The Formative Tension between Scientific Psychology and Pseudosciences: Epistemological and Ethical Implications for Professional Practice
Keywords:
Critical Thinking, Ethical Implications, Potentially Harmful Therapies (PHTs), Professional Ethics, Pseudoscience, Scientific Evidence, Scientific Literacy, Trivialisation, pseudoscience, critical thinking, cognitive biases, epistemology, professional ethicsAbstract
Pseudosciences represent a persistent challenge for contemporary psychology, infiltrating it with discourses that simulate scientific rigour but lack empirical support, eroding public confidence in the discipline. This reflective article takes an integrative approach to addressing the epistemological foundations, psychocognitive mechanisms and ethical implications that explain their adherence and proliferation. It analyses the criteria for demarcation and explores the processes that facilitate belief, such as confirmation bias, the illusion of control and patronisation, together with the influence of Happycracy and the commodification of well-being. The ethical analysis focuses on the concept of Potentially Harmful Therapies, highlighting the risk of direct harm and harm by substitution, a phenomenon corroborated by the high prevalence of alternative practices in the country. The article concludes that professional ethics implies an inescapable epistemic responsibility. It proposes strengthening critical scientific literacy and explicit methodological training in the professional curriculum as a central strategy to counteract pseudoscientific thinking, ensure disciplinary integrity, and safeguard technical quality and beneficence in contemporary psychological practice.
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