Fringe Science, Pseudoscience, and Traditional Science

Occasionally on astro-ph I am treated to a good smattering of amusing articles. To explain, astro-ph is an online archive of astronomy and astrophysics related papers that are commonly known as "preprints". When a scientist has a result ready for publication, they will often post their paper to astro-ph before it appears several months later in a journal like Astronomy & Astrophysics or The Astrophysical Journal. Each day, the submissions to astro-ph are compiled and listed in the order of first-submitted, first-listed. People who are working in similar fields quickly know what each other are doing, and fast moving fields in astronomy move faster than ever before. Most of the scientific community fosters collaboration,* which astro-ph makes easier.

One downside to astro-ph is that you never know what you might get. The astrophysical journals are peer-reviewed and questioned for scientific rigor. Astro-ph is not. (Remember, though, that the majority of papers submitted are already approved for use in common journals.) Any and all submissions are posted each day, including the few papers that are not peer-reviewed. There are enough crazy sounding ideas among mainstream scientists** that it is pretty fun when you get something outside the norm.

I'm sure that this is going to come up a lot, so I'm just going to take a moment right here to address a few elements of my terminology.

Traditional Science
I refer to traditional science or "mainstream science" as the science which is often done at institutions like universities or science labs. I don't want to sound biased towards the "ivory tower" of higher education, but that is where much of the science I talk about comes from. Generally, mainstream scientists have been through an apprenticeship period and agree on most of the fundamentals in their field. Ideally, experimentalists follow the scientific method. Theorists draw from a fundamental set of ideas concerning simple situations in order to address more complicated situations. Not everyone agrees on everything, but there is a consensus to the validity of the basics, a flexibility in changing ideas when confronted with evidence, and a method of collaboration. (Checking your answers with a friend is a good idea!)

Pseudoscience
I sometimes loathe the word pseudoscience because it can sound demeaning. Nonetheless, I think it is important to make a distinction between this and Fringe Science. Pseudoscience I would call a discipline that relies on some pedagogy but allows for flexible interpretations and methods of execution. For example, astrology is a pseudoscience that contains a canonical set of constellations, planets, and general properties for each. However, the detailed interpretations of astrological patterns are not well-set and are largely up to the astrologer's own intuitions. Other examples of pseudoscience might be home remedies, tarot reading or betting on horse races. Pseudoscience doesn't have to mean "Bad Science" or "Not Science," it just describes a discipline that isn't subject to as stringent requirements as Traditional Science.

Fringe Science
Fringe Science is based on some of the concepts supported by Traditional Science. Sometimes Fringe Scientists seek to overturn a major theory in Traditional Science, while some others are seeking to add different methods and perspectives to Traditional Science. Fringe Scientists have trouble breaking into the mainstream because they often do not have the same background and training as Traditional Scientists. (There are exceptions.) Gaining mainstream scientists to support Fringe Scientists may be difficult because their ideas may violate a fundamentally accepted concept with no experimental evidence. Fringe Science has a tendency to be theoretical with an objective to explain observed phenomena with a single all-encompassing, alternative concept.

I was going to talk about some of the papers I saw on astro-ph today, with fringe science in mind, but this post has gone longer than it should have already. Instead, here's an interesting example of how astro-ph has influenced the field of astronomy, posted of course on astro-ph.

* There are some exceptions and some competitive streaks.
** For example, Dark Matter and the even spookier Dark Energy, along with MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics), CMB Non-Gaussianity, and contemplations on the nature of the void. Some of this will come up later, and hopefully I can convince some people that these ideas came about for important reasons. For now they can induce a wacky knee-jerk reaction.