What is Pseudoscience?

We all know the old (and true) slogan about moderation in all things. Rather too often, excess is harmful. This applies to ultra violet radiation on human skin, mostly meaning sunlight.

There is a lot going on in the climate space at the present time.

Most unidentified flying object (UFO) reports have mundane explanations. Celestial objects such as Venus or Jupiter, aircraft lights, balloons, and a host of other misperceived things seen in the sky. These stimuli, seen through a society's cultural and psychological lenses, suggest the presence of an unusual emotional climate which distorts perceptions and the perceived significance of merely terrestrial phenomena. Through time we have observed many different explanations for lights in the sky. In the late 1890s, hot air balloons were often sighted, and in the early 1900s airships were the go-to explanations. Numerous sightings in Australia and New Zealand were explained away as airships in the article Crowded skies by New Zealand Geographic, including a famous one in the then small Otago town of Kelso, in 1909.

Angel Numbers are patterns you may notice when looking at the numbers around you - maybe the digital readout on your oven's clock, a number plate of a car on your street, or the total of your dinner bill at your local Indian restaurant. These special numbers are supposed to be sent by your angels to guide you in life. Most of the number patterns you're meant to look out for are pretty simple - either the same number repeating, like 2:22 or $88.88, or a simple run of numbers, such as RKH123. The numbers are meant to have significance, letting you know about your life, in a kind of fortune telling way.

I was fascinated recently to read about an ancient classical archaeological attraction, known variously as the Berico Amphitheatre, Anfiteatro Berico, Anfiteatro Marittimo Berico, Anfiteatro Porta degli Angeli, and Porto degli Angeli. It is located on a scenic hillside near Arcugnano, in the province of Vicenza in Italy's northern Veneto region. Verona's amphitheatre is just 64 km to the west. This massive site has been marketed to tourists as dating from around 393 AD, with Neolithic, Greek and Roman artefacts. Franco Molasso claims he discovered it in 2005 following a landslide. But none of this is the reason I am writing about it. Because it turns out… it's totally fake.

Many of us who grew up with access to a TV may remember long ads that flashed through scenes of shanty towns, dirt roads, dishevelled children, and emaciated infants too exhausted to respond to the flies landing on their faces. These edits are followed by a B- or C-list celebrity exhorting viewers to sponsor a child for as little as $1 a day. Sally Struthers' long partnerships with the Christian Children's Fund (formerly China's Child Fund, now just ChildFund) and Save The Children (which officially discontinued their sponsorship programme in January 2026) come to mind: