Today’s optional discussion prompt: Pseudoscience and its harms. Sometimes pseudoscience can be an eccentric but harmless set of beliefs. Other times, be it in the various iterations of racial science, Lysenko’s ridiculous (but state sponsored) ignorance of genetics, or the long series of cranks offering spurious explanations and cures for autism with no basis in fact. As Martin Gardner writes in his classic book, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, “the publication of scientific rubbish [sows] confusion in the minds of gullible readers what is or isn’t scientific knowledge. And the more the public is confused, the easier it falls prey to the doctrines of pseudoscience which may at some date have the backing of politically powerful groups.”