The False Claim of Cryonics as Pseudoscience

Hostile critics and bias

Photo by Sander Sammy on Unsplash

Cryonics does not reflect the criteria for pseudoscience. It does not claim to be a science but to be a medical practice informed by various sciences. It is based on empirical evidence, it uses scientific method, its research is in the context of standard science, it does not rely on anecdotal evidence, it changes with new evidence, it does not make vague or unverifiable claims, it does not appeal to authority or tradition, and it does make progress. Claims of pseudoscience are biased emotional expressions of an editor’s personal view.

Getting real about pseudoscience

One of the laziest accusations made by critics is that cryonics is a pseudoscience. Advocates of cryonics find this especially annoying because they are, almost universally, rationalists and supporters of scientific and empirical means. When Wikipedia claims that “cryonics is generally regarded as a fringe pseudoscience”, we can reply: That’s because you keep wrongly presenting it that way! (The Wikipedia author’s authority for this statement is an article in the Chicago Tribune. Apparently, one reporters view settles the matter.)

What is pseudoscience? We should be a little careful in declaring any set of beliefs or practices “a pseudoscience” just as we should be a little careful in calling specific religious adherents “cultists”.

First of all, it is peculiar to label something as “pseudoscience” if it does not claim to be a science or if it is clearly something other than a science (a practice, a philosophy). Some things labeled as pseudoscience may simply be false beliefs. They only become pseudoscience if belief in those things is based on a system of ideas that at least superficially resembles science.

Secondly, the boundary between a science and a pseudoscience is not black and white, not at any one time and especially not over time. I will try to avoid delving into the dark recesses of the philosophy of science to demarcate science from other forms of knowledge. I shall only note that there is no universal agreement on the demarcation problem.

Cryonics would be a pseudoscience if it relied on theories that have been falsified or on a framework that contradicts established sciences or invokes entities not discoverable by empirical means. For instance, it would be a problem if cryonics relied on a theory of “datons” – invisible, data-preserving particles that hold personality and interacted with “cryons”.

Cryonics instead looks to neuroscience, cryobiology, related technologies such as electronic microscopy, and uses means practically identical to cryopreservation methods frequently and successfully used to store and revive embryos and many tissues. The preservation of memory-related brain structures can be addressed through scans and testing (as has been done in c. elegans). Cryoprotectants are formulated according to standard chemistry. The ability of cryopreservation to slow and stop biochemical processes is based on standard physics. The methods used for getting someone cryopreserved effectively are entirely based on standard science, technology, and medicine.

The only area of cryonics that lacks a current, obvious scientific foundation is the repair and revival aspect. New technologies and tools will be needed to enable repair and revival. We obviously cannot precisely specify today technologies yet to be developed. Instead, we have to project future capabilities within the limits of current science. Nothing about the idea of repairing any damage from cryopreservation contravenes established science. On the contrary, a detailed examination of the technical issues such as found in Robert Freitas’ Cryostasis Revival are entirely within that scientific framework. [Book synopsis here.]

Repair and revival depend on technologies – not sciences – that we have not yet invented but for which theoretical designs exist and for which parallels in nature exist (such as DNA repair). The proposition that it is likely that we will eventually be able to successfully revive cryonics patients – at least those preserved sufficiently well – is much like the claim in the first half of the 20^th century that we would probably be able to put a human on the Moon. In 1900, we had little or no idea of the technologies needed for computation, propulsion, or life support that make that goal possible.

Science/pseudoscience boundaries

I said that the boundary between a set of ideas being a science or a pseudoscience is not sharp. Not everything is clearly one or the other. Consider alchemy. Today we would definitely consider this a pseudoscience. It posits forces and entities for which we have found no evidence and it ignores far more powerful, productive, and proven forces. Centuries ago, alchemy was pursued when we had no good theories of physics or chemistry. It is therefore best viewed as a protoscience. Indeed, many historians of science treat it that way.

Similarly, in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, scientists posited the existence of phlogiston, an element they believed resided in combustible bodies and released in combustion. When Daniel Rutherford discovered nitrogen in 1772, he and his mentor Joseph Black used phlogiston to explain Rutherford’s results. Joseph Priestley, who discovered oxygen, explained it as dephlogisticated air. Although holding onto phlogiston theory today would be pseudoscientific, it’s rather harsh to describe Rutherford and Priestley as pseudoscientists.

Even better example to illustrate the not-so-bright line historically is the theory of caloric. This theory explained heat as a self-repellant fluid or weightless gas that flows from hotter to colder bodies. Not only was this a neat theory, it actually appeared to explain a range of observations. It could explain the cooling of a hot cup of coffee toward room temperature. It could explain the expansion of air under heat by being absorbed into air and thereby increasing the air’s volume.

Sadi Carnot developed the Carnot cycle – still important in heat engine theory – based entirely on caloric. That line of thinking led a few decades later to the recognition of the second law of thermodynamics. As if that was not enough, caloric appeared to be confirmed by Pierre-Simon Laplace's theoretical correction of Sir Isaac Newton’s calculation of the speed of sound. LaPlace’s approach continued making more accurate predictions for almost another century.

Qualities of pseudoscience

Even though no perfectly sharp distinction can be made between science and pseudoscience, certain qualities position any theory closer to one or the other. The more of those factors present in a particular field, the more pseudoscientific it can be said to be.

Here are a few of those factors (based on an answer from ChatGPT which accords with other such lists):

Lack of Empirical Evidence: Pseudoscientific theories are typically not supported by empirical evidence that can be verified or replicated by others.

Absence of Scientific Method: Pseudoscience often lacks the rigorous use of the scientific method. It does not systematically test hypotheses, nor does it rely on peer review or reproducible experimentation.

Excessive Resistance to Criticism: Pseudoscientific claims often do not undergo the scrutiny of peer review and are resistant to criticism and refutation by the scientific community. (This can also be true of solid and universally accepted science.)

Reliance on Anecdotal Evidence: Pseudoscience frequently relies on anecdotal evidence and personal testimonies rather than systematic research and empirical data.

Failure to Change with New Evidence: Unlike science, which evolves with new discoveries and evidence, pseudoscience often holds onto its initial claims regardless of contradictory evidence.

Use of Vague, Unfalsifiable Claims: Pseudoscientific theories often use vague language that is not specific enough to be tested or refuted.

Appeal to Authority or Tradition: Pseudoscience may rely on the authority of an individual or traditional beliefs rather than scientific evidence.

Lack of Progress: Pseudoscientific fields typically do not progress or evolve in response to new knowledge or understanding.

It should be clear that each of these factors come in degrees. We expect theories in physics to be extremely precise and decisively testable. Theories in economics and other social science are vastly harder to test because of the difficulty of eliminating variables and running controlled experiments. But problems can arise even in physics.

Consider fundamental physical and cosmological theories. These may be impossible to test (at least we haven’t figured out how to test them), as in the case of varying interpretations of quantum mechanics, or dark matter or dark energy. Competing theories of particle physics may run up against testability problems because the apparatus to test them are far beyond human capabilities (a collider the size of the solar system!), at least for the present and foreseeable future.

The accepted areas of science differ in their approaches, methods, or standards of knowledge. Physics differs from meteorology which differs from economics. Imposing the same standards on the study of wildly differing phenomena is part of what is meant by the pejorative term scientism.

As I go through some of the indefensible Wikipedia claims, bear in mind how the study and practice of cryonics meets the conditions of science and does not incorporate the flaws of pseudoscientific thinking. For example, in cryonics you find:

• published and peer-reviewed papers

• reproducible results (University of Minnesota’s recent reproduction of and improvement on research at 21CM; c. elegans experiments)

• falsifiable claims

• progress (medications, cryoprotectants, vitrification, new evidence from CT scans, electron micrographs, etc., successful reversal of ever more complex and larger bodies of biological tissue)

Consensus and authority

One factor that is not a good criterion is consensus. As eminent philosopher of science Imre Lakatos noted, “a statement may be pseudoscientific even if it is eminently 'plausible' and everybody believes in it, and it may be scientifically valuable even if it is unbelievable and nobody believes in it.” Lakatos’ point conflicts with Wikipedia’s long list of pseudosciences, which often refers to disagreement with the current consensus as the reason something is a pseudoscience.

Consensus is an especially weak consideration because a view that is today’s consensus may well be dismissed in future. Geocentrism and, later, Newton’s mechanics, were supported by a practically universal consensus at the time. Later developments disproved them entirely. There was a consensus that continental drift was nonsense but that became today’s consensus.

Nor is a dismissive statement from an eminent scientist a good sign of pseudoscience if it is issued from authority rather than being clearly based on existing science. To take a drastic example, in the Soviet Union Trofim Lysenko could authoritatively dismiss alternative agricultural theories and established Mendelian genetics while supporting disproven Lamarckianism– his authority was backed by the deadly power of the Soviet State and personally by Stalin – yet it was Lysenko himself who was the pseudoscientist.

Falsehoods in Wikipedia’s cryonics entry

Wikipedia entries are written by human beings. (This may change, but LLM outputs will still be selected and confirmed by humans.) Humans have biases. Even self-described rationalists – such as anti-cryonics wiki editor David Gerard – have biases. When they have control over topic entries it can be hard for them to refrain from abusing that control.

Wikipedia editors who cry pseudoscience! may simply be conveying their own belief and signaling that they reject a differing view. The claim of pseudoscience may be little more than an emotional expression of rejection. As, Richard McNally has written, “The term 'pseudoscience' has become little more than an inflammatory buzzword for quickly dismissing one's opponents in media soundbites”. Rather than trying to position a view as pseudoscience, McNally suggests instead asking: “How do you know that your intervention works? What is your evidence?”

Anthropologist Simon Dein write that cryonics is a typical pseudoscience because of its lack of falsifiability and testability. In Dein's view cryonics is not science, but religion: it places faith in non-existent technology and promises to overcome death itself.”

Here is a good example of blatant falsehood and unwarranted assumptions. One blatant falsehood is the claim that cryonics promises to overcome death itself. Perhaps some advocates have, at times, spoken too boldly but the claim is only that if a person is preserved under good enough conditions it is likely to be possible to repair and revive them with more advanced technologies. Death is not overcome. You will still die from accidents, homicide, suicide, and yet-unconquered pathogens. This is so clear that we can only assume that Dein is so intent on his framing that he is dishonest.

Cryonics is clearly falsifiable. I have noted how cryonics uses a lot of established standard science (chemistry, cryobiology, physics) and thus is automatically falsifiable and testable. Even the most speculative aspect – that of eventual revival capability – is falsifiable. We cannot test that fully today because it relies on future technological developments, just as did claims about the possibility of space flight, or today’s claims about the curability of cancer. Projecting future capabilities based on today’s capabilities constrained by known physical laws is not “faith”. The view that we will certainly never be able to revive anyone is the faith-based view.

Short of reviving a person who has been cryopreserved there is plenty that we can do to test the proposition. Testing it as applied to a human will take decades. But we can test it on a small organism and we have. A few decades ago, many people would have claimed that it’s impossible to freeze anything and then bring it back to life. Then we discovered tree frogs and other organisms, and then we froze skin, and corneas, and heart valves, eggs, and sperm, and even embryos. The claim that we will never be able to revive a well-cryopreserved human flies in the face of all this accumulated – and still accumulating evidence. Cryopreservation beautifully meets the condition of making progress over time.

Memory storage in humans is not unique. Human brains are large and hard to rewarm rapidly enough today to avoid recrystallization and other damage. But we have already tested one form of memory in the tiny c. elegans – so tiny that we can rewarm it extremely quickly. Using existing neuroscience we can examine large and complex bodies of neural tissue to see if they retain the structures that encode memory. Electron micrographs exist for precisely this reason. Such tests are not limited to advocates of cryonics. As rewarming improves (and it is improving) we should be able to test increasingly large organisms for function, not just structure.

Cryonics proponents go further than the mainstream consensus in saying that the brain does not have to be continuously active to survive or retain memory.

This is a perfectly mainstream view. Based on experience, we know that memory (except for short-term memory) survives absence of brain function. You can halt brain activity with anesthesia and someone can go through a period of unconsciousness due to cold and then return to intact awareness. The mainstream view is that while short-term memory depends on continued electrochemical activity, the far more important long-term memory (20 minutes plus) is encoded in physical changes. If you are not aware of this, take a look at any review article. The part that goes beyond the current mainstream view is that we will be able to successfully restart brain function in cryopreserved people. That goes beyond the mainstream in part because the mainstream hasn’t given it much thought.

When I put “cryonics” into Wikipedia’s search box, it automatically suggests: “Cryonics: freezing of a human corpse.” This assumes away an item of dispute. Corpse is not a scientific term. We don’t call someone a corpse when they are reversibly clinically dead. Corpse refers to legal death which is not a scientific concept. Our concept and definition of death has changed over time. The authors betray their commitments by using a presumptive term like “corpse” instead of a more neutral one like “body” or “legally dead patient”.

Economic reality means it is highly improbable that any cryonics corporation could continue in business long enough to take advantage of the claimed long-term benefits offered.

This statement violates Wikipedia’s guidelines in that it displays what Wikipedia calls original research or opinion. “Highly improbable” is the writer’s opinion. How is that likelihood established? How does the writer account for the fact that two cryonics organizations have already been operating for around half a century? Why does the writer not consider the durability of good non-profit structures as used by leading cryonics organizations for maintaining patients? Cryonics advocates have thought about this issue plenty.

Even using the best methods, cryopreservation of whole bodies or brains is very damaging and irreversible with current technology.

“Very damaging” is an unspecified term. In many cases, there is considerable damage. It is widely granted that we do not know if any future technology could repair that damage adequately. In cases with minimal delay and good cryoprotection damage is vastly reduced. How much damage is too much to ever be repaired is an open question. The fact that damage is irreversible with today’s technology is irrelevant. “Here in 1920, rocketry is crude and dangerous and it is impossible to land a person on the moon with current technology.”

To emphasize a point that critics keep missing: Evidence of damage in cryonics patients is not sufficient to prove that cryonics fails. Damage would mean failure only if we could be sure that no methods and tools will ever be devised that can repair that damage. Damage could be extensive and still repairable. All that is required for this is the ability to infer the original state of tissue from its preserved state. We can already identify damage through electron microscopy. We are already developing increasingly precise tools including, but not limited to, nanotechnology in one form or another. We cannot be absolutely sure that repair will be possible but neither the laws of physics nor existing repair mechanisms in biology rule it out.

Cryobiologist Dayong Gao states that “we simply don't know if (subjects have) been damaged to the point where they've 'died' during vitrification because the subjects are now inside liquid nitrogen canisters.”

This is false. Many cryonics patients have not been examined for neurological preservation because historically it has been too difficult and expensive. However, for well over a decade (with one case several decades ago) CT scan have been done – this is standard practice at Alcor and at Tomorrow Biostasis. In special cases far more detailed studies have been done using electron microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, and other methods. 21^st Century Medicine and the Brain Preservation Foundation have published research showing excellent ultrastructural preservation of the brain using either traditional cryobiological technologies or “aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation” (ASC) in which cryopreservation is preceded by chemical fixation. Not only are new patients regularly being scanned, Alcor is gradually working back through previous patients. This is completely in accord with a scientific, empirical approach.

Cryobiologist Dayong Gao states that “People can always have hope that things will change in the future, but there is no scientific foundation supporting cryonics at this time."

I have already pointed out how this goes wrong. Cryonics relies on and uses well established sciences and technologies. You cannot expect a “scientific foundation” to demonstrate a future technological advance. You can only show that it violates physical law. If you cannot demonstrate that, you have no business dismissing it. But there is scientific support for the practice and for a reasonable possibility that repair and revival technologies will be developed. The same “lack of scientific foundation” bad argument could be applied to space travel before Apollo or proposals for freezing embryos or curing cancer.

Should we not try to cure cancer because we cannot demonstrate a specific means of doing so today?

…one argument against cryonics is that a centuries-long absence from life might interrupt the conception of personal identity, such that the revived person would “not be themselves”.

“Might interrupt” is hardly a decisive refutation. It is not a good argument that cryonics is not worth trying. Worse than that, this claim makes no sense. It is not referring to massive damage that could damage personal continuity. The claim refers simply to the passage of time. Why would the person not “be themselves” just because time has passed? If their brain is well-preserved – and cryogenic storage means that biochemically no time is passing – why would personal identity disappear after a year or a decade or a century? (If you want to compare authorities here, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the topic.)

Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein wanted to have his head and penis frozen after death so that he could "seed the human race with his DNA".

Amazing! This is a low blow indeed. For any subject you can find one widely despised person and claim a connection. Smearing by association is much easier than providing real arguments. Even if it were true that Epstein was a supporter of cryonics and arranged it for himself (or his penis), that would have zero bearing on the validity of the idea. But this is pure hearsay with no evidence. Based on my considerable insider knowledge, I would say the claim that Epstein made cryonics arrangements is almost certainly false. His statement was clearly in jest. He was informed enough to know that there is no point in preserving that organ. Brain-only cryonicists expect their body to be regrown. Whole body cryonicists know that all their tissues will need repairing or replacing.

David Gerard, the long-time guardian of his preferred “truth” on Wikipedia’s cryonics page also contributes to RationalWiki. He makes similar unfounded claims in his entry on cryonics advocacy.

Mostly, scientists consider that cryonicists are failing to acknowledge the hard, grinding work needed to advance the several sciences and technologies that are prerequisites for their goals.

This is an assertion that flies in the face of all the evidence. Any scientist who actually does make such a claim (rather it being something Gerard wants to believe) is utterly ignorant of cryonics theory, practice, and development. No need to repeat here the numerous ways in which cryonics uses and builds on scientific and technological development and itself funds and carries out research. Gerard’s approach here is like people who accuse those they disagree with of being “naïve”. It’s an easy term to throw around to discredit someone.

I think that’s enough! What we are seeing is a few people abusing their positions of editorial control to present and maintain a biased explanation intended to sway the public. These powers attract driven keyboard warriors with an agenda. These editors quote snap judgments from supposed authorities (which may be nothing more than a random journalist or a scientist lacking knowledge of the field), show no sensible recognition of what constitutes a cryonics expert, use biased and inflammatory language, and apply inappropriate standards to emerging technologies.

Reasons vs. conclusions

Gerard in particular considers himself a rationalist. In the traditional sense of the term – reason should be preferred to faith, empirical methods should be used, all conclusions should be held open to questioning, knowledge is contextual and dependent on changing conditions – I am very much a rationalist. Gerard appears to be one of the contemporary, problematic types of rationalist. These people are working with an impoverished view of reason. This is the scientistic form of rationalism which leaves no room for uncertainty. If something is not strictly empirically testable today, it is dismissed. Yet science and technology both advance because of new thinking that cannot be derived from mere observations or formalism.

Wikipedia lists cryonics along with many other ideas as pseudoscience. This fails to distinguish between pseudoscience as a process of reasoning and as a conclusion. Critics often dislike the conclusion and so jump to the claim that something is a pseudoscience. But good processes can lead to false results and bad processes can lead to correct results. Rather than slapping on a dismissive label to an idea supported by many extremely educated and smart people, critics would do better to consider the extent to which an idea embodies the practices of science or pseudoscience.

Cryonics depends on technological progress not on new science or invented science. (Which is not to say that no new science could lead to more breakthroughs in repair technologies).

Some of you are interested in cryonics but more committed to life extension. I would note that the same objections of pseudoscience can be applied to longevity research since it depends very much on achieving something that has never yet been achieved using methods we can mostly only guess at.

Early on, I noted that cryonics is not a science. It does not claim to be a science. Therefore, it cannot be a pseudoscience. Cryonics and biostasis are more like an experimental medical treatment. You don’t know if it will work until it works. That doesn’t make the suggestion of an experimental treatment a pseudoscientific proposal. Cryonics should not be evaluated as an experimental science but as a form of decision-making under conditions of uncertainty.

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Postscript: Other critiques of Wikipedia

Many people by now realize some of the limitation of Wikipedia in terms of what you can trust. Wikipedia is a fantastic resource on uncontroversial topics. Whenever a topic is contentious, Wikipedia may be a starting point but users should realize that a contentious topic draws motivated writers and editors. Once they capture a page, you cannot expect a balanced view of the subject. It’s worth quoting Larry Sanger since he is the co-founder of Wikipedia and has gone on to create alternatives such as The Encylosphere using a different model. All text below is from Wikipedia’s page on Sanger. I do have to give credit for allowing criticism of the site here. (See the page for inline links.)

Sanger also argued that “I think the kind of biases that are in some ways more interesting and more pervasive have to do with individual biases not on political issues but on a host of very specific academic issues. An article can reflect the bias of a few people who just happen to be most motivated to work on it. This is a general problem with Wikipedia”.

In March 2014, Sanger stated that “In some fields and some topics, there are groups who ‘squat’ on articles and insist on making them reflect their own specific biases. There is no credible mechanism to approve versions of articles.”

In a May 2019 interview with Sophie Foggin of 150Sec, regarding the website's neutrality, Sanger said: “Wikipedia has long since decided to turn the other cheek when influential editors make articles speak with one point of view, when they dismiss unpopular views, or when they utterly fail to do justice to alternative approaches to a topic.” Sanger also stated that Wikipedia “never did come up with a good solution” for “how to rein in the bad actors so that they did not ruin the project for everyone else” and that “Wikipedia is a broken system as a result”.

In a February 2021 interview with Fox News, Sanger stated that Wikipedia's “ideological and religious bias is real and troubling, particularly in a resource that continues to be treated by many as an unbiased reference work”.[70] In a February 2021 interview with Carrie Sheffield on Pluto TV, Sanger criticized Wikipedia's coverage of socialism, saying that “when schoolkids go, and they look up answers to questions about the meaning of 'socialism' ... they're going to find an explanation that completely ignores any conservative, libertarian, or critical treatment of the subject”, “And that's really problematic. That's not education. That's propaganda.” He claimed that Wikipedia was originally “committed to neutrality” until “about 10 years ago” when “liberals or leftists made their march through the institutions ... and basically took [Wikipedia] over”, adding…

In an August 2021 interview with The Sunday Times of London, Sanger objected to Wikipedia's description of alternative medicines, such as homeopathy, as “pseudoscience“. He believed such a definition lacked true neutrality. Sanger also claimed that “If you don't kowtow to the right people, you won't even be allowed to participate.”