Pseucalling

The act of labeling an opponent's position or something one disagrees with as "pseudoscience" based on criteria that extend beyond mere scientific methodology into the realms of politics, economics, ideology, or lobbyist influence. It's a rhetorical move (a blend of "pseudoscience" and "calling") designed to discredit and exclude certain discourses from legitimate conversation. Pseucalling is frequently deployed against dissident, counter-hegemonic, anti-capitalist, or non-Western perspectives, using the epithet of "pseudoscience" as a social and professional weapon to enforce conformity and marginalize challenges to established power structures.

Example: "The community's traditional knowledge about local plant medicines was dismissed as 'pseudoscience' by the pharmaceutical researcher seeking to patent a synthetic version. This was pure Pseucalling; the dismissal wasn't based on testing the remedies, but on protecting corporate intellectual property and the hegemony of the lab-coat over indigenous epistemologies."

Pseucalling by Nammugal January 30, 2026