[mdp2021]

Research, also of correlations (as a starting point), is to some of us "in general definitely a good thing". But.

Your use of 'accurately' probably does not consider actual sensible practices in the assessment of data, where you assess the occurrances of false positives and false negatives in more revealing considerations. One of the first online articles found through a quick search seems to be very good already as an introduction: https://towardsdatascience.com/accuracy-precision-recall-or-... (Koo Ping Shung, Accuracy, Precision, Recall or F1?, 2018).

Politically, there is a problem in fairly dealing with the matter of inclinations, especially considering that guilt is after actions, not inclinations, or considering that it amounts to "prejudice".

The use of 'pseudoscience' in the article was more political than theoretical - imprecise but left to the reader's margins of "getting the idea". It meant that "we have been there and the actual scientific results were poor (e.g. we could not predict local brain function under that bulge that may have meant inclination i)".

Science is much more complex than the simple correlation you seem to be supposing. Science is about understanding phenomena with objective grounds and methods (understanding is then corroborated with predictions, but predictions are not understanding). In your example you are limiting the matter to observations: they are the first step in science, not the last. (A statement like 'people with quality q tend towards inclination i' would be an observation, not a law.)

[arketyp]

You make a good point of distinguishing between a scientific model and a predictive oracle. I think the political use of pseudoscience isn't helpful though. There could be a lot of understanding to be gained from these systems.

[mdp2021]

> I think the political use of pseudoscience isn't helpful though. There could be a lot of understanding to be gained from these systems.

If you meant, using the label of 'pseudoscience' to undermine research (in the broadest terms), or to promote blind faiths (e.g. scientism) or "arbitrary requirements for social membership", of course it is deterior (though the economic/financial matter is more complex). But in the specific context, the attribution of pseudoscience is (though often with little care and an improper naïvety) to be a substantially legitimate warning of "do not encourage shallow beliefs amounting to prejudices".

Many of us believe that similar research may reveal interesting correlations which may then trigger good insights. But there has been a trend (especially in cultures that have shown very little appreciation of subtlety as an ideal) that seem to encourage a return to the archaic ignorant use of stereotypes. Apply that to law enforcement, and - sorry, just inventing a sufficiently acceptable example, after today's article about "Irish Baileys" - the idea subtly or less subtly emerges to arrest sober Irishmen just because.

[HPsquared]

Perhaps there should be more of a hard boundary between science and politics (like the separation between church and state).