Science and pseudoscience

- Show me your hand Philip, I want to read your future. - Huh, what? How can you do that by looking at my hand? - I read some research that says the lines on your palm say a lot about you. Your palm tells me you are very organised, you’ll get far in life, and something exciting will happen to you today! Can Kim really read Philip’s future from his palm? Or is it just a guess?

Kim mentioned reading some research about telling the future from one’s palm. The word research makes it sound quite scientific doesn’t it? But just carrying out an experiment doesn’t make it scientific. Imagine you notice a plant on your windowsill grows towards the outside. You might think that’s because the plant is growing towards the light outside.

This is your possible explanation — hypothesis. But you can’t be sure it’s correct, so based on your hypothesis, you do an experiment — you draw the curtains and see what happens to the plant if there’s no daylight coming through the window. After a month, you check the plant again — you analyse the result of your experiment, and notice that the plant is still growing towards the window. This means your first hypothesis is either wrong, or you didn't test enough plants! You might think of different possible explanations, and test another hypothesis, this time with more than one plant, to make sure your results are accurate and reliable.

The fact a hypothesis can be proven wrong is a very important part of science. So, science is about making observations of the world around us, trying to find possible explanations - hypotheses, and then carrying out experiments until you prove or disprove the hypothesis. So how is Kim’s palm reading research different from actual science? Palm reading starts with an observation — looking at someone’s palm. It also has a hypothesis: lines on someone’s palm can tell the future.

Here is where things get a bit risky. Kim told Philip the lines on his palm say he is a very organised person. But Kim could easily know this by being Philip’s friend. How about the exciting event then? Well, that statement is very vague.

Anything that happens today, Kim could mark as exciting, so that it fits the hypothesis. So there is no way to disprove the hypothesis. That’s one of the major differences between science and this type of research. So even though it might seem scientific, it’s not. We call this pseudoscience.

There are other differences between science and pseudoscience. Scientific findings are based on carefully controlled studies. These are usually written down, reviewed and often repeated by other scientists. If the results of the repeated study are the same as those of the original study, great! If not, the original hypothesis might not have been correct and more research needs to be done.

Pseudoscientific research however is usually not planned or controlled properly and often produces different results when repeated. Though, instead of changing the hypothesis, pseudoscientists blame inconsistent results on other factors, like different research methods. Palm reading isn’t the only pseudoscience, there are many — horoscopes, mind reading, therapeutic touch... - I actually came to tell you something exciting — I got into photography camp this summer! - Hah, see? I was right! Although I have to admit… I did meet your mum earlier today.

Maybe she told me about it, or maybe she didn’t.