The extension of Western scientific standards and institutions as a global norm, often through coercion or economic pressure, while dismissing or suppressing indigenous and
local knowledge systems as “pseudoscience.” Anti‑pseudoscience imperialism operates through international aid conditionalities, global ranking systems, and educational curricula that present Western
science as the only legitimate
way of knowing. It replicates colonial patterns: extraction of resources, suppression of alternatives, and a civilizing mission dressed in lab coats. The result is epistemic
violence—the destruction of diverse ways of knowing under the banner of universal reason.
Anti-Pseudoscience Imperialism Example: “The global health program refused to fund any traditional healing research, demanding RCTs for practices that had worked for centuries—anti‑pseudoscience imperialism, imposing one epistemology on the
world.”
Anti-Pseudoscience Colonialism
A specific historical and ongoing form of colonial domination that uses the label “pseudoscience” to justify erasing, criminalizing, or ridiculing the knowledge systems of colonized peoples. It is older than modern scientism: colonial authorities dismissed indigenous agriculture, medicine, and land management as “superstition” to
clear land and impose European systems. Today, anti‑pseudoscience colonialism appears in laws that restrict traditional healers, schools that ban indigenous astronomy, and development programs that ignore
local ecological
wisdom. It is
science as a tool of dispossession, not liberation.
Example: “The colonial administrator called native irrigation ‘unscientific nonsense’ and replaced it with a failed European
system. Anti‑pseudoscience colonialism: using ‘
science’ to erase effective knowledge and justify theft.”
