Pathological Skepticism is closedmindedness with deception: it is an irrational prejudice against new ideas which masquerades as proper Skepticism. A person under the sway of Pathological Skepticism will claim to support Reason and the scientific worldview while concealing their strongly negative emotional response against any questioning of contemporary accepted knowledge. The primary symptoms of Pathological Skepticism are the presence of scorn, sneering, and ridicule in place of reasoned debate. In their arguments, pseudoskeptics will freely employ logical fallacies, rhetoric, and numerous dishonest strategies of persuasion which are intended more sway an audience rather than to expose truth, i.e. than to pursue science. Because it promotes a falsely scientific facade, Pathological Skepticism is a class of pseudoscience.

The terms Pathological skepticism and Pseudoskepticism were coined in the early 1990s in response to members of skeptic groups who apply the label of "Pathological Science" to fields which are actually protoscience.

See also

• Scientism

External links

• [THE ANOMALIST: Pseudoskepticism (http://www.anomalist.com/commentaries/pseudo.html)]
• [Zen and the Art of Debunkery (http://members.aol.com/ddrasin/zen.html)]
• [CSICOP: Abuses of Skepticism (http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/abuses/)]
• [CSICOP: Preposterism (http://www.csicop.org/si/9711/preposterism.html)]
• [Myths of Skepticism (http://www.rpi.edu/~sofkam/papers/skeptik.html)]