Pharmacists’ attitudes to and perceptions of pseudoscience: how pseudoscience operates in health and social communication

Abstract

Given the expansion of pseudoscience, there is a need to understand its mechanisms of diffusion. Our aim was to evaluate how pseudoscience operates among pharmacists. We performed 29 semitructured interviews to assess the stance of pharmacists regarding pseudoscience. Interview data were analysed qualitatively to seek common themes. Our results indicate that although pharmacists were broadly opposed to more extreme pseudoscientific practices, some attitudes were detected that may contribute to pseudoscience acceptance. We identified some of the processes by means of which pseudoscience boundaries with science are blurred: the minimization of risk, the hierarchy of health-related pseudoscientific therapies, inappropriate utilization of the notion of “innocuousness” and the use of the placebo effect as a justification for prescription. Discursive patterns typical of pseudoscientific argumentation were also recognized, such as contradictory arguments and the sequndum quid and ad antiquitatem fallacies, which, we conclude, may contribute to a greater acceptance of pseudoscience.