this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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Came across a list of pseudosciences and was fun seeing where im woo woo.

Lunar effect – the belief that the full Moon influences human and animal behavior.

Ley Lines

Accupressure/puncture

Ayurveda

Body Memory

Faith healing

Anyway, list too long to read. I guess Im quite the nonscientific woowoomancer. How about you? What pseudoscience do you believe? Also I believe nearly every stone i find was an ancient indian stone. Also manifesting and or prayer to manipulate via subconscious aligning the future. oh and the ability to subconsciously deeply understand animals, know the future, etc

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Like you, I ain't reading the list.

However, I'm not dismissive of stuff that's woowoo, but the stuff you listed has pretty much been shown to be nothing better than placebo effects, with the partial exception of the cycles of some things in nature matching the moon. But it isn't about the phase, per se (at least, the last serious publication I saw on it indicated it wasn't).

Thing is, woowoo placebo effect isn't a fake thing. Hence me not being dismissive. If something A: helps get someone through shit, B: doesn't hurt anyone, and C: isn't being used by someone as a tool to manipulate, it ain't my business to correct anyone.

Some shit, like acupressure has benefits beyond the placebo, even though it isn't for the claimed reasons. When stuff like that works, it's very often the touch itself combined with the idea it will help that makes it effective enough to be worth keeping around.

But, with that kind of thing, that's only okay if it's conjunction with evidence based beat practices. That's when woowoo really shines. To help someone decrease stress, handle the horrible, and get through another day. Because it really does help in that regard.

See, it's known that religion serves that purpose. It's a psychological coping tool in one of its aspects. It doesn't matter if the same effect happens because of faith in a deity or not. It's that we can, to a limited degree, improve our selves by how our minds are functioning. So, if someone gets through their divorce, or being sick, or grieving by burning incense and playing with pretty rocks, IDGAF, I'll lie to their face and tell them that it's great, as long as they're also working on whatever it is more holistically with something evidence based.

Even then, I'd just try to convince them to add to, not abandon.

That being said, I wish some of that shit worked. It would be so fucking nice.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Pretty sure lunar effect is a real, scientifically confirmed thing, just known by a different name. Perhaps not the full moon specifically, but we do oscillate according to the moon phase. It's called circalunar cycles. The name might sound familiar to circadian cycles because they both derive from the same word structure, ie circa-dia ("around a day") and circa-lunar ("around a month")

At minimum, I'm quite surprised that Wikipedia lists this as a pseudoscience, because my impression has generally been that circadian researchers acknowledge circalunar cycles as a given

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 week ago (2 children)

A lot of these are adjacent to real observable phenomenon but a nutty belief system has been overlaid and then additional claims are made on the basis of that nutty belief system which are not observable.

For example, Feng Shui in practice is usually pretty sensible "where should I put the sofa" kind of stuff, but if you claim that it's about the flow of qi through your house and suggest that based on that not only should the sofa go over there, but you need to put a topiary vase on the table next to it, that might be a nice aesthetic touch but there's no evidence of qi.

Additionally there's plenty of Traditional Chinese Medicine that became actual medicine because it has observable properties. For example turmeric is a mild anti-inflammatory.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 week ago (4 children)

None. If any of it was reproducable it would science instead of pseudoscience

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Goodness, that's a lot to read.

I don't know if I believe any of them with actual faith instead of just chalking coincidental things up to some beliefs like that. The Lunar phase one comes to mind as something I'll often reference, but I don't actually believe in lunacy.

However, there's one about grounding methods in the health section. I definitely don't believe there's anything about elecron alignment or whatever bull that all is. But being on the ground helps me a lot with anxiety and relaxation in general. To the point where I prefer sitting in front of my couch vs on it, lol. So maybe I believe in that one, but not in any pseudoscience way??

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

I work in 911 dispatch, and I don't have hard stats to back it up, I'm not even really sure how it could be objectively measured, and I'm sure I have a whole lot of bias and such, but I'm pretty sure everyone I work with agrees that we just get weirder calls on full moons.

Not necessarily busier, or more severe, there's just a certain something that's hard to explain about a lot of our callers that seems to get a little strange on a full moon.

It's not something we're actively keeping track of, it's not like we have a reminder set on our phones for the full moon, but when we have one of those nights where everything just seems to be a little off and we check the moon phase, it seems like it's full or nearly full more often than not.

Although personally I think we see a bigger difference for a couple days after the clocks change for daylight savings time. My pet theory on that is it throws people's medication schedules off by an hour and it takes them a few days to readjust. Plus throwing off sleep schedules, and dementia patients who sundown may be up and acting up at a time they would otherwise be asleep.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I try to follow truth whenever it leads, I guess the closest was when I was younger and wanted dragons to be real, but I didn't really believe it.

Acupuncture isn't a pseudoscience, anyway, it's science. It has been actually proved to work.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acupuncture

Acupuncture[b] is a form of alternative medicine[2] and a component of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in which thin needles are inserted into the body.[3] Acupuncture is a pseudoscience;[4][5] the theories and practices of TCM are not based on scientific knowledge,[6] and it has been characterized as quackery.[c]

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38980012/

First, we find that evidence for any direct vagal parasympathetic efferent innervation of the adrenal glands is weak and likely artifactual.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

In the Cambridge International AS and A Level coursebook it says that there is scientific evidence for acupuncture.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Cryptozoology. There are definitely creatures unknown to science. Dozens of new ones are discovered every day. Loch Ness monster - no. Unknown ape - possibly.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Speaking of unknown animals. Unicorns could pretty much be real. Just imagine: We have horses, we have horned animals (even one-horned animals), it is not impossible that a horse-like animal with a horn exists.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

We even have sea unicorns, land unicorns don’t seem too far fetched.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Except all of their remains have somehow disappeared

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

Hunted and had their horns removed by greedy humans.

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The Moon landing was staged, but Stanley Kubrick insisted to shoot on location...

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Pffft, you believe in the Moon?

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