Document Type : Research Paper

Author

• Zahra Zargar

Assistant Professor at Institute for Science and Technology Studies Shahid Beheshti University

Abstract

In many cases, pseudosciences are developed by people who have scientific credit. Therefore, the importance of recognizing pseudoscience from proto-science and bad science is acknowledged in the recent literature about the Demarcation problem. By emphasizing this point, this paper focuses on what makes difference between pseudoscience and legitimate or fruitful scientific dissents. To suggest an answer, I appeal to Solomon’s social empiricism and her decision vector model. She defines a decision vector as everything that affects the output of a decision. Decision vectors include social, political, theoretical, or empirical factors that in a social level facilitate or hinder the development of a theory in a scientific society. Solomon employs this concept to suggest a normative framework for distribution of research efforts. According to this framework, a scientific dissent is useful for scientific progress, if the distribution of research efforts is proportional to the empirical success of all rival theories. By applying this framework to the case of Lysenkoism, I explore the implications of Solomon’s model for the problem of differentiating usual scientific dissents from pseudoscience. Then, I discuss the advantages of this analysis over the other theories of pseudoscience.

Keywords

• Lysenkoism
• Pesudoscience
• Scientific Dissent
• Social Empiricism
• Demarcation Problem