer do. The abundance of discarded theories lurking beneath contemporary knowledge suggests that, from the future's perspective, many current scientific ideas might one day be considered pseudoscientific.

Chapter 3: Politics and Science: The Dangers of Hyperpoliticized Research

While many fringe doctrines seem harmless, some represent grave threats when they become hyperpoliticized—tightly yoked to political ideologies, especially under repressive regimes. These cases reveal not simply that science can be political (all science is potentially political), but how science becomes distorted when subjected to extreme ideological pressures. Consider "Aryan Physics" in Nazi Germany. In 1935, physicist Philipp Lenard published a textbook called Deutsche Physik, claiming that "science is determined by race or by blood." Lenard and his colleague Johannes Stark denounced Einstein's relativity theory and quantum mechanics as "Jewish physics," advocating instead a return to classical Newtonian and Maxwellian frameworks. Ironically, both men had previously made significant contributions to the very quantum theory they later rejected, with each winning Nobel Prizes for their experimental work. After Hitler's rise to power in 1933, these "old fighters" for National Socialism expected to remake German physics in their image. Despite their political connections, Lenard and Stark failed to establish Aryan Physics as orthodoxy. Other leading German physicists, notably Werner Heisenberg, insisted that quantum physics and relativity were simply physics, not Jewish inventions, and were essential for military applications. Though Aryan Physics never dominated, Nazi policies still devastated German science through the dismissal of Jewish scientists and the perversion of medicine, anthropology, and genetics in service of racial ideology. An equally notorious example emerged in Stalin's Soviet Union with Trofim Lysenko's "Michurinism" or "agrobiology." Lysenko, an agronomist from a peasant background, claimed he could alter plants' hereditary traits by exposing them to environmental stresses—a neo-Lamarckian approach contradicting mainstream genetics. Initially tolerated by Soviet scientists, Lysenko's theories received Stalin's explicit endorsement in 1948, after which classical genetics was officially denounced as pseudoscientific. Soviet biologists who refused to recant their belief in genes faced dismissal or worse; some, like renowned geneticist Nikolai Vavilov, died in prison. Lysenko's dominance persisted until 1965, long after Stalin's death, and Soviet biology required decades to recover. Western scientists cited the episode as a cautionary tale about political interference in science—though this interpretation neglects that the Soviet Union heavily invested in other scientific fields that flourished during the same period. Democratic societies are not immune to hyperpoliticized science. Eugenics in the United States illustrates this vulnerability. Originating from Francis Galton's theories about improving human heredity, eugenics initially shared much with early genetics research. However, as scientific understanding of heredity advanced, eugenic assumptions about inherited traits proved increasingly problematic. Nevertheless, eugenic policies continued gaining political momentum, leading to forced sterilization laws across the United States—California alone performed 20,000 such procedures between 1909 and 1963. The fate of these hyperpoliticized sciences offers a stark warning: when scientific claims become subordinated to political ideologies, both science and humanity suffer. Yet it's crucial to distinguish between science that addresses politically contentious issues—like climate change or reproductive health—and science that becomes weaponized as an arm of political doctrine.

Chapter 4: Counterestablishment Movements: Creating Parallel Scientific Worlds

Many fringe advocates don't see themselves as "pseudoscientists" but as practitioners of genuine science fighting against establishment suppression. When mainstream scientists label their work pseudoscientific, these researchers often respond by creating parallel institutions that mirror the scientific establishment they oppose. These "counterestablishment sciences" possess journals, conferences, institutes, and sometimes degree programs—all the professional trappings of mainstream science. This pattern emerged in the early nineteenth century with phrenology, which held that character traits could be read from bumps on the skull. Though derided by the medical establishment, phrenologists established journals, lecture circuits, and societies that attracted many adherents, especially among those interested in educational and penal reform. The movement's democratic, anti-elitist tendencies aligned it with radical politics, further distancing it from the conservative scientific establishment. Creationism represents perhaps the most successful counterestablishment science. Its development accelerated in the 1920s when fundamentalist Christians responded to the introduction of evolutionary theory in schools. George McCready Price, a Seventh-day Adventist schoolteacher, shifted attention from Adam and Eve to Noah, arguing that the biblical flood catastrophically created Earth's geological features. Building on this foundation, John Whitcomb and Henry Morris published The Genesis Flood (1961), presenting Young-Earth creationism as scientific rather than theological. Creationists soon established robust parallel institutions: the Creation Research Society (1963), the Institute for Creation Research (1970), and later the intelligent design-focused Discovery Institute (1990). They produced peer-reviewed journals, textbooks, and scientific conferences, while lobbying for equal time with "evolution science" in schools. Though their legal strategy failed in Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) and Kitzmiller v. Dover (2005), their counterestablishment continues to thrive alongside evangelical education. Cryptozoology—the search for creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster—formed a different kind of counterestablishment. Rather than mimicking laboratory science, cryptozoologists adopted the practices of natural history, relying on field observations and eyewitness accounts. Despite occasional hoaxes and media sensationalism, dedicated searchers formed research networks and newsletters to document their findings. Other counterestablishments include cosmic catastrophism (Immanuel Velikovsky's theory that Venus was once a comet that nearly collided with Earth), UFOlogy (the study of alleged alien visitations), and most recently, flat Earth theories. The latter illustrates how counterestablishment doctrines often incorporate conspiracy thinking—how else to explain the overwhelming consensus that Earth is round, or the many space photographs showing a spherical planet? Interestingly, counterestablishment movements tend to be predominantly male, perhaps reflecting both the gendered domains they draw from (like hunting, in Bigfoot's case) and their imitation of mainstream science, which historically marginalized women. By studying these parallel scientific worlds, we gain insight into both the social structures of mainstream science and the persistence of fringe beliefs despite institutional opposition.

Chapter 5: Mind Over Matter: Parapsychology and Its Scientific Reception

Claims about extraordinary mental powers—telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis—occupy a unique position on the scientific fringe. Unlike many pseudosciences, parapsychology has maintained a tenuous connection to academic institutions, with credentialed scientists occasionally publishing research in mainstream journals. This persistent border-crossing makes parapsychology especially revealing about how science polices its boundaries. The modern study of paranormal mental abilities traces back to mesmerism in late 18th-century Paris. Franz Anton Mesmer claimed to have discovered a superfine magnetic fluid that permeated all bodies, which he could manipulate to cure various ailments. His treatments involved massages and iron tubs with protruding rods that supposedly stored this fluid. Mesmer's popularity prompted investigation by a commission including Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier, who concluded in 1784 that any effects stemmed from imagination rather than magnetic fluid. Their experiments—comparing subjects who believed they were being mesmerized with those actually receiving treatment—pioneered the placebo-controlled research design still used today. Spiritualism emerged in the 1840s when the Fox sisters of New York claimed to communicate with spirits through rapping sounds and moving furniture. The practice spread to Victorian England, where it acquired more formal structure with séances conducted by "mediums" in darkened rooms. Far from being anti-scientific, spiritualists often embraced empirical observation and new technologies like photography to document phenomena. Distinguished scientists including chemist William Crookes and natural selection co-discoverer Alfred Russel Wallace became convinced of spiritualism's reality, while others formed debunking commissions. University-based parapsychology developed in the early 20th century, finding its champion in Joseph Banks Rhine at Duke University. Rhine's 1934 book Extra-Sensory Perception introduced methodological innovations that raised the field's respectability. Instead of using playing cards for telepathy tests, he created standardized Zener cards with five symbols, allowing for statistical analysis of guessing rates. If subjects consistently scored above the expected 20% success rate, this suggested ESP. Rhine's research attracted significant funding and academic interest, though skeptics questioned why the supposed ESP effects didn't diminish with distance. The 1970s saw renewed interest in parapsychology alongside broader countercultural movements. Israeli-born mentalist Uri Geller captured media attention by seemingly bending spoons with his mind, while government agencies like the CIA funded research into potential military applications of ESP. In response, skeptics including philosopher Paul Kurtz, science writer Martin Gardner, and magician James Randi formed the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) to debunk paranormal claims through experimental testing and media exposure. Despite decades of criticism, parapsychological research continues. Physicist Brian Josephson, who won a Nobel Prize for work on superconductivity, later became an advocate for ESP research. In 2011, Cornell psychologist Daryl Bem published claims of precognition in a leading journal, triggering debates that contributed to psychology's broader "replication crisis." These cases illustrate how parapsychology consistently exists at the edge of academic science—neither fully within nor completely outside its boundaries—creating a persistent challenge to demarcation efforts.

Chapter 6: Controversy as Inevitable: Fringe Claims Within Scientific Processes

The diversity of doctrines labeled as pseudoscience—from astrology to creationism, from Aryan Physics to parapsychology—suggests they share no single essence that makes them pseudoscientific. Yet their histories reveal a common pattern: pseudosciences emerge when advocates continue defending ideas after the scientific consensus has shifted decisively against them. This process happens continuously as part of normal scientific development. Consider the case of N-rays, discovered in 1903 by respected French physicist Prosper-René Blondlot. Many European scientists initially confirmed Blondlot's findings, but American physicist Robert Wood later demonstrated that N-rays were merely a product of wishful thinking—when Wood secretly removed a crucial part of the experimental apparatus, Blondlot still claimed to detect the rays. Was Blondlot doing science or pseudoscience? Before Wood's exposé, he was simply conducting research using methods similar to his earlier, successful work measuring radio waves. This ambiguity suggests an uncomfortable truth: any scientific position could potentially be labeled pseudoscientific depending on its future trajectory. This isn't merely possible but practically inevitable given two structural features of contemporary science. First, science is adversarial—researchers gain recognition by refuting existing theories, not merely confirming them. Second, science is increasingly expensive, with limited resources creating intense competition. These conditions guarantee that some research will end up on the losing side of scientific controversies, and if its advocates persist, they risk being labeled pseudoscientists. The fates of controversial scientific claims vary widely. In the 1960s, Soviet scientist Boris Deriagin reported discovering "polywater," a form of water with extraordinary properties like a boiling point of 250°C. Western scientists initially took the claim seriously, with research appearing in prestigious journals and receiving government funding. By 1973, however, researchers determined that polywater's properties resulted from impurities in the samples, and the theory was abandoned without being labeled pseudoscientific. By contrast, when French immunologist Jean Benveniste published research in 1988 suggesting that water retained a "memory" of substances dissolved in it—even after dilution to the point where no molecules remained—the journal Nature took extraordinary steps to debunk the claim. Editor John Maddox assembled an investigation team including magician James Randi, published a critical companion piece alongside the original article, and quickly declared the research "a delusion." The similarity to homeopathic principles likely triggered this unusual response. Cold fusion presents an intermediate case. In 1989, electrochemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced they had achieved nuclear fusion at room temperature using a simple palladium electrode setup. Their press conference and rushed publication violated scientific norms, while theoretical problems (like the absence of lethal radiation that should accompany fusion) raised immediate skepticism. After a decisive debunking at the American Physical Society meeting, most scientists abandoned the claim, but a small community continues research through specialty journals and conferences. These controversies border on scientific fraud, which has become increasingly visible as career pressures intensify. From physicist Jan Hendrik Schön's fabricated semiconductor results to South Korean researcher Hwang Woo-suk's falsified stem cell work, high-profile cases highlight how publication pressures can corrupt scientific integrity. Similarly, psychology's "replication crisis"—the discovery that many canonical findings cannot be reproduced—suggests systemic problems in how research is conducted and evaluated. Understanding controversy as inherent to scientific development helps explain why pseudoscience persists. As long as science evolves through competing claims and limited resources, there will always be displaced theories whose advocates refuse to concede defeat. The fringe is simply the shadow cast by mainstream science itself.

Summary

At the heart of our exploration lies a profound insight: pseudoscience is not simply the opposite of science but its shadow—a reflection cast by the scientific enterprise itself. The demarcation between science and pseudoscience remains persistently elusive not because of intellectual shortcomings, but because science itself is constantly evolving. Yesterday's scientific consensus becomes today's outmoded theory, and some theories that appear fringe today may find validation tomorrow. The adversarial nature of scientific progress, combined with limited resources and human psychology, ensures that controversial claims will always exist at the boundaries of accepted knowledge. This perspective invites us to approach fringe doctrines with more nuance. Rather than dismissing all pseudosciences equally, we might distinguish between relatively harmless beliefs like Bigfoot hunting and truly dangerous ones like Nazi eugenics or climate change denialism. We might also question whether better science education alone can eliminate fringe beliefs, given that pseudoscience often appeals precisely to those who value scientific thinking. After all, flat-Earthers and parapsychologists don't reject science—they embrace what they consider to be better science. Perhaps most importantly, examining the fringe helps us better understand how mainstream science actually works, revealing the social, historical, and philosophical forces that shape our collective pursuit of knowledge about the natural world.

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Michael D. Gordin

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