[P]ublic education in science has been withering in recent years. At the same time, activities of superstition and ignorance have been growing, and antiscience and pseudoscience cases have become frequent. Therefore, effective measures must be applied as soon as possible to strengthen public education in science. The level of public education in science and technology is an important sign of national scientific accomplishment. It is a matter of overall importance in economic development, scientific advance, and the progress of society.
We must be attentive and implement such public education as part of the strategy to modernize our country and to make our nation powerful and prosperous. Ignorance is never socialist, nor is poverty.
Pseudoscience in America is part of a global trend. The causes, dangers, diagnosis, and treatment are likely to be similar everywhere. Here, psychics ply their wares on extended television commercials, climate deniers are in the White House. Anti-Vaxers are prominent political leaders. Fake cures for COVID-19 are political leaders of the nation.
The quote above was published 5 December 1994, by the Chinese Communist Party who were alarmed by the developments of the lack of scientific understanding in their nation.
Pseudoscience differs from erroneous science. Science thrives on errors, cutting them away one by one. False conclusions are drawn all the time, but they are drawn tentatively. Hypotheses are framed so they are capable of being disproved. A succession of alternative hypotheses is confronted by experiment and observation. Science gropes and staggers toward improved understanding. Proprietary feelings are of course offended when a scientific hypothesis is disproved, but such disproofs are recognized as central to the scientific enterprise.
Pseudoscience is just the opposite. Hypotheses are often framed precisely so they are invulnerable to any experiment that offers a prospect of disproof, so even in principle they cannot be invalidated. Practitioners are defensive and wary. Skeptical scrutiny is opposed. When the pseudoscientific hypothesis fails to catch fire with scientists, conspiracies to suppress it are deduced. - The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan, 1997
