A meta-field that studies the anti‑pseudoscience movement as a social phenomenon—its history, institutions, strategies, and effects. It examines how the category “pseudoscience” is used to police boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate knowledge, who has the authority to apply the label, and what social interests the label serves. The social sciences of anti‑pseudoscience ask: why do certain beliefs get labeled pseudoscientific while others, equally speculative, escape? How does anti‑pseudoscience activism sometimes become a form of scientism? It critically examines the social dynamics of demarcation, revealing that the fight against “bad science” is also a fight for institutional power.
Social Sciences of Anti-Pseudoscience Example: “His work in the social sciences of anti‑pseudoscience traced how the term ‘pseudoscience’ was historically used to dismiss non‑Westernknowledge systems—not because they failed empirical tests, but because they threatened Western epistemic authority.”
Fogey/fogy /fougi/ sl. (early 18C+, orig. Scot) old-fashioned, stuck-in-the mud.
Person with old fashioned ideas which he is unwilling to change: Come to the disco and stop being such an old fogey!
You think me an old fogeyand an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I saw three generations since O’Connel’s time. I remember the famine. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before O’Connel did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things. (James Joyce, Ulysses. Penguin Books,1992. p. 38)