Pseudoscience, Skepticism, and Predicting Markets

The "Delphic Oracles and Science" section of Victor Niederhoffer's The Education of a Speculatory offers some good connections between the work of Martin Gardner, Irving Langmuir, and John Wheeler and market forecasters.

Irving Langmuir's Symptoms of Pseudoscience

1) The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
2) The effect of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability; or, many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
3) [There are] claims of great accuracy.
4) Fantastic theories contrary to experience.
5) Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur of the moment (p 77).

Victor Niederhoffer's Symptoms of Pseudoscience in Market Analysis

1) Appeal to authority.
2) An absence of counting.
3) A framing of predictions in a form that cannot be tested.
4) A tautological prediction guaranteed to be true under almost all conceivable circumstances.
5) No allowance for chance variations; any randomly formed groups exposed to varying conditions will show differences in means and variability. But the differences can be due to sampling variation rather than the true effects of the conditions. That's what statistical analysis is about.
6) A paranoid mien.
7) Disregard of alternative explanations.
8) Self-evaluation of accuracy.
9) Retrofitted systems (p 8).

Niederhoffer recommends

Martin Gardner and Christopher Scott in the Oxford Companion to the Mind
Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, by Martin Gardner.
Paranormal Phenomena: The Problem of Pro, by