359: Justin Ramsdell | How to Detect and Disarm Pseudoscience

Justin Ramsdell is a clinical psychologist, an expert witness, an assistant professor of forensic psychology at George Mason University, and a veteran pseudoscience detector.

What We Discuss with Justin Ramsdell:

• Why stressed brains don't make great decisions (especially when there's no light visible at the end of the tunnel to indicate that there is an end).
• How pseudoscience preys on our cognitive biases to give us the answers we want with the scantest of unprovable "evidence."
• Why watching YouTube videos and ranting in Reddit threads doesn't count as "research" in the same way that work done by field-experienced scientists with doctorate degrees and peer-reviewed studies under their belts counts as research.
• Be wary of intellectual trespassers -- who might very well be field-experienced scientists with doctorate degrees and peer-reviewed studies under their belts, but make wild, pseudoscientific claims about areas outside their expertise (e.g., a chiropractor who claims to cure COVID-19 with massage).
• Why you don't have to be a field-experienced scientist with a doctorate degree and peer-reviewed studies under your belt to avoid being hoodwinked by pseudoscience charlatans.
• And much more...

Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/359

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