Manifesto for a Free University of pseudoscience and obscurantism Given the increasingly abundant proliferation of conferences, courses, seminars and all kinds of different currents pseudoscientific activities being developed within the framework of English and Latin American universities, a trend which crystallizes in the recent establishment of a Chair Homeopathy Research at the University of Zaragoza, the undersigned (scientists, teachers, students and citizens in general) we find it necessary to state the following:
collaboration between the University and the Company and with other agencies and social partners is rewarding, productive and should be considered as one of the priorities of the university policy. The agreements and contracts for the transfer of research results to private enterprise may represent an important source of funding for public universities, which, properly developed, resulting in a more scientific productivity and optimization of applications such activity. However, we believe it is justifiable that the University find ways of financing at any price, let alone if this perverted philosophy and fundamental purposes.
Public University, like any other government agency must be to serve the public, maintaining constant contact with the society of which it forms part, through constant communication that allows the line between academia and social needs. To meet these objectives, the University must be a champion in terms of innovation and exploring new avenues for knowledge. The University should never be a statue, but a constant motion animation.
can not understand the research mission and social commitment of the University without the overlap with his role in the formation of free citizens, able to face the world with a critical mindset that allows them to escape the chains irrationality, superstition and ignorance. This teaching function, completely integral to the university, goes beyond the classroom, to represent the university a benchmark in terms of knowledge and rationality to the whole society.
In this sense, University plays an important role to the progress in contemporary society are taking certain currents unscientific and anti-rational, which can be a significant retreat to obscurantism and superstition, which is located at the opposite pole of the university's objectives. We are concerned, as academics and as citizens, to well into the twenty-first century increasingly proliferate more therapies closer to magic than medicine, often covered by public medical institutions and companies, we are concerned that heads of government consult astrologers, who officially declared fraudulent magic bracelets are carried by health ministers and are the best selling gift last Christmas, that more and more citizens who firmly believe that vaccines are toxic and harmful to health, to increase the number of patients who leave the embrace alternative medical treatment for esoteric, we care very seriously that much of the population back to rely more on traditional healers in scientific medicine.
We are concerned that the University can become a market that accommodate any irrational alternative to scientific knowledge. Just a misunderstood open-mindedness can justify teach alchemy in the Faculty of Chemistry, ufology in Physics or flood in History. Offer to the pseudo-university forum on an equal footing with the rational knowledge does not translate into any cultural enrichment, but a university validation of superstition and quackery. We can hardly educate our children about the lack of empirical bases astrological prediction if you will find on-campus graduate courses in astrology.
Reza
a top science that reason should not accept something as true just because many people say so or because important people sign it, and it is always necessary to stop to any assertion and doubt about whether or not true. This forces act much more slowly, carefully weighing the options, to proceed carefully with any type of proposal. And this is one of the things that we strongly believe should be taught in universities.
Therefore, we are concerned that the University of room for acupuncture courses, lectures on creationism, astrology and seminars on chairs in homeopathy. We are particularly concerned, if not addressed as a critical debate and rational analysis, but with a budget of functionality and scientific validation of not only lack, but are in opposition front the university critical.
In the case of homeopathy, but apply equally to the rest of pseudoscience, has not been proven scientifically and its rationale (which contradicts our knowledge of elementary chemistry and medicine), or its effectiveness beyond a placebo. Decades ago, extensive studies were used to search for a possible based on homeopathic principles, which have not changed significantly in two hundred years, base ever found.
We find it extremely ironic that while European governments withdraw funding and support State homeopathic practice in Spain are in place chairs in public universities. The guarantee that this implies, places homeopathy, astrology and spiritualism under the category of academic disciplines, especially when we are not solely to a research activity on an ambiguous event, but to an institutionalization aimed at training and dissemination of these principles.
believe finally, that while further justified and funds to any factor that could be investigated, the special economic situation makes investment effort and resources in such disciplines thoroughly discredited in an act of pure waste of resources that could be used in areas of research and teaching far more priority.
People from different strata and groups of society endorse this manifesto we wish to draw attention to this important aspect of the whole population and especially to academic and governmental authorities, hoping that the right end imposed on superstition and obscurantism.