Bunge, therefore, would be happy to include among the research fields those areas of the humanities, for instance, where explanatory systems are based on data that have been subjected to critical appraisal, not merely weighed against the hopes and prejudices of their partisans. On the other hand, his criteria would clearly exclude a number of fields that loudly assert their scientific status but fall short of the intellectual rigor and respect for evidence that distinguishes legitimate sciences from pseudosciences. I submit that it is this fundamentally different attitude toward evidence that separates orthodox biomedicine from its competitors who call themselves the alternatives. These days, the prestige and influence of science are such that very few fields outside religion and the arts wish to be seen as overtly unscientific. Not surprisingly, this has encouraged many pretenders, i.e., fields that adopt the outward trappings of authentic sciences but lack their methodological and conceptual rigor, not to mention their storehouse of reliable data.
Some perpetrators are avowed charlatans, far more are sincere but self-deluded.
A recent US study reported that one-third of those polled had used at least one unconventional therapy in the previous year. Somewhat lower Canadian participation rates are presented in the present issue of this journal. Admittedly, not all of these products are entirely without merit, but the hazard lies in the fact that so many potential consumers lack the wherewithal to assess the evidence that would separate the safe and useful from the useless or the outright dangerous. Alternative treatments run the gamut from reasonable lifestyle and relaxation advice to patently absurd practices such as iridology, crystal healing, and colonic irrigation. Nutritional pseudoscience also permeates the field.