June 6: Pseudoscience

In today's class we talked about whether Seti's research for alien life a science or a Pseudoscience.

A Primer on SETI at the SETI Institute

Seti is a non-profit organization that works to find technological life in space. Their goal to find evidence of intelligent alien life by sending out and taking in radio signals. They hope is to capture radio signals from alien civilization. 

Science or Pseudoscience:

In my group with Aarna Srivastava, Mia Lankford, Jinny Kim, and Aimee Segoviano, we decided that Seti's work was Pseudoscience. We had two main reasons:
            • Their research isn't falsifiable
            • It does not have a real beneficial goal

Can it become science:

I thought about the idea that if Seti's research is Pseudoscience could it become science in the future once humans are more advanced? I thought that it might be able to. If in the future, we are able to define how far we can scan then the research technically could be falsifiable. In the future once humans are more advanced than there could become a beneficial goal or a reason for this research. In this way the Pseudoscience could turn into a science. 

Further thoughts:

In my group we discussed the reality of Seti's research. Whether or not it was pseudoscience or science we really only were questioning the point of the research. Even if alien life could be proved, what would we do after. At our stage in technological advancement our group felt we weren't able to really be able to search for alien life. There is no point in trying as we aren't able to do much. If life is detected it would be from years ago as the signals probably traveled very far and also, we would not be able to track it or send anyone in the direction the signal came from as its too far away. 

Final thoughts:

Overall, this activity helped me learn that the fine line between Pseudoscience and science is very thin and could be crossed easily. It also opens the idea that Pseudoscience could become a science once a civilization advances enough to properly experiment. 









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