Misappropriation of science.

[innerbrat]

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Comments

[innerbrat]

We'll get into it when we both have time. I may be missing some huge leap of logic that is made to go from what I htink to what the accepted idea is.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I see the word "meme" as being a scientification of "idea". It doesn't actually add anything more on, and it's there purely to make it sound like there's hard science involved.

[innerbrat]

I am intrigued by the distinction between 'hard' and 'soft' science, but it'll have to wait to a later date, because I'm out of spoons and need to get on with some science.

[innerbrat]

WHAT DOES IT EVEN MEAN?

You know beyond "things I disagree with and wish to lump into one general category so I can dismiss it without engaging with any of it."

[innerbrat]

I assumed the etymology was somewhere in the 'wriggles fingers' category, rather than 'woo hoo'.

[apiphile]

Ah yes. Why on earth should there be a short, convenient term for "things which are not supported by any empirical tests but persistently pushed as effective and aggressively defended by people with huge emotional and financial stakes in them"? Then we might be able to get onto the discussion part more quickly! What an awful word "woo" is.

[innerbrat]

Really? That's the definition? What's wrong with the word 'bullshit'?

[apiphile]

Bullshit is something different. Bullshit exists to deceive others; woo (or woo-woo, or whatever - it's deliberately childish because the premise "it just works, okay?" *HUFFSTAMP* is childish) exists to deceive the self as well.

[innerbrat]

Is it more childish than the "it just doesn't work, OK?" attitude with which I've seen it used?

[andrewducker]

I've also heard "Woo" to refer to emotional/arty things. So The Fountain was full of Woo because it was a parable rather than being a straightforward portrayal of events.

[davegodfrey]

Its probably not the view everybody takes, but I tend to follow Orac's lead on his irregular "Your Friday Dose of Woo" over on Respectful Insolence. Things like "Atlantean Power Crystals", which apparently-

"incorporates the toroidal power of implosion, orgone energy, phi harmonics, tensor fields, sonics and ultasonics, visible and invisible light spectrum energy and, most crucially, a unique energy template within the crystalline matrix of The Atlantean Power Crystal™"

I don't need a degree in physics to spot that this is bullshit of the first order, although the fact that it-

"It emits neutrinos, enabling the correction of intracellular frequencies. It reorients the psychic channels, increasing intuition and psychic perception through the correction of molecular frequencies in the cerebral cortex."somewhat worries me given that it sounds it needs to be kept in a lead box and never taken out. I think that's "woo"- appropriating sciency sounding words to try and explain how your "treatment" works. The thing about this is that its