Pseudoscience now also finds space in the magazines of accredited publishers, who have actually created newspapers dedicated to the collection of all sorts of epistemic rubbish, as long as you pay for it
From time to time, articles appear published in accredited scientific journals that are a summa of modern magical thinking (?), dressed in terms scrounged from science and typically used in the way pseudoscience does, that is, to construct syntactically correct and semantically null sentences.
Let’s see, for example, an article published just a week ago in a magazine explicitly dedicated to De Gruyter’s “integrative and complementary medicines”.
The purpose of the work described in the article is described by the authors since its attack, which goes something like this: “There is growing interest in applying biofield therapy as complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to treat various diseases. Practices include reiki, qigong, blessing, prayer, distant healing, known as biofield therapies. This article aims to take stock of the scientific knowledge accumulated in preclinical and clinical studies to validate its possible use as an alternative medicine in the clinic.”
Now, what the authors declare might almost seem like a respectable intent – if not for the fact that they use the oxymoronic “alternative medicine”, in place of those that the marketing of the sector has already identified as less questionable adjectives – “integrative” or ” complementary”; but, without even having to commit to reading, the summary of their results, as described by the authors, is already sufficient to understand what kind of charlatanism we are dealing with. In fact, they write that “the effects of biofield energy therapies are observed due to the quantum thinking of the healer, and the transmission of quantum energy to the subject leads to healing that occurs spiritually through instantaneous communication at the quantum level via quantum entanglement ”.
Who are the authors? These are individuals affiliated with “Trivedi Global Inc”, an organization on whose website we discover that “Human biofield energy has a subtle energy that has the ability to operate effectively. This energy can be collected and transmitted by those who possess the gift to living beings and inanimate objects through an energy biofield healing treatment or therapy process.” This pseudoscience is the product of an organization that stands out among similar ones in terms of size and influence: to realize this, just take a look at the sites through which it carries out propaganda but, above all, at the hundreds of publications in more or less officially scientific journals. Faced with examples such as those just reported, and even expanding the list as desired by looking at the 65 works cited in the bibliography of the article mentioned at the beginning, anyone with a minimum of reasoning, once the initial laughter phase has passed, is soon prey to an irresistible boredom, due to the hollow sound of names, verbs and adjectives in tautological and exhausting repetition; This is exactly one of the trademarks of pseudoscientific discourse, which resorts to hypnotic repetition ad infinitum generally built on a narrow selection of scientific vocabulary.
The term αδρανώ is the translation of “to go around in circles” in ancient Greek; I will therefore coin the term “adranolalìa” to indicate the rigmarole with which every form of pseudoscience invariably dresses itself, to try to seduce the ear of those who are looking for something less tiring than understanding reality, and perhaps get them a few thousand dollars if you are lucky, but in the worst cases directing him to believe he can cure cancer with “biofields”.
