In my presentation "Quantum Mechanics for the skeptic", some of the audience asked how to tell the difference between technobabble and real scientific language. But there's a problem in asking me for help. The method I use and the method they use are necessarily different. I can easily tell the difference myself because I study physics and know the scientific language. But they are lay people who may never study physics.
In the presentation, I showed this video as an exercise in spotting quantum nonsense.
Let me describe a bit how this video looks to someone who knows the scientific language. Lynn Mctaggart plainly uses a lot of technobabble. I might put the technobabble into three categories which sometimes blend into each other.
- Words that aren't really used by physicists. Usually, these words appear to be derived from some real concept in physics, but she's garbled it so much that she doesn't recognize that the words she uses mean something completely different from the original words.
Examples: connected, sea of light, separateness, potential life, nether region, beings of light, vibrating energy, sea of energy, memory bank
- Words that are used by physicists, but don't mean what she thinks they mean. Sometimes she mixes in true facts, but often in really misleading ways.
Examples: energy, field, zero point field, Copenhagen interpretation, observation, nonlocality, photons, ground state energy, information, waves
- Technical words that are just tossed around for no apparent reason. The words are just there to provide an aura of science.
Examples: DNA, frequency, constructionists (?), vacuum, hologram, magnetic resonance imaging, geomagnetic storm
The rule of thumb I would suggest is "Physics language, when properly used, does not say things about moral or social issues." You can't go from physics to sociology without first passing by chemistry, biology, and psychology.
For example, at the beginning of the video, Lynn says we're all connected, and starts talking about wars and the "mine is bigger than yours" mentality. You automatically know she's talking nonsense because even if "we're all connected" were a true statement in physics, it could not possibly mean that we're connected in a psychological, social, or moral sense.
Really, she's just using the physics as a metaphor. She even says so herself at one point. We determine the laws of physics based on experiment, not based on which ones give the best metaphors.
Even if a physicist uses technical words in this way, I would regard it with suspicion. Physicists like to make social commentary just as much as the next person, after all, but they don't have any special insight into social issues that the layperson doesn't. I think most physicists would actually appreciate it if you can distinguish between their authoritative statements on physics and non-authoritative statements on social issues.
But this rule of thumb is not sufficient. For example, if someone tries to sell you a bracelet that interacts with your bioenergetic fields to keep you healthy... well, that's pseudoscientific technobabble right there. But no social commentary is necessary to sell you a bracelet. What other rules of thumb can the layperson use?
Or must the layperson accept that they cannot always spot pseudoscience on their own? Gee, I sure hope this isn't the answer... that would require humility. Surely, we can find a better answer than that.
