The social consequences of pseudoscience are particularly devastating.
Let us formulate the most important of them.
For example, the baldness for many years made it impossible to discuss the feedback from the environment in the analysis of the origin and evolution of life. But in nature, processes are impossible without such feedback. The most important, purely scientific problem of search of extraterrestrial civilizations is discredited by fans of "flying saucers", UFOs and women who have become pregnant, ostensibly, from aliens.
The same is true in everyday life when it is necessary to have a doctor intervene, but people turn to pseudo-scientific healers and die.
Another class of examples of the social consequences of pseudoscience is related to social processes. Scientific works of the middle of XIX century became the basis of narrow specializations of modern sciences. But their concrete results have been repeatedly specified for this time.
In the social sciences, for political reasons, this was forbidden. As a result, for example, modern "communism" turned into a pseudoscience. It discredits the development of vital scientific ideologies and social programmes.
As a result, religious organizations, both traditional and about 300 "scientific religions-spectrum", come to the fore. Some of them even practice self-destruction acts. Terrible examples of the use of the sarin, a warfare agent, by a religious sect in the Tokyo subway, and the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York by religious fanatics are a challenge to all humanity, warning of the dangers of religions.
Another group of social consequences of pseudoscience is closely related to the fact that it discredits reasonable politics and politicians, as well as democracy.
Pseudoscience is becoming an essential means of forcing people, in conditions of freedom, to choose for themselves the suicidal paths of development imposed on them by individual social groups and their leaders. For a long time, science has been too lenient with pseudoscience.
This can no longer continue. Pseudoscience is becoming dangerous for both science and society. The Bacchanalia of paranautical delirium, alas, is beginning to affect the highest echelons of power: it is beginning to merge with pseudoscience the officials representing the highest authorities of the country.
There are many excellent illustrations in this regard. In the late 80s, Chumak and Kashpirovsky made their way to the TV screens. But in those years, television was controlled by the state! This means that the miracle-workers appeared on the screens with the consent of senior officials. This is how the possibility of influencing the public consciousness was tested.
In conclusion, I would like to add that in recent years, the Russian Academy of Sciences has raised the problem of combating pseudoscience and established a representative Commission to combat pseudoscience and falsification of scientific research under the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
False science and the problems it poses do exist. They cause considerable material and moral damage both to science and to human society as a whole. Many active engineers and scientists have nothing to rely on in publications of scientific and popular scientific journals, and they become propagandists of "flying saucers", "parapsychology", "energy information exchange", etc.
Undoubtedly, it is unacceptable to underestimate the destructive consequences of pseudoscience for society and science. Even in isolated cases, pseudoscience should not displace science in its favor.
Of course, it is impossible to prevent a person's natural desire to understand the true essence of the universe, to comprehend the secrets of being, which is why society is interested in various paranormal phenomena that do not fit into the framework of our everyday consciousness.
This has also been facilitated by the enormous growth in knowledge over the past hundred years, so it is difficult for modern man to focus on a particular field of science, as well as to realize the meaning of the ever-growing flow of new scientific discoveries.
But it is also useful to remember that true education must be based on the study of the true facts, confirmed by indisputable evidence and arguments. So it is most likely worth getting closer to the true science, and leaving pseudoscientific tendencies aside. So far...