Techno Babble: Difference between revisions

 

 

* Essentially every product or idea sold on the basis of the word "quantum", or to put it another way, the entire woo-woo industry. Woo which predates quantum mechanics—homeopathy, for example—has been retooled to include a lot of convincing-sounding, but utterly nonsensical, jibber-jabber about superposition and parallel dimensions. To make yourself an idea, watch the second half of ''What the <BLEEP> Do We Know''.

* Attempts to use technobabble to lend a veneer of plausibility to pseudoscience often have the opposite effect on people who actually know anything about the scientific disciplines being abused. [https://web.archive.org/web/20120306055402/http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/08/your_friday_dose_of_woo_just_what_your_w.php One hilarious example]—apparently the ills of the world are caused by the ''bond angle in water changing''; not only would this not happen without a change in the fundamental constants of the universe, but it's something everyone would notice because it would affect the freezing and boiling points of water. The same people then go on to talk about how boiling water drives off the electrons because its natural state is electrically charged, at which point anyone who hasn't completely forgotten GCSE chemistry and physics should smell the bullshit clearly and anyone who actually has a degree in either subject will be laughing uncontrollably, facepalming or both. Most people don't, which is why it's so popular to use.

** [http://classic.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55756/ Some guys got a vanity academic journal to accept a paper made up entirely of technobabble generated by a computer, from a university that didn't exist.] The only concern was how soon the submitters were going to pay their fee. [http://classic.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55759/ The editor who had supposedly read the paper promptly quit, saying he had never seen the paper in question] and the journal eventually shut down.

* A number of supplements talk about how wonderful it is that they contain DNA. As does every life form on Earth.

 

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