Synthese DOI 10.1007/s11229-017-1481-1 SYSTEMATICITY - THE NATURE OF SCIENCE

Systematicity is necessary but not sufficient: on the problem of facsimile science Naomi Oreskes1,2

Received: 10 February 2016 / Accepted: 23 June 2017 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017

Abstract Paul Hoyningen-Huene argues that what makes scientific knowledge special is its systematic character, and that this can be used to solve the demarcation problem. He labels this STDC: “Systematicity Theory’s Demarcation Criterion.” This paper argues that STDC fails, because there are areas of intellectual activity that are highly systematic, but that the great majority of scientists and historians and philosophers of science do not accept as scientific. These include homepathy, creationism, and climate change denial. I designate these activities “facsimile sciences” because they mimic the appearance of science but are not, by the standards of philosophers and scientists, scientific. This suggests that we need additional criteria to demarcate science from non-science and/ or nonsense. Keywords Systematicity · Demarcation · STDC · Homeopathy · Facsimile science · Climate change denial · Creationism · Intelligent design Paul Hoyningen-Huene argues that what makes scientific knowledge special is its systematic character. Knowledge comes in many forms, but common or everyday knowledge lacks the systematic character of scientific knowledge. While scientific knowledge does not always have a counterpart in everyday knowledge, in cases where it does the former is always more systematic than the latter. Professor Hoyningen-Huene’s claim is supported by his own systematic enumeration of the character of science with respect to a capacious set of relevant characteristics. These include description, explanation, prediction, completeness and other qualities commonly held to be characteristic of science. He is persuasive that

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Naomi Oreskes [email protected]

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Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

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Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

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systematicity is a necessary condition to identify a science. After reading the book, I doubt anyone will wish to argue that science is not systematic. He is also persuasive that, where relevant comparisons exist, science (as we identify it) is typically more systematic than the activities we decline to designate as such. Why is this an important point? Hoyningen-Huene’s argues that understanding the nature of science is the central question of philosophy of science, a question we have yet to answer. I agree. Characterizing science is, or should be, a central aim of philosophy of science. It is an important project of the history of science, too. Historians want to understand the changing role of science in culture, and this is difficult (if not impossible) to do if we cannot say what science is.1 The past 30 years have witnessed tremendous amounts of detailed description and characterization of scientific work, but this detail has had the effect of making it more difficult, rather than less, to come up with a general characterization of scientific knowledge and therefore to articulate what distinguishes it from other forms of knowledge. Hoyningen Huene writes: “although we are familiar today with the phenomenon of science to a historically unparalleled degree, we do not really know what science is.”2 Again, I agree. Moreover, as Hoyningen Huene notes, the emergence in past decades of “so-called creation science…has also stirred up some political [and] even legal interest.”3 The question of what is and is not science matters not only to philosophers and historians, but also to the world at large. One role that science is supposed to play in society, as sociologist Robert Merton stressed long ago, is to provide “certified knowledge.” Since the early modern period, scientists have been the experts to whom society has turned for advice on a wide range of questions.4 This advice is believed to be reliable not so much because of the character of the scientist (although Steven Shapin has suggested the importance of that element, particularly in the early modern period5 ), but more because of the character of the scientific enterprise. Science is supposed to provide a reliable basis for decision-making not because scientists are exceptionally intelligent, honest or trustworthy, although they often are expected to be—but because they practice a form of inquiry that is expected to produce reliable knowledge.6 Following Shapin, we might conclude that a significant change in the scientific enterprise since the early modern period has been a decreased emphasis on the character of the scientist and an increased emphasis on the character of the scientific process. For Merton, this practice was disinterested, communal, organized, skeptical and universalist. For Karl Popper it was self-critical: the key to the reliability 1 Lorraine Daston has suggested that one reason for the failed alignment of history of science with science studies is lack of agreement as to what science is. See Daston (2009). 2 Hoyningen-Huene (2013), p. 6. 3 Ibid p. 176. 4 The literature on this is large, but some important titles are: Veblen (1906), Price (1965), Ezrahi (1990), Jasanoff (1998), Kitcher (2001), Weingart and Lentsch (2011) and Oppenheimer (2016). 5 Shapin (1994). 6 This of course was the central thrust of the considerable efforts of the logical positivists, empiricists, and

Karl Popper: to identify and define what that particular and distinctive form of inquiry was. Useful starting places for these discussions are Ayer (1936), Boyd et al. (1991); and more recently Godfrey-Smith (2003).

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of science was that its theories were falsifiable (with the implication that, if falsified, they would be abandoned.) For the logical empiricists, reliability was grounded in the verifiability of observation statements: all scientific claims were supposed to be grounded in and verifiable by empirical observation. For Thomas Kuhn, science worked because its practitioners worked under paradigms that ruled out of court questions that could not be answered. None of these perspectives have quite withstood historical and philosophical scrutiny, yet the idea that science is in some way different from other human activities—including other knowledge–seeking and knowledge– producing ones—persists. Moreover, it is the special character of science that is thought, in some way, shape or form, to be the warrant for its privileged use by society in decision-making, as well as its special status in the classroom. One may argue as to whether science deserves the status that it is often accorded, and whether its status is as high as it once was, but the fact remains—in most western countries and international arenas and despite various challenges—that individuals, organizations, agencies, and governments turn to scientists for certified knowledge on matters that are understood to be “scientific.7 The United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—comprised of scientists, not governmental officials—to assess the threat of “dangerous anthropogenic interference” in the climate system. The architects of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer created the Ozone Trends Panel—comprised of atmospheric scientists—to monitor and track the status of stratospheric ozone. In the United States, the U.S. National Research Council produces over 250 reports each year, nearly all of them commissioned by government officials and agencies to aid in agency practice and decision-making. From 1977 to 2013, the U.S. National Institutes of Health issued over 160 “consensus reports” intended to guide medical practice.8 Similar reports are produced in Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia, and around the globe. Perhaps for this reason, the issue of demarcation has of late received revived attention in the philosophical community: the world presents us with a substantive motivation to understand the character of science and to be able to distinguish scientific from other forms of claims.9 If a group of people otherwise identified as scientists stray, in their activities, from what the scientific enterprise is supposed to be, then we may have reason to question their claims. Conversely, if a person or organization claims veracity for a conclusion by virtue of it being scientific, then we have reason to ask if the work is scientific or not.10 Such claims are made with great frequency, 7 One may of course argue about what makes a subject an appropriate topic for scientific arbitration; for an interesting discussion on this in the context of matters nuclear, see Hecht (2012). 8 NIH Consensus Development Program (2013). See also Solomon (2007) and idem (2011). 9 For example, Pigliucci and Boudry (2013). 10 This is addressed in Oreskes and Conway (2010), a historical situation in which men with robust scientific training and credentials made and promoted assertions that were arguably unscientific, as judged both by the consensus of scientific experts actively pursuing research in those domains, and by the standards of community vetting and peer review. One critique of this work is that it is “asymmetrical” insofar as it grants epistemic privilege to the consensus of scientific experts. Their response is that, while one cannot equate consensus with truth, it becomes almost impossible to critique contrarian activities in an intellectually

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so the status of a particular claim or set of activities as scientific can be a matter of considerable public concern.11 In short, I agree with Professor Hoyningen-Huene and other philosophers that the demarcation problem retains its relevance in the twenty-first century—even if the issues that need demarcating have changed since the 20th. Few of us today are deeply concerned whether Marxism is a science, and psychoanalysis thrives as a practice that people find of value irrespective of what philosophers think of its epistemic status; I will not revisit these topics. What I wish to interrogate is his claim that systematicity can solve the demarcation problem. Our consideration of the problem will focus on the status of three areas of activity about which many people are currently concerned: homeopathy, creationism, and climate change denial. These domains of intellectual activity are systematic—or at least appear, on the face, to be so, yet are rejected by nearly all working scientists as not constituting legitimate scientific inquiry. I label this the problem of facsimile science. Facsimile sciences, I argue, take on the behaviors, costumes, accessories and accoutrements of the socially-recognized and institutionally validated sciences, including their systematic character.12 They claim scientific status, and their adherents perform in certain ways that mimic scientific behavior. But are they scientific? Most philosophers and nearly all scientists would say no. At the risk of contributing to proliferation of terms, I introduce the term “facsimile science” here—and use it in preference to the more familiar “pseudoscience”—for two reasons. The first is that the latter term is strongly associated with Popper’s criterion of falsifiability, particularly his rejection of Marxism and psychoanalysis. There are various grounds upon which diverse scholars have defended both Marxism and psychoanalysis; that debate should neither distract nor detain us here. What is relevant here is that, due to Popper’s influence, many scientists equate a lack of falsifiability

Footnote 10 continued coherent way if one is unable or unwilling to take some sort of position as to what science “is.” The issues raised by Hoyningen-Huene are exactly pertinent to this point. See also Oreskes and Conway (2012). 11 Some science studies scholars reject the concept of experts—separate and distinct the rest of society— who develop and hand over knowledge for use, arguing instead for a model in which knowledge is co-produced by scientists and society: for examples, see Jasanoff (2004), idem (2003), Novotny et al. (2001). However, Harry Collins and Robert Evans have insisted not only thatthe category of expertise is still needed, but should now be our focus of attention: Collins and Evans (2002). This is not the place to engage a major discussion on the merits and limits of the coproduction model, but suffice it to say that in the world as it now exists, we have communities of scientists, who consider themselves and generally are considered to be experts, to whom society often turns for knowledge. No historian or sociologist would argue that these communities are hermetically sealed, and the ways in which science is or is not used by others can and often does influence what sort of work scientists do and how they do it. Is this co-production? Perhaps, but the term seems to imply a high degree of social equity and epistemic symmetry that strikes me as insufficiently warranted by the evidence. Indeed, the very notion of “expert” implies epistemic asymmetry. More to the point here, whether or not the knowledge that expert communities produce is accepted, understood and used as those experts would like it to be is a separable question from the character of the processes by which it is produced. 12 I do not address here the motivations for facsimile science, which, I believe, are several, and not neces-

sarily malicious.

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with pseudo-science, a position that is clearly too blunt.13 There are various ways in which an activity may be unscientific, and many reasons why a specific theory might be rejected as unscientific. Hoyningen Huene is not concerned with this diversity and neither are we. Our concern here is the specific problem of activities that satisfy the systematicity criterion, yet are nevertheless unscientific in one or more ways. This leads to the second reason for the introduction of a new term: to identify and highlight the particular challenge that certain activities represent for the use of systematicity as a demarcation criterion. Oreskes and Conway (2010) have used the term “Potemkin Village” science to describe some of the same activities discussed here; that term is serviceable, but too specific. It conveys deliberate deception: Grigori Potemkin is said to have built attractive facades to deceive Catherine the Great into thinking all was well in Crimea.14 Facsimile sciences, in contrast, may or may not involve deception, and may be carried out by individuals who (unlike Potemkin) believe in and/or are attempting to establish their legitimacy. In taking up the problem of facsimile science I mean to address directly the question that Hoyningen Huene himself poses: Does systematicity theory offer a criterion by which to demarcate pseudoscience from real science?15 Hoyningen Huene acknowledges that systematicity theory cannot claim to be normative without falling into the naturalistic fallacy, but he nonetheless suggests that it offers a workable demarcation criterion. In his words, “the demarcation problem concerns the question of how proper science can be distinguished from other enterprises that resemble science, or even pose as science, but are not science …The attempts to solve the demarcation problem consist of the formulation of a criterion that, applied to the field in question, gives an unambiguous and correct assessment of its status as being a science or not.”16 Does systematicity provide such a criterion? Hoyningen Huene holds that it does, offering the acronym STDC to refer to “systematicity theory’s demarcation criterion.”17 Our concern therefore is to evaluate the proposal that systematicity offers an “unambiguous” demarcation criterion. The cases analyzed here have been considered in other contexts, and some may question if further consideration is necessary. The justification for revisiting them in this volume is their specific relevance to STDC. Scholars have already concluded that these activities are unscientific, so if systematicity is to function as an effective and unambiguous demarcation criterion, it should be able to exclude them. That is to say, STDC ought at minimum to be able to rule out activities that are already widely acknowledged as unscientific (as well as perhaps others that have previously been considered ambiguous). Yet, as I will show, STDC does not rule out these activities. To make this point requires consideration of the details of these activities in this particular context.

13 For a recent discussion see Lewis (2017). 14 Another problem with the term is that many students do not know what it connotes. 15 Hoyningen-Huene (2013), p. 199. 16 Ibid pp. 199–200. 17 Ibid p. 204.

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1 Homeopathy The first example is homeopathy. Nearly all U.S. scientists and physicians believe that homeopathy is unscientific.18 Many scientists have argued on mechanistic grounds that homeopathy cannot be effective, because the dilutions used in homeopathic remedies are so great that in most instances there are no actual molecules of the active ingredient. Even researchers sympathetic to homeopathy acknowledge that the very concept of it “is highly implausible.”19 Several meta-analyses have concluded that homeopathy is ineffective. Recently, the Australian government summarized one of these meta-analyses, stating that there is “no good quality evidence to support the claim that homeopathy is effective in treating health conditions.”20 This conclusion was based on a review of over 1800 papers, which “found no good quality, well-designed studies with enough participants to support the idea that homeopathy works better than a placebo, or causes health improvements equal to those of another treatment.” For this reason, the government advised that expenditures of money on homeopathic remedies were wasteful, and that patients might be putting their health at risk if they use such remedies instead of using proven effective ones. In effect, they rejected homeopathy’s claim to the status of scientifically based medicine.21 However, despite such clear statements by medical authorities that homeopathy lacks a scientific basis, it thrives in many parts of the world. In Germany (where homeopathy was first developed) millions of individuals take homeopathic remedies, which are widely sold in drug stores. In the United Kingdom, homeopathy has long been supported by the Royal Family, including Edward VIII and his brother George VI, grandfather to Charles, the current heir to the throne.22 Prince Charles is a wellknown defender of homeopathy who has argued—to the chagrin of many doctors and scientists23 —that the National Health Service should support homeopathic hospitals.24 In Switzerland, one study found that more than half of all Swiss citizens

18 Blakeman (2015). 19 Linde and Jonas (2005). 20 National Health and Medical Research Council (2014). 21 An interesting complication of the Australian study was that the substantive conclusions were based on

a subset of all the studies reviewed: only 225 of more than 1800—or less than 12.5%. The remaining more than 1500 studies were rejecting from further consideration because they were judged to be too small or too poorly designed to be worthy of further consideration. The government press release explained: The review found no good quality, well-designed studies with enough participants to support the idea that homeopathy works better than a placebo, or causes health improvements equal to those of another treatment. Although some studies did report that homeopathy was effective, the quality of those studies was assessed as being small and/or of poor quality. These studies had either too few participants, poor design, poor conduct or poor reporting to allow reliable conclusions to be drawn on the effectiveness of homeopathy. 22 Loudon (2006). 23 Goldacre (2007). 24 Robinson et al. (2015).

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would prefer a hospital that offers complementary and alternative medicine, including homeopathy. 25 If one looks at specific studies that claim positive effects, typically the claim is for a specific ailment rather than for homeopathy, writ large (which is, of course, also true for clinical trials of pharmaceuticals). A question thus arises: do meta-studies fail to find effects because they lump together treatments for different diseases, some of which perhaps do sometimes work? One recent review and meta-analysis of randomized, placebo-controlled studies allowed for that possibility, concluding that “[m]edicines prescribed in individualised homeopathy may have small, specific treatment effects.” 26 Another study, published in 2015 in Current Oncology Reports, concluded that the “findings from several lab and clinical studies suggest that homeopathy might have some beneficial effect in cancer care…” and called for further study.27 Some scholars have argued that the key to homeopathic success lies in its individualization of care, something that is difficult to replicate and test in randomized, blinded studies; at least one researcher has argued that conventional medicine should pay more attention to harnessing this documented example of the psychological aspects of health and healing.28 But the fact remains that the vast majority of western physicians and scientists reject homeopathy as unscientific. Thus, what matters for our discussion here is not whether or not homeopathy works, but whether the criterion of systematicity would permit us to reject homeopathic medicine as unscientific. The answer is no. Homeopathic practice has generated a body of work that is highly systematic. Its original principles were laid out by Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) in his highly systematic 1796 work, Essay on a New Principle for Ascertaining the Curative Power of Drugs, and in his 1810 The Organon of the Healing Art. These studies, which presented significant amounts of empirical data, were consistent with the scientific standards of the time.29 Science has changed a good deal since 1810, but over the course of two centuries Hahnemann’s followers have developed and refined his concepts and arguments, and published thousands of studies, many of which are disease- and ailment-specific in a comparable manner to studies conducted under the canons of conventional medicine. Today, there are many journals dedicated to publishing homeopathic studies. There have been hundreds of studies of clinical trials attempting to evaluate efficacy.30 Many of these studies argue a point that historians of science have supported in other contexts: that if empirical evidence reveals an effect, it is illogical to reject that evidence simply because one lacks an account of how that effect is achieved.31 Like mainstream medical journals, homeopathic journals are peer-reviewed, and like conventional med25 Ullman (2012). Of course, it’s not clear how significant this finding is, given that homeopathy was

grouped with an array of practices. Personally, I would answer yes to such a question, even though I do not believe that most homeopathic medicines are efficacious. 26 Mathie et al. (2014). 27 Frenkel (2015). 28 Harrington (1999), idem (2009). 29 See for example Schmidt (1992). 30 On this, see Dean (2005). 31 Oreskes (1999). The argument here was more historical than epistemological: that there was a long

history in geology of accepting the reality of startling geological phenomena, such as nappes and ice

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ical journals they serve the needs of their professional communities. The American Journal of Homeopathic Medicine, describes its mission this way: The American Journal of Homeopathic Medicine (AJHM) is a peer-reviewed scientific journal, specifically intended to meet the needs of physicians involved in the specialty of homeopathy. The editor invites original manuscripts, feature articles, research reports, ‘Homeopathic Grand Rounds’ cases studies, abbreviated case reports for ‘Clinical Snapshots,’ seminar reports, and position papers that focus on homeopathy, as well as book reviews and letters to the editor.32 The Journal Homeopathy, similarly describes itself as: …an international journal aimed at improving the understanding and clinical practice of homeopathy by publishing high quality articles on clinical and basic research, clinical audit and evidence-based practice of homeopathy. It also promotes debate and reviews homeopathic literature.33 These journals aspire to the same function as any conventional medical or scientific journal: to report results of scientific studies and challenges to them.34 The American Journal of Homeopathic Medicine, founded in 1844, is as old and well-established as many medical and scientific journals in the United States, and older than many (The oldest medical journal in the U.S., The New England Journal of Medicine, was first published in 1811.) Its subject matter therefore cannot be dismissed as a fad. Nor can homeopathic publications be dismissed on the basis of lacking proper credentials: Homeopathy is published by Elsevier, a well-known publisher of leading academic scientific books and journals. Homeopathic medicine also boasts colleges of medicine and hospitals, including the Royal London Homeopathic, in 2010 renamed the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine (although still a target for its detractors).35 Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital in Philadelphia no longer teaches homeopathic medicine, but long did.36 Homeopathic hospitals and institutes flourish in diverse places, including Sweden, India, Cuba, and many other countries. The existence of scientific institutions does not, by itself, demonstrate satisfaction of the criteria of systematicity, and a comprehensive analysis of the work undertaken by homeopathic practitioners would be beyond the scope of this paper. But even a cursory perusal of homeopathic literature reveals that it meets most of the stated criteria of systematicity. It offers descriptions and explanations (and perhaps even predictions); its practitioners are engaged in critical discourse; and it strives for an ideal of completeness (indeed, more so, arguably, than conventional allopathic medicine). As for the defense Footnote 31 continued ages, even though one could not explain how they occurred. Oreskes suggests that this was epistemically reasonable: To reject evidence simply because one cannot (yet) explain it is at best a missed opportunity to make a discovery, and at worst arrogant and illogical. 32 American Institute of Homeopathy (2016). 33 Fisher (2017). 34 Mathur and Gupta (2016). 35 Lewis (2010). 36 Rogers (1998).

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of knowledge claims (which at times Hoyningen Huene seems to suggest may be the most important of the nine dimensions)37 homeopathic practitioners go to great length to defend their knowledge claims, perhaps even greater lengths than conventional practitioners who may assume that many of their claims do not need defending. It may be objected that homeopathy does not satisfy all nine dimensions of scientific systematicity, as articulated by Hoyningen Huene, but that objection would be misplaced, insofar as he is explicit that individual scientific disciplines will not necessarily be systematic with respect to all nine dimensions. It may also be objected that Hoyningen-Huene’s theory is comparative rather than absolute; he notes that where there is an appropriate “reference science” against which to compare a candidate for pseudo-scientific status, the relevant question is not whether the latter is systematic but whether the former is more systematic. He would therefore need to argue that conventional allopathic medicine is more systematic than homeopathic medicine. This objection is overcome by acknowledging the social dimension of all scientific work: By its nature as unconventional medicine, homeopathy receives less government and private sector support than conventional medicine and therefore lacks the resources to be as systematic as the latter. Indeed, one might argue that the extent of systematic development of homeopathy is remarkable given the degree to which mainstream medicine has tried to refute and eliminate it. The purpose of this discussion, however, is not to argue that the persistence of homeopathy is evidence of its scientific character; many foolish and erroneous ideas and practices are persistent. The argument is simply that according to the criteria of systematicity, homeopathy appears to be a science. Homeopathy is systematic, and given the resources available to it, it appears to have achieved a degree of systematicity that is comparable to that of mainstream medicine. Yet, despite this, scientists and physicians judge it to be unscientific. Thus, I suggest that systematicity does not provide a demarcation criterion that permits us to reject homeopathy; other criteria must be invoked.38 Some readers may believe that the mainstream medical community is wrong in rejecting homeopathy, in which case one might argue that the criterion of systematicity could help us to identify areas of inquiry that have been wrongly rejected by overly conservative practitioners and those with excessively narrow methodological approaches. This is an interesting thought. However, my next two examples will provide additional reasons to conclude that while systematicity is a feature of science, it is neither sufficient to identify it nor to demarcate it from pseudo-science.

37 Hoyningen-Huene (2013), p. 210. 38 One might argue that homeopathy receives less support to test its claims, but this is a weak argument

because it could nevertheless be the case that limited studies indicated a positive effect. We could compare this with meditation, which has been demonstrated to have positive effects, despite comparatively less attention than pharmaceuticals. See, for example, Grossman et al. (2004).

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2 “Creation Science,” Creationism, and Intelligent Design Nearly all readers will be familiar with the claim that there is a body of knowledge and research known as “creation science,” whose central tenets—creationism or intelligent design—are scientific theories that deserve to be taught alongside evolutionary biology in U.S. science classrooms. Advocates of creationism invoke recognized scientific ideals such as skepticism, critical inquiry and open-mindedness, and insist that their arguments are based on evidence, including evidence of defects in evolutionary theory.39 Sometimes their theories are presented as a response to these purported defects, such as the (alleged) inability of evolutionary theory to explain the emergence of complex phenomena such as the human eye. Invoking these arguments, several U.S. states have passed laws requiring schools to provide “equal time” for the consideration of creationism as for evolutionary theory in public schools. Most readers will also know that scientists have repeatedly and categorically rejected creationists’ claims that their theory is a scientific one. Indeed, some readers will be familiar with the lengths to which the U.S. scientific community has gone to disallow creationism from American science classrooms: preparing statements, issuing amicus briefs in court cases, and appearing as expert witnesses.40 These statements express conventional views as to what is required for an activity to be scientific, such as the requirements of methodological naturalism, testability, falsifiability, empirical adequacy, and revisability, and the rejection of the subordination of data to statements based on authority, revelation, or religious belief.41 The National Center for Science 39 For example, see Michael Behe, Talk Origins Archive. 40 Organizations that have issued statements rejecting creationism as scientific include The American

Association for the Advancement of Science, the national Center for Science Education, the American Association of University Professors, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the National Association of Biology Teachers. 41 One reviewer suggests that if creationist claims are “not testable and subordinate observed data to statements based on authority…” that this means, ipso facto, that the claims lack systematicity. This seems to be an excessively expansive definition of systematicity, one that is so expansive as to include all other possible criticisms—and thus to render the argument virtually circular. Moreover, Hoyningen-Huene’s nine criteria of systematic science (p. 27) say nothing about testability. Therefore, I believe it is appropriate to consider testability, along with falsifiability, to be distinct from systematicity, Indeed, Hoyningen-Huene make considerable effort to demonstrate that his idea is distinct from concepts of demarcation focused on testing and falsification. See, for example, his discussion of Popper on pp. 200–203. For statements from the US scientific community rejecting creationism’s claim to be a science, see: National Academy of Sciences (1999), Rennie (2002), AAAS (2006) and NCSE (2016). Interestingly, AAAS also issued a statement in support of the teaching of evolution in 1922 response to the Scopes trial. In some ways, it was a stronger statement, including the following affirmation: “The Council of the Association is convinced that any legislation attempting to limit the teaching of any scientific doctrine so well established and so widely accepted by specialists as is the doctrine of evolution would be a profound mistake, which could not fail to injure and retard the advancement of knowledge and of human welfare, by denying the freedom of teaching and inquiry which is essential to all progress.” AAAS (1992). A striking rejection of creationism has been offered by the Department of Biological Sciences Department at Lehigh University, the institutional home of one of the most well-known advocates of Intelligent Design, Michael Behe. His colleagues have declared: “The faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences …are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory, which…has been supported by findings accumulated over 140 years. The sole dissenter from this position, Prof. Michael Behe, is a well-known proponent of “intelligent design.” While we respect Prof. Behe’s right to express his views, they are his alone …It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested

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Education has insisted that to teach a religiously-based idea in a science classroom is a category mistake.42 Philosophers have also have rejected creationism as a form of science; Philip Kitcher has called it as an “abuse” of science.43,44 And on the repeated occasions when the issue has landed in U.S. Courts, judges have also concluded that creationism is not science.45 When the issue reached the U.S. Supreme court in 1987, Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Lewis Powell noted that “[C]oncepts concerning God or a supreme being of some sort are manifestly religious ….These concepts do not shed that religiosity merely because they are presented as a philosophy or as a science.”46,47 Yet, despite the overall familiarity of the topic, many readers may not be familiar with the extent to which creationists have developed a systematic approach to their topic. Indeed, close examination reveals not only that creationism is systematic, but that creationists have gone to considerable lengths to make it so. Consider the textbook, Of Pandas and People. This textbook played a major role in the U.S. court case of Kitzmiller et al. v Dover. The case hinged in part on the fact that the school board had recommended the use of this textbook, written specifically to organize and systematize creationists’ claims and evidence. (Recall that Thomas Kuhn argued that the rewriting of textbooks was a signal that a new paradigm was in place; creationists would agree that theirs is a new paradigm.) The textbook, like conventional scientific texts, lays out the hypothesis under consideration, offers the evidence in support of it, and includes many illustrations and an extensive bibliography.

Footnote 41 continued experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific.” Lehigh University (2015). http://www.lehigh. edu/~inbios/News/evolution.html. 42 Edwords (1981). 43 Kitcher (1982). 44 See also Ansted (2013). 45 More recently, many state legislatures have considered “academic freedom” laws that permit but do not

require teachers to present creationist alternatives to evolutionary theory. Often these bills are presented under the guised of stimulating critical thinking. As of this writing, only Louisiana has passed such a law, with the Orwellian name of The Louisiana Science Education Act. The NCSE is tracking developments in this area: National Center for Science Education (2009). On the role of Steven Jay Gould in these debates, see Perez (under review). See also Edwords (1982) and Larson (2003). 46 Powell (1986). Justice Scalia dissented in a long and rather complicated dissent, in which he questioned the legitimacy of overturning the law based on the motivation of its sponsors—which he insisted could not be known. He also quoted at length from witnesses for the defendants, who argued that evolution could not be considered a fact because it could not be observed in the laboratory: “The body of scientific evidence supporting creation science is as strong as that supporting evolution. In fact, it may be stronger. Id. at E-214 (Young statement); id. at E-310 (Sen. Keith); id. at E-416 (Sen. Keith); 2 id. at E-492 (Sen. Keith). The evidence for evolution is far less compelling than we have been led to believe. Evolution is not a scientific “fact,” since it cannot actually be observed in a laboratory. Rather, evolution is merely a scientific theory or “guess.” 1id. at E-20–E-21 (Morris); id. at E-85 (Ward); id. at E-100 (Reiboldt); id. at E-328 - E-329 (Boudreaux); 2 id. at E-506 (Boudreaux)”. By this standard much biology, most earth science and just about all of astrophysics and cosmology would have to be rejected. 47 In the closely watched 2005 case of Tammy Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District, the presiding judge John E. Jones concluded with a vengeance that the theory of Intelligent Design was creationism by another name—and it did smell the same. He expressed his outrage at the “breathtaking inanity” of the school board’s decision to include Intelligent Design in the science curriculum; see Goodstein (2005).

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Nor does this textbook stand alone. As Kitcher has noted, there are scores of books on creationism, many of which are written in the form of textbooks or other scholarly efforts, and nearly all of which present systematic arguments about the evidence for creationism, and the difficulties with the theory of evolution by natural selection.48 They also systematically address the character of the fossil record, and the question of what the fossil record does or does not reveal—a question that mainstream scientists have also addressed.49 Michael Behe, one of the most prominent advocates of creationism in the United States, has produced detailed discussions of whether a process of selection amongst random variants could produce an organ of such great delicacy and complexity as the human eye.50 These discussions may be wrong or wrong-headed, but they are not unsystematic. The systematicity of science, as Professor Hoyningen-Huene has noted, is expressed in part through publications in peer-reviewed journal. The alleged lack of such publications was specifically raised in the 1981–82 court case of McLean vs. Arkansas (sometimes referred to as the Overton case after the name of the presiding judge, William Overton). Geneticist Francisco Ayala testified that he had edited and reviewed scores of scientific papers but he had “never heard of a scientific paper on creationism being submitted to any scientific journal.”51 Historian Edward Larson also stressed this point, and in the trial, Judge Overton noted that, “no recognized scientific journal had published a creationist article.”52 Creationists have responded to this just as homeopaths have responded to the rejection of their ideas by mainstream medicine: they have created their own scientific journals. As historian Ronald Numbers has noted, creationists created their own institutes in part because of the perception that the scientific community was closed to them, and these institutes have therefore published books and magazines intended for their own communities.53 The Institute for Creation Research, for example, has long published the popular magazine Acts and Facts.54 But creationists have now created their own research journals, publishing articles and conference proceedings in the style of scientific journals, and some of these articles are peer-reviewed. If one were to reject these journals as unscientific, it would have to be on grounds other than their systematic character (or lack thereof). Consider the 2013 paper “Numerical Simulations of Winter Storms, Tropical Cyclones, and Nor’easters During the Ice Age Using the NCAR WRF Model with a Warm Ocean,” found on the web site of the Institute for Creation Research, and published in the Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Creationism. This paper—whose title and format are indistinguishable from conventional papers in climate science—argues that 48 Kitcher (1982), p. 2. 49 Most famously Niles Eldredge and Steven Jay Gould in their arguments over gradualism v punctuated

equilibrium: Eldridge and Gould (1977), Punctuated Equilibria: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism; and idem (1977), Punctuated Equilibria: The Tempo and Mode of Evolution Reconsidered. 50 Behe (1998). 51 National Center for Science Education. McLean v. Arkansas. 52 Larson (2003), p. 164. 53 Numbers (2006) and Moran (2012). 54 Institute for Creation Research (2017).

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“increased sea-surface temperature following the Genesis Flood was the likely cause of the ice age.”55 It presents a coherent hypothesis, and supports it with evidence and reference to previous publications on the subject. It is not an isolated claim: it is part of a body of systematic work. This is but one of many examples. The Creation Research Society has recently launched a scholarly journal entitled The Creation Research Society Quarterly; other journals include the Journal of Creation and Answers Research Journal. Like homeopathic journals, creationist journals serve their intellectual communities by providing peer-reviewed articles on topics of interest, and the articles in them present both theory and evidence to support their claims. Some are affiliated with professional societies, such as the Creation Biology Society, which describes itself as “an affiliation of biologists and other researchers dedicated to developing a young-age creation model of biological origins.”56 This Society publishes the Journal of Creation Theology and Science Series B: Life Sciences. These titles and formats are similar to the titles of conventional scientific journals. Indeed, they appear to be modeled on the Proceedings of the Royal Society, with its Parts A and B, the latter being the biological sciences. One might argue that these journals are not “legitimate” scientific journals, insofar as they violate the scientific ground rule disallowing supernatural explanation.57 But this is the point. Creationism has been rejected by scientists, by philosophers, 55 Vardiman (2013). 56 The Creation Biology Society. 57 Creationists have also attempted to publish creationist arguments in mainstream scientific journals, which, if they succeeded, could potentially support the claim that creationist arguments are legitimate alternative scientific hypotheses and that teaching them could support a secular intent of advancing science instruction. An interesting account of one such attempt was described in 2008 in the Reports of the National Center for Science Education. In a paper entitled, “Creationism slips into a peer-reviewed journal,” computational biologist Steven L Salzberg describes how he recognized a creationist paper in an on-line pre-publication version of a paper in the journal Proteomics. Embedded in a review paper on mitochondria that otherwise appeared to follow conventional scientific reasoning, the authors made the claim that the evidence of “proteomics overlapping between different forms of life are more likely to be interpreted as a reflection of a single common fingerprint initiated by a mighty creator than relying on a single cell that is, in a doubtful way, surprisingly originating all other kinds of life.” Salzberg notes that the title—“Mitochondria, the missing link between body and soul: Proteomic prospective evidence”—should have raised a red flag insofar as “scientific papers do not talk about the ‘soul.”’ He likewise finds it hard to understand how reviewers could have missed the discussion of the “mighty creator” in the body of the text. As it turned out, the paper was heavily plagiarized and on those grounds the journal stopped its publication. But the incident raises a number of interesting challenges, as Salzberg writes:

This entire episode points out a weakness in scientific peer review that creationists and other pseudoscience proponents may try to exploit again. We only caught this attempted fraud thanks to the diligence of bloggers: the journal itself had already missed it. What is perhaps more troubling is the fact that the journal relied solely on the plagiarism to force the retraction: if not for that, the article might have been published despite its unsubstantiated creationist claims. …. The … paper demonstrates a new strategy that proponents of creationism might attempt again, and perhaps next time they will not be so foolish as to plagiarize their text. We can only hope that the publicity surrounding this incident will alert both reviewers and editors of scientific journals to be on the lookout for “stealth” creationist claims in the future. Salzberg (2008). There are many questions that might be asked about this incident. For our purposes, the pertinent point is that if a paper is written in a scientific style, it may pass scientific peer review, even if its creationist claims are “unsubstantiated.”

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and by the U.S. Courts on the basis of violating traditional epistemic norms such as empiricism, testability, falsifiability, revisability, and methodological naturalism. And yet, creationism is systematic. Creationists engage in research that is organized, well-developed, and presented coherently in textbooks, journals, and conference proceedings. Therefore, the rejection of creationist claims cannot be based on their lack of systematicity. It must be based on some other standard, such as a lack of empirical substantiation or the invocation of the supernatural. STDC does not permit us to reject creationism.

3 Climate change denial Unlike homeopathy and creationism, climate change denial is characterized more by what it rejects than what it affirms. It may be defined as the organized public rejection of the scientific conclusion that human activities, primarily the addition of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, have altered the global climate, a conclusion that has been repeatedly affirmed both by climate scientists, and by analysts of climate science.58 In recent years, a number of scholars and journalists have documented important aspects of this history, particularly in the Anglophone world.59 They have shown that the arguments put forward were not scientific, as judged by the social criteria of being put forward and debated by credentialed scientists in the normative loci of scientific discourse (such as scientific conferences and peer-reviewed journals), nor as judged by the epistemic criteria of inference to the best explanation or being subject to testing, revision, and falsification.60 However, they often mimic the structures and apparati of science, for example, through the systematic issuance of reports and technical papers that follow the form, structure, and tone of scientific papers. A key finding of previous research is that efforts to undermine climate science utilize many of the same strategies, tactics, and personnel of earlier efforts to undermine the scientific evidence of the harms of tobacco use. These included the creation of conferences, journals, and institutes, what we might label “structures of systematicity.”61 For example, the tobacco industry created institutes, such as the Tobacco Institute and 58 The scientific literature on climate change is now vast; the obvious starting point is the IPCC Fifth

Assessment Report. For analyses of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, see Oreskes (2004), Doran and Zimmerman (2009), Anderegg et al. (2010) and Cook et al. (2016); 59 Gelbspan (1997), Monbiot (2007), Oreskes and Conway (2010) and Hoggan and Littlemore (2009). 60 For a discussion of climate science as judged by conventional philosophical criteria, see Oreskes (2007).

An early example of the scientific community formally rejecting the claims of climate change deniers is NAS Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and the Institute of Medicine (IOM), who in the early 1990s conducted a major consensus study on this issue, entitled Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming (1991, 1992). This analysis concluded that, “Even given the considerable uncertainties in our knowledge of the relevant phenomena, greenhouse warming poses a potential threat sufficient to merit prompt responses. …Investment in mitigation measures acts as insurance protection against the great uncertainties and the possibility of dramatic surprises.” For more recent discussions, see National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2005). For succinct summaries, see The Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (2011), Wayne et al. (2016) and Climate Nexus (2013). A particularly useful contribution is from The Royal Society (2005). For the perspective of the Vatican, see: The Pontifical Academy of Sciences (2017). 61 Oreskes (2010).

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the Center for Indoor Air Research, which in some cases undertook original scientific research, albeit for the primary purpose of developing a cadre of experts who would speak to the press or testify in court to the effect that the science was unsettled. The industry also sponsored conferences and workshops that would produce conference proceedings, which could then be cited (much like the creationist papers already discussed) to support the industry’s claims. Historian Robert Proctor has documented the creation of newsletters, magazines, and journals—including journals with ostensible peer review—in which the results of industry sponsored research could be reported, published, and cited. These included Tobacco and Health, Science Fortnightly, and the Indoor Air Journal.62 The same pattern has prevailed in climate change denial.63 Consider the efforts of the George C. Marshall Institute, which describes itself as a “nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation to conduct technical assessments of scientific issues with an impact on public policy.” Since the late 1980s, it has consistently taken positions contrary to the scientific community on the matter of anthropogenic climate change (as well as other matters, such as ozone depletion). In 1989, just as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was organizing its first assessment of the state of climate science, the Marshall Institute published a report that rejected the emerging scientific conclusion that anthropogenic climate change was underway, and insisted, instead, that observed changes were due to the sun.64 Throughout the 1990s, the Institute issued numerous reports and hosted conferences and workshops where the central theme was to question, doubt and challenge mainstream scientific conclusions about anthropogenic climate change.65 Even as the scientific consensus strengthened in the 1990s—particularly after the publication of the IPCC’s second assessment report— Marshall Institute reports and workshops continued to suggest that the sun, rather than 62 Proctor (2012) and Brandt (2009). 63 Oreskes (2010), p. 244. 64 First published as Global Warming: What Does the Science Tell Us? The Marshall Institute republished this as Scientific Perspectives on the Greenhouse Problem in 1989, 1990, and 1991. See Jastrow et al. (1989). 65 The Institute no longer denies the reality of man-made climate change, and now takes a much more subtle and nuanced approach than in the 1980s and 90s. However, it continues to echo tobacco industry strategy with its persistent emphasis on scientific uncertainty. A recent visit to their web site, found a continued primary emphasis on the uncertainties in climate science, viz: “Many of the temperature data and computer models used to predict climate change are themselves as uncertain as are our understanding of important interactions in the natural climate.” While this claim is not false, it strongly contrasts with the tone and tenor of recent scientific assessments, such as the recent IPCC statement that “warming is unequivocal.” (IPCC Fourth Assessment Report). Given that the Marshall Institute provides no link on its home page to any of the major scientific societies’ statements or reports on climate change, it is fair to say, at minimum, that the focus on uncertainty as the central point on its home page is out of step with the central conclusions of the expert community. For a detailed accounting of how the institute’s activities and positions have specifically clashed with mainstream science, see The Desmog Blog and Newsweek (2007). In the 1990s Frederick Seitz stepped down from the chairmanship, to be replaced by William O’Keefe, previously Treasurer/Secretary of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, COO of the American Petroleum Institute, and a registered lobbyist for Exxon-Mobil Corporation. Recently, the institute sponsored a talk by physicist William Happer entitled “The Myth of Carbon Pollution,” (Happer 2014). Happer promotes the idea that increased atmospheric CO2 will be good for the environment because it will promote plant growth, a claim that was investigated—and discredited—by scientists in the 1990s. See Oreskes (2010), “My facts are better than your facts.”

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human activities, was the cause of observed changes.66 In short, as the scientific community converged on an accepted understanding of anthropogenic global warming, the Marshall Institute systematically countered it. In 1997, the Chairman of the Marshall Institute, Frederick Seitz, joined forces with a biochemist named Arthur Robinson—previously primarily known for his work with Linus Pauling and his advocacy of home schooling and civil defense—to organize the Oregon Petition Project.67 This was a petition urging the U.S. government to reject the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (which committed its signatories to mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions) on the grounds that the science was unsettled and that any attempt to control emissions would lead to excessive taxation or rationing.68 The petition was sent to thousands of scientists around the United States, accompanied by a cover letter written by Seitz, stressing the latter’s position as a former President of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and formatted in a manner as to imply the Academy’s endorsement. It was also accompanied by a reprint of an article, co-authored by Robinson and several colleagues (including Professor Willie Soon, who was later revealed to have received extensive funding from fossil fuel interests), formatted to look like a paper from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In the words of the Academy, the formatting of the paper was “nearly identical to that of scientific articles published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”69 Arthur Robinson runs the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which collaborates with the Heartland Institute, famous for its opposition to mainstream climate science, including running advertisements comparing climate scientists to terrorists.70 The Heartland Institute sponsors a group known as the “Non-governmental Panel on Climate Change,” which presents itself as a (systematic) alternative to the IPCC. In 2009, they published Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). The report, some 880 pages in length, mirrors in length, format and content, the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC, published 2 years earlier. One of the report authors, S. Fred Singer, boasted in an interview that the reports were the same, even down to the thickness. “We strictly use the same thickness,” he said.71 Also mimicking the structure of the IPCC, which has a policy of including authors from many countries, NIPCC authors note that their report “lists 35 contributors and reviewers from 14 countries.”72 A similar report was issued by the CATO Institute, also a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, which describes itself as a public policy research organization.73 In 2012, CATO released a report entitled “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United 66 The Oregon petition continues to be cited in public debate as “evidence” that there is no scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change, see Bast (2016). 67 Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (2015a). 68 Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (2015b). 69 The National Academy of Sciences (1998). 70 Kuipers (2012). 71 Singer (2015). 72 See “About the NIPCC”. 73 The CATO institute (2017).

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States.”74 This title is the precisely same as a report issued in 2009 by the U.S. Global Climate Change Research Program (GCRP) as the official report of the U.S. Second National Climate Change Assessment. Not only the title, but the entire CATO report mimics the structure, style, layout, and topical content of the GCRP report.75 Even the cover is almost identical: yellow letters, on a blue background, above a picture of the United States viewed from above. In the film version of Merchants of Doubt, Skeptical Inquirer editor Michael Shermer holds the two reports side by side and asks, “If you were a Congressman, how would you tell the difference?” This, of course, is the point: these non-scientific reports mimic the structures of scientific reports, in order to carry the political and epistemic authority that often accrues to science. One might object that the appearance of systematicity is not the same as systematicity itself. True, but if one reads the CATO report, one finds that, like creationist and homeopathic articles and reports, it lays out an argument, offers evidence for it, provides counter-arguments to mainstream science, and supports its claims with tables, graphs, and illustrations. Indeed, the objection of mainstream scientists to climate change denial is not that it is unsystematic, but that it is that it is misleading, unfair, and incorrect. Climate change deniers exaggerate the extent and significance of the scientific uncertainties, take data out of context, and mischaracterize what scientists have said. They make claims that cannot be tested, or have been tested and shown to be wanting. The explanations they offer are not supported by evidence, or are refuted by available evidence. But the manner in which they make these claims is systematic. Indeed, their work is systematic in many of the same ways that climate science is systematic, because it is designed to be so.

4 Discussion It should be clear from this discussion that any critique of the facsimile sciences—any attempt to demarcate them from real, true, or actual science—must invoke some criteria other than systematicity. Matthew Crawford, who worked at the Marshall Institute and later wrote about the experience, has put it this way: …the trappings of scholarship were used [at the Marshall Institute] to put a scientific cover on positions arrived at otherwise. These positions served various interests, ideological or material. For example, part of my job consisted of making arguments about global warming that just happened to coincide with the positions taken by the oil companies that funded the think tank.76 While the ideological commitments of climate change deniers may not be as absolute as those of creationists, these commitments have caused their adherents to reject scientific evidence as understood by scientists and vetted in peer-reviewed venues. Thus, it 74 Center for the Study of Science (2012). 75 Compare the CATO Institute’ “Addendum: Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” with

the US Global Change Research Program’s “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” (Holdren et al. 2009). 76 Crawford (2009).

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is fair to conclude that climate change denial, like creationism and homeopathy, is unscientific. For the sake of completeness, we may enumerate the respects in which the facsimile sciences are not scientific: 1. They disregard evidence collected using established scientific methods 2. They repeat claims that have shown to be incorrect or obsolete 3. They misrepresent scientific data, theories, and models presented in peer-reviewed journals 4. They rely on techniques—like petitions—that fall outside the norms of scientific procedure 5. They are motivated by ideological and economic considerations more so than epistemic ones 6. These motivating ideological and economic considerations trump epistemic ones and 7. They refuse to accept the weight of evidence as judged by relevant experts in the field. In sum, we can find abundant grounds for finding the facsimile sciences to be unscientific, but these grounds do not include being unsystematic. In the case of homeopathy, we can recognize that it is a knowledge-seeking activity—it seems clear that most practitioners and researchers are genuinely interested in the possibility that homeopathic treatments might have therapeutic value. To the extent that it offers an alternative theoretical framework, it should be viewed as potentially knowledge-producing. The difficulty with homeopathy is that most homeopathic treatments fail the tests to which they have been put. To the extent that homeopathic treatments may work, the reasons may not be what their practitioners claim. Thus, we may conclude that homeopathy mostly or entirely fails the test of efficacy, theoretically it fails the test of falsifiability, and the explanations that it offers for its efficacy, where there is efficacy, are questionable. The proponents of homeopathy appear to be largely unmoved by evidence of its ineffectuality, nor the suggestion that where it does work its efficacy may be mostly placebo effect. Creationists may be knowledge-seeking as well: many are motivated to try to find substantive evidence to support their belief that we are not alone in the universe, that our existence is not the chance result of random acts of selection. If they could find such evidence, it would be reassuring to them, and not necessarily a bad thing for the world at large. Moreover, scientists cannot disprove the postulate of a guiding hand in the universe; they can only rule it out of bounds qua science. Therefore, the problem of creationism, qua science, is not that it is unsystematic; it is that it breaks the established conventions of modern science. Creationists are only interested in knowledge that support the existence of a guiding hand; they seek to explain away all else. Scientists, of course, sometimes do this as well, but it is generally agreed to be bad when they do. Historians and philosophers have also generally agreed that the production of new knowledge sometimes involves the abandonment not only of previously held “facts,” but also of the broader theories and commitments in which those facts are understood, interpreted, placed. For creationists, the broader theory is

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belief in God, his role in creation, and his imminence. These beliefs are not subject to abandonment. Creationism thus fails the criterion of revisability in light of evidence. Moreover, if it succeeds in confusing people about the actual results of scientific inquiry, then it produces not knowledge but ignorance.77 The same can be said of climate change denial, whose purpose is to reject certain scientific conclusions, but offers no credible alternatives. Thus, if we are to reject these activities as unscientific, we must invoke criteria beyond systematicity. Admittedly, Professor Hoyningen-Huene has a response to this. Following Paul Thagard he suggests that we can identify pseudo-science by its lack of progressiveness, defining progress here not so much by the traditional philosophical notion of “success of the theory in adding to its set of facts explained and problems solved,” but by an increase in systematic character.78 He writes: We can generalize this idea of progressiveness in terms of systematicity theory …For a test of whether a given field is pseudoscientific at some time t0 , we have to first identify the relevant reference science, i.e., a science with roughly the same subject matter existing at the same time. Next, we investigate the reference science’s development over some longer time span until the time t0 [and] … record what sort of systematicity increase the reference science exhibits during this time span.…Next, we investigate the development of the putative pseudoscience in the same time span until t0 …. We then compare the systematicity increase of the reference science with the systematicity increase of the putative pseudoscience. If the putative pseudoscience scores substantially worse than the reference science, then it is indeed a pseudoscience. If the difference in systematicity increase is only slight, then the putative pseudoscience is a scientific competitor with the reference science. I believe that there are several problems with this suggestion. First: As Hoyningen-Huene acknowledges, there may not be a clearly identifiable reference science. In particular, how do we treat a field of investigation that consciously sets itself up as a distinct science, one that is by design not equivalent to existing fields? For creationism and climate change denial, there are obvious reference sciences— evolutionary biology and conventional climate science—but what is the reference for homeopathy? Is it western pharmacologically-based medicine? Or is it a different form of personalized medicine, such as ayurvedic or traditional Chinese medicine? Second: What is the metric by which systematicity is measured? Given that “progress” has been a notoriously difficult concept to pin down, even among those who accept its reality and centrality, it seems unlikely that we could agree on a quantitative scale for systematicity. Even if we could, it is not clear that the “true” sciences would always win over the facsimile sciences. The systematicity of the areas we have considered has clearly increased over time. There is a case to be made that the relative increase in systematicity of creationism, as compared to evolutionary biology, in recent decades has been greater: because the former began in an unsystematic way, it

77 On the social production of ignorance, see Proctor and Schiebinger (Eds.) (2008). 78 Hoyningen-Huene (2013), note 4 on p. 204.

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has been able to make more obvious gains. The same might be the case for climate change denial as well, although we are still left with the problem of a suitable metric by which to measure. Third: Contra to Hoyningen-Huene’s assertion, it is not clear that the systematicity of “real” science necessarily increases over time. Consider earth science during the period between the proposal of the theory of continental drift and the acceptance of plate tectonics. Theoretical accounts of mountain-building proliferated; one geologist asked if geology could even be considered a science when so many competing ideas, including the seemingly bizarre idea of moving continents, could “run wild.”79 Or consider the recent proliferation of new drugs and treatments in conventional Western medicine, including some whose mechanisms of action are not well understood. One might make the case that, although the Western pharmacopeia has increased in size in recent decades, the science that undergirds it has not become more systematic. Clearly, the areas we have investigated may be critiqued on many grounds. The most obvious is that they have not generated new knowledge claims that have fostered new lines of investigation. Accepting Hoyningen-Huene’s argument that real science is progressive, we might argue that creationism and climate change denial have not generated progressive research programs. But this argument takes us out of the domain of systematicity, and into the domain of generativeness. Creationists argue that their claims have led to new questions and even new answers; Michael Behe, for example, insists that his approach opens up certain “black boxes” that evolutionary biologists have left closed.80 Likewise, some climate scientists—while adamantly rejecting denialist conclusions—acknowledge that some contrarian assertions have motivated additional research that has been productive, but then we are back to the traditional philosophical notion of epistemic progress.81 (We might also then ask whether this was the best use of scientists’ time.) Finally, we might reject any of the claims of facsimile sciences on the grounds that they are false. Indeed, this is the grounds upon which most mainstream scientists have rejected them. But to take an “escape route” in this manner is to admit that our criterion of demarcation must admit additional factors. There is nothing wrong such an admission, but it refutes Hoyningen-Huene’s claim that systematicity offers a sufficient demarcation criterion.

5 Conclusion Systematicity may well characterize science, as Hoyningen-Huene argues, but it is not a sufficient criterion by which to demarcate it from pseudo-science. Individuals and groups may re-create the systematic character of science yet still do work that scientists and philosophers of science reject as unscientific on other grounds. It is a worthy goal to continue to work on the demarcation problem. In a world where educated people promote the teaching of creationism in science classrooms, deny anthropogenic climate change, and forego vaccinations—a world where facsimile 79 Chamberlin (1928), p. 83. 80 Behe (1998). 81 Lewandowsky et al. (2016).

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sciences proliferate—it is more than worthy: it is essential. Unfortunately, something more than systematicity is needed. The theory of systematicity by itself does not resolve the demarcation problem.

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