Immunizing Strategies and Epistemic Defense Mechanisms
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A skilled pseudoscientist switches back and forth between different versions of his theory, and may even exploit his own equivocations to accuse his critics of misrepresenting his position. Philosopher Nicholas Shackel has termed this strategy the “Motte and Bailey Doctrines” (Shackel 2005; see also Fusfield 1993), after the medieval defense system in which a stone tower (the Motte) is surrounded by an area of open land (the Bailey): For my purposes the desirable but only lightly defensible territory of […] the Bailey, represents a philosophical doctrine or position with similar properties: desirable to its proponent but only lightly defensible. The Motte is the defensible but undesired position to which one retreats when hard pressed. (Shackel 2005, 298)