Debunk Pseudo Science Claims

Why people create Pseudo Science? There are quite a few different reasons why people create pseudo science claims / beliefs. 1. Creators who want to sell stuffs One of the obvious reasons is to benefit from people who are lazy (or lack of critical thinking). Many people take the  mental shortcut  and  believe   comments from experts  or  reputable source , like  various Science forum  without a second thought.  For example, someone create pseudo science claim like  magnetic wristbands improve your sporting performance  in order to sell their stuffs. 2. Creators who want to cover up their mistakes so they can look good The other group of pseudo science creators are not for any "tangible" reason. They don't get a cent by promoting the questionable claims they created.  Then why they still created pseudo science claims? Most of the time, they just made a mistake when they made such claims initially (due to mistake or mis-understanding of certain concepts). However due to

 Thanks a lot to the managment team of Head-Fi.org to fight against Pseudo Science. Thank you! Thank you! Although I received no reply from the managment team of Head-Fi regarding my complaint (as of now, i.e. 13 May 2024 8pm EST), their brave action (*) demonstrated that they are big supporters of anti-pseudo science. They set a role model of what a person  who have critically thinking would do.  Salute to them! Would the other Audio Science sites join Head-Fi.org in fighting against Pseudo Science? I doubt but let's see. I still have hope. Cheers! ================================================================= (*): they undeleted the thread and closed it to avoid further reply. It is not ideal but it is still better than gone completely.

I sent the following complaint letter to the Head-Fi.org (via "contact us"). Hopefully, it could reach their management team there. I am not sure if they care to reply.  The intention for this Open Complaint Letter is to make the general public to be aware of the fact that the information or "knowledge" they obtained from these so-called Audio Science or Sound Science forums are indeed questionable.  The general public should leverage their own critical thinking to filter what's correct and what's not instead of blindly accepting the information or "knowledge" as a fact. Here is an example . Most of these questionable claims would be classified as Pseudo Science based on the following definition on Wikipedia It is because these claims are incompatible with the scientific method (i.e. the claims are not 100% correct). These claims are not the same as Junk Science ; these claims are considered as " CORRECT  but not absolutely "  in the mind

"Trust me! You cannot hear it. It is Science!" (from many people in Audio Science Forums) "Trust me, you cannot hear it. It is based on Science. Do you trust in Science ?" This is one of the famous statements amongst the people who are active in the online so-called Audio Science forum.... "Do you trust in Science? If you trust in Science, you cannot hear it" (yet another religious claim in the so-called Audio Science forum) Audio Science is indeed a very interesting subject. To me, it is a multidisciplinary subject  that involves Physics (for hard core science stuffs), Psychology (for human perception, confirmation bias, perception illusion studies, etc.), and Computer Science (for the various computing related aspects in Audio Science). It is very hard to master. Most people would just view it from a single angle (based on their own expertise in a particular area) With my recent journey in the Audio Science world (via various different Audio Science foru

What's the difference between CD-quality music and Hi-Res music.  This is a follow up to the previous blog regarding  valid claim vs valid but not absolute claim" Some people on various on-line audio science forums claim that "Hi-Res is useless" and "you cannot hear the difference between the CD-quality music and Hi-Res music". You may ask, "Really? Is Hi-Res music really useless?" Well. Let's check together with our critical thinking! ( note : this is a high level comparison between CD-Quality format and Hi-Res format. It should give you a good starting point for your own investigation) Reconstruct music from CD-quality format The following graph (Figure 1) shows the original analog input signal (a perfect sine wave) Figure 1: Original analog input signal (a perfect sine wave As the final audio signal reconstruction process can  never be perfect  , the reconstructed analog signal looks like a "smooth" sine wave but, in fact, it i

 A "valid but not absolutely" claim? Hey, what are you talking about? === update on 12 May 2024 === Some of the links to Head-Fi are broken now as the moderator of the Audio Science forum there decided to delete all the evidences/facts in the thread that support my view point. ==========================   If an expert (e.g. a MIT graduate in Electrical Engineering) claim the following: " The analog signal can be reconstructed losslessly, smoothly, and with the exact timing of the original analog signal [by using CD format] " (the claim) What would you think about such claim? I bet most people would understand the claim as the following: "Using 44.1kHz / 16 bit digital source (i.e. CD format) would allow us to reconstruct the original analogy signal perfectly . " Is it your understanding too? You may said, " Yes, of couse. That's what the claim means. They are talking the same thing. Are you that stupid to ask such simple question? " I thoug

 Why people believe in "flat Earth"? Did they know that it is a pseudo science claim? Hmm... something just popped up in my mind while I am listening to my " absolutely better reconstructed " Hi-Res music and thinking about this discussion in head-fi . Why people believe in "flat Earth"? Did someone (supposed-to-be an "expert") show some "scientific evidence" to those believers with some real-life experiments / demos to prove that the Earth is flat? Did those believers experience similar "scientific evidence" in their daily life and these experiences confirm the "scientific evidence" the "expert" shown to them? Would these "confirmation of the scientific evidence shown by the expert" cause these believers to truely believe in "flat Earth" and become a hardcore flat Earth believer because they do really experience the "evidence" themselves? When other shows these "flat Eart

Confused with Part 1  of the discussion? Let me explain further... (source: " the Monty's video ", a "perfect" sine wave output) (By the way, thanks to the discussion on head-fi , I noticed the Monty's video was removed  from the official website .   if you click on the "Digital Show & Tell" link on the web site, you'll get the following: Hmm... why it was removed from the official site? Did someone find out it is mis-leading?  The YouTube copy of the same video was uploaded to the FLStudio channel by someone else. Probably they need to ask someone to remove it and they forgot. update: one fellow member in head-fi found out the video is somehow still available in the  offical site domain  However, it is not accessible from the of the main article ) As I expected, I got quite a lot of "strong" feedbacks from other people in various on-line discussions. Most of these are in the form of bullying-like argument except the one I found o

 Pseudo Science factory?  Just saw an interesting dialog in ASR forum. What do you think about the following dialog with your critical thinking skill?  (source:  Is 96khz LDAC Bluetooth useless? Should LDAC be capped at 44/48khz to limit compression loss? | Audio Science Review (ASR) Forum  ) Simple Question:     Is the answer provided correct? Anawer A: Yes, the answer is correct Answer B: No, the answer is not correct Anawer C: None of the above

Magic! Now you don't see it !   Background for our discussion: 1. As stated in " why I start my blog ",  I created my account (@sunjam) in Audio Science Forum (ASR ) for my journey in the Audio Science World on 19 March 2024. 2. I saw a lot of fun and inspiring topics in ASR 3. Meanwhile, I noticed the wrong belief (i.e. the claim) that " Hi-Res is useless " ( statement 1 ) were being promoted by a lot of ASR members (including "Major Contributors", "Donors", "Sponsor", "Industrial Insider") to the people who question the claim 4. Most of these supporters claim "statement 1" is " factual ". They emphasized that there are a lot of objective tests / measurements supporting such claim. For example, this is the  paper  (from Journal of the Audio Engineering Socieity) they used for the claim. (This blog explain why the paper does not support statement 1) 5. Some of these supporters even state th