User:Puddytang

Divination

• Astrology refers to any of several systems of understanding, interpreting and organizing knowledge about reality and human existence, based on the relative positions and movement of various real and construed celestial bodies.
• Cartomancy is a form of fortune telling -- divination -- using a deck of cards.
• Channeling is a supposed special ability of a person to receive information from a supernatural source.
• Chiromancy evaluates a person's character or future life by "reading" the palm of that person's hand.
• Dowsing is a divination method which empowers the dowser to find water, metals and hidden objects by carrying a form of stick (dowsing rod) and watching its motion.
• Electronic voice phenomenon uses sound recording devices to playback messages ostensibly from ghosts or extraterrestrials.
• Fortune telling is the practice of predicting the future, usually of an individual, through mystical or supernatural means.
• Geomancy is a method of divination based on the interpretation of markings on the ground or the pattern of scattered dirt or pebbles. It also refers to a set of practices and theories based on the identification or manipulation of energies tied to the earth (see Sacred Geometry), including dowsing, feng shui, and ley lines / dragon lines.
• Instrumental transcommunication also known as "ITC" attempts to use electronic technology such as video feedback, computer monitors, TV sets, and radios to communicate with the dead.
• Numerology is an arcane study of the purported mystical relationship between numbers and the character or action of physical objects and living things.
• Ornithomancy is a form of divination using the flight of birds to predict future events.
• Papyromancy is a form of divination through the folding of paper.
• Pyramid power theory states that the shape of the pyramid has healing power and spiritual energy.
• Remote viewing is a form of clairvoyance by which a viewer is said to be able to perceive objects or events separated from the viewer in space or time.
• Scrying is the name given to the ancient technique of gazing into an object for the purpose of clairvoyance.
• Telepathy is the claimed ability for humans to communicate information from one mind to another without the assistance of outside tools such as speech or body language.
• Levitation is the act of rising up from the ground without any physical aids, usually by the power of thought.

Geology

• Catastrophism claims that Earth has been affected by sudden, short-lived, violent events that were sometimes worldwide in scope. Immanuel Velikovsky's theories fall under this category. (An exception, one specific type of catastrophism that is no longer significantly disputed, is the theory that the Earth has occasionally experienced collisions with astronomical objects such as asteroids and comets large enough to temporarily affect global climate and cause extinction events, such as the K-T event.)
• Flat Earthism is the idea that Earth is flat, not a spheroid, as has been observed since the time of the Greeks.
• Flood geology is the creationist form of geology that advocates most of the geologic features on Earth are explainable by a global flood.
• Hollow Earthism theory claims that the Earth is hollow, and its inside is possibly populated by a race of superbeings, humans or aliens, and possibly dinosaurs.
• Ley lines are alignments of a number of places of geographical interest, such as ancient megaliths.
• Normally undetectable Monoatomic Elements make up 5% of the earth's crust.

Medicine

• Acupuncture
• AIDS reappraisal movement, a group of activists who dispute the scientific consensus that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the cause of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).
• Applied kinesiology claims to be a method of diagnosing malfunctioning organs and what the effect of substances on the body is or would be by testing whether certain muscles are weakened or not. It is not the same as scientific Kinesiology.
• The Bates Method of vision improvement, based on claims of accommodation and myopia pathogenesis which are not a part of mainstream ophthalmology or biology.
• Biorhythm theory claims that there are measurable patterns of alterations in physiology, emotions, and intellect that can be charted over the course of days or weeks.
• Cellular memory is the unproven hypothesis that people can inherit mental traits, such as memory, sexual orientation, or taste in music from organ or tissue transplants.
• Crystal healing theory states that crystals have alleged healing and mystical paranormal powers.
• Dianetics is a therapy that evolved into the Church of Scientology.
• Demon possession was a theory for explaining some forms of mental illnesses; the theory was once widely held and was believed by many to have had Biblical support; most modern mental health professionals, today, have rejected this theory.
• Dermo-optical perception - the claimed ability to "see" through one's fingertips.
• The Duesberg hypothesis claims that recreational and pharmaceutical drug use, rather than HIV, is the primary cause for the progress of the disease AIDS. See also AIDS reappraisal.
• Homeopathy is a system of alternative medicine involving the use of highly diluted substances with similar (i. e. homeo-) characteristics to the condition being treated. In many cases, not a single molecule of the substance remains in the diluted solution.
• Iridology is the practice of examining the iris to evaluate and recommend treatments for specific health problems. (See also eyology and sclerology.)
• Magnet therapy is an alternative medicine based on the concept that certain medical disorders (particularly pain or muscle spasms) can be effectively treated by exposure to magnetic fields.
• Prayer healing is the belief that praying for someone to get well from an illness or injury will cause them to get well, even if the object of the prayer is unaware of the prayer.
• Psychic surgery is a type of apparent surgery performed by the healer with bare hands or unorthodox instruments.
• Reflexology claims that by massaging specific parts of the foot, one can improve the health of various other parts of the body.
• Reiki is the use of 'healing hands' to allow a patient to experience "Universal Lifeforce Energy" to create physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
• The opposition of Scientologists to psychiatry
• Thought Field Therapy claims that it can heal of a variety of mental and physical ailments through specialized "tapping" with the fingers at meridian points on the upper body and hands.
• Trepanation is the act of drilling a hole in one's head to release built-up pressure and move the person to a higher plane of consciousness. (Not to be confused with more generic medical procedure of trepanation used in neurosurgery to access the cerebrum.)

Planetary science

• Tiamat is the name of a hypothetical planet theorized to have existed between Mars and Jupiter (Tiamat is from the Babylonian mother goddess "Tiamat").

• Phaeton is the name of a hypothetical planet posited to once have existed between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter whose destruction supposedly led to the formation of asteroid belt. The name "Phaëton" is from Greek mythology and refers to the son of the sun god Helios.

• Nibiru is the name of a hypothetical planet or brown dwarf in the solar system which supposedly collided with Tiamat (see above) and formed Earth, the asteroid belt, and certain comets.

Physics

• Faster-than-light

• Unified field theory
• Conformal gravity
• Alternatives to general relativity
• Aristotelian theory of gravity
• Luminiferous aether
• Anti-gravity
• Project Omicron--needs article see anti-gravity
• Biefeld–Brown effect
• Dean drive
• Stochastic electrodynamics
• Polarizable vacuum
• phlogiston theory
• Steady state theory

• Autodynamics is a theory proposed as a replacement for special relativity, which is claimed to have been based on erroneous assumptions.
• Cold fusion
• Creationist cosmologies offered by Young Earth Creationists as alternative ideas about cosmology to allow for a universe that is only thousands of years old.
• Nikola Tesla's unpublished (and "lost") Dynamic theory of gravity.
• ECE theory, an alleged unified field theory,
• Emitter theory, another now-obsolete theory of light propagation.
• Heim Theory (see also Burkhard Heim), a Theory of everything with small, mostly German and Austrian following.
• Hydrino theory proposes the hydrino, or miniature hydrogen atom with the electron pushed closer than usual to the nucleus.
• Kirlian photography is high-voltage contact print photography. Its existence is not disputed, but the paranormal interpretations of some images thus produced are.
• Modern geocentrism, citing uniform gamma ray bursts distribution as evidence that we are at the center of the universe, and other ideas of this type.
• Non-standard cosmologies, a summary of the alternatives to the Big Bang offered by various groups who claim varying levels of scientific legitimacy.
• N-ray, an alleged new form of radiation first "observed" by René-Prosper Blondlot, and soon debunked by Robert W. Wood and others.
• Wilhelm Reich's Orgone energy is an unproven form of energy, both cosmic and biological.
• Perpetual motion
• Polywater is a supposed polymerized form of water.
• Polarizable vacuum is a supposed alternative to general relativity introduced by Harold Puthoff, which claims that gravitation is merely an electromagnetic phenomenon.
• Process physics by Reginald Cahill. "Process physics comes together with physics, automata theory, and cognitive science into a holistic area known as generative sciences, towards the unification of all systematic knowledge about the universe and the world."
• Red mercury, code name for a supposed energetic substance that could allow creation of hydrogen bomb without preceding fission explosion, promulgated by Samuel Cohen, sometimes claimed to be a ballotechnic substance.
• Riemannian Cosmology, proposed by Igor Bogdanoff, regarded as illucid or cranky by most mainstream physicists, but defended by a vocal minority.
• Scalar field theory is a set of theories in a model which posits that there is a basic mechanism that produces the electric field and the magnetic field and which normal electromagnetic theory does not acknowledge or account for.
• Synchronicity is the claim by Carl Jung that some mysterious alignment of forces in the universe create apparent coincidence which according to Jung are imbued with profound meaning. In a strange aberration, late in his life (age 55), the prince of skeptics, Wolfgang Pauli, coauthored a book on this topic with Jung.
• Time Cube says that time is cubic. The claims are those of Gene Ray, and first appeared on a website of the same name in August 1997. The claims relating to physics and mathematics attempt to redefine basic scientific principles and terminology, and rely on the circular logic of Time Cube instead of established scientific conventions. The lack of academic interest in the claims is always attributed to conspiracies, and/or that educated people are evil/stupid.
• Yilmaz theory of gravitation, regarded as illucid or cranky by mainstream physicists.

Probability

• Gambler's Fallacy, the claim that truly random events which have happened less often than the frequency expected by random chance in the past are more likely than random chance to happen in the future.
• Luck,

Psychology

• Characterology method of character reading developed in the 1920's.
• Couéism, or the Coué Method, method of healing and self-improvement through autosuggestion.
• Engrams, a phenomenon claimed by Dianetics (see Scientology), are claimed to be mental patterns connected through activation at the same time.
• Enneagram is a classification of personality characteristics claimed to give insight into intra- and interpersonal relationships.
• Graphology is the study of handwriting and its connection to behavior, personal information and other human traits.
• Indigo children refers to a New Age concept used to classify children with certain "unusual" psychological characteristics or abilities.
• Neuro-linguistic programming is a communication model based on the language and behavioral patterns of exceptional psychotherapists.
• Parapsychology is the study of purported paranormal mental phenomena.
• Pathognomy is the study of passions and emotions.
• Phrenology claims to be able to determine personality traits and criminality on the basis of the shape of the head.
• Photoreading is "mentally photographing" printed pages.
• Physiognomy is based upon the belief that the study and judgement of a person's outer appearance, primarily the face, reflects the contents of their personality.
• Recovered memory is the act of discovering repressed memories and therapy to achieve such ends.
• Sentience Quotient is a concept invented by Robert A. Freitas Jr. The theory defines sentience according to a relationship between information processing rate and brain mass, yet there is no evidence that such a relationship is in any way related to the measure of sentience.

Sociology

• Eugenics, a term variously defined but generally meaning attempts to use social control to improve the human gene pool, is often labeled as a pseudoscience when referring to its status in the first half of the twentieth century as practiced in the United States, Sweden, and under Nazi Germany, which rested on methodologically problematic assumptions and very sloppy data. Depending on the definition of the term, though, it is not necessarily pseudoscience.^[1]

Xenology

• Pseudoarchaeology refers to the ideologically-driven, usually sensational interpretation of the past outside of a critical, scientific framework. Pseudoarchaeology also includes forms of protosciences.

• Vril - A worldview involving Nazi mysticism, and an interpretation of Ufology relating to a Hollow earth and subterranean Nazi-friendly super beings, rather than "space" extraterrestrial.

Miscellaneous

• conspiracy theories
• Apollo moon landing hoax accusations
• Anthroposophy, also called spiritual science by its founder Rudolf Steiner, is an attempt to investigate and describe spiritual phenomena with the same precision and clarity with which natural science investigates and describes the physical world.
• Bible codes research states that the future can be predicted by examining Hebrew letters arranged in blocks and making various skips (every 4th letter or every 6th letter, etc). Critics say that similar "codes" can be found in any book of similar length (for example: War and Peace).
• Biblical scientific foreknowledge, which asserts that the Bible makes predictions about science.
• Facilitated communication is viewed as an alternative means of expression for people who cannot speak, or whose speech is highly limited (e.g. echoed, limited to one or a few word utterances), and who cannot point reliably. Critics charge that actual communication is only done by the facilitator.

• Laws of Form, to the extent that it is claimed to be anything more than an unorthodox presentation of propositional logic.
• Materialization creation of matter from nowhere and out of nothing by somebody's will power or concentration.
• New Chronology consists of various competing theories which claim that currently accepted chronology presents a history that lasts either much longer or much shorter than it should (e.g., that Jesus was born around 1000 years ago).
• Novelty Theory An eschatology-like theory claimed by its creator, ethnobotanist Terence McKenna, to have a firm mathematical basis (McKenna is not a mathematician), although its rationale and sources are primarily numerological, for example the Mayan Calendar and a list of numbers from the I Ching. Its main feature is a plotted waveform McKenna calls "Timewave Zero," which he claims shows that "something" significant will happen in the year 2012, which corresponds to an abbreviated form of the date which marks the end of the Mayan Calendar.
• Welteislehre is the theory developed by Hanns Hörbiger in the early 20th century. It states that the universe is based on a constant struggle between ice and fire.
• idealism
• Solipsism

9/11 Truth Movement Center for Inquiry || || 27/01/07

Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

James Randi Educational Foundation |- The National Council Against Health Fraud|-

Quackwatch
Scholars for 9/11 Truth

The Skeptics Society

SETI Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence