I want to bring a scholarly paper here, written by Barry Beyerstein in 1995: Distinguishing Science from Pseudoscience. At 50 pages long, it is an extensive read, and touches on most categories of this issue, covering many of them in detail. It will inform the reader well on the kinds of pseudoscience that exist, why they are pseudo, how all of us are susceptible from time to time, and how to defend one's own mind against it all - what the red flags look like so they can be spotted, in other words.
A moderator on Somasimple started a thread about Barry Beyerstein and has several more links to his work posted there. He was a prof at SFU, in BC, and a contributor to the magazine Skeptical Inquirer. He passed away suddenly last year.
While writing this and bringing a link to SFU here, I serendipitously found this media release from just a few weeks ago: Scientists find origin of electrical signals in nerve cells. Excellent. Congratulations, real scientists, and thank you.. you are helping clinicians like me figure out how to apply our treatment knowledge without resorting to pseudoscience.
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