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• Appeals to false authority, to emotion, sentiment, or distrust of established fact. A high-school dropout is accepted as an expert on the martial arts, though he may never have studied it. A movie star swears a pseudo-master is real, so he must be. A physicist says a pseudo-master could not possibly have fooled him with simple tricks, although the physicist knows nothing about magic and sleight of hand.

• Emotional appeals are common, such as "If it makes you feel good, it must be true" or "In your heart you know it's right." Pseudo-masters are fond of imaginary conspiracies, such as "There's plenty of evidence for the death touch, but the martial arts establishment keeps it secret." And they argue from irrelevancies. When confronted by inconvenient facts, they simply reply, "Scientists don't know everything!"

• Makes extraordinary claims and advances fantastic theories that contradict what is known about nature. Pseudo-masters make false claims such as "Every human is surrounded by an impalpable aura of electromagnetic energy, the auric egg of the ancient Hindu seers, which mirrors the human's every mood and condition." Then they not only provide no evidence that their claims are true, they also ignore all findings that contradict their conclusions.

• Pseudo-masters invent their own vocabulary in which many terms lack precise or unambiguous definitions, and some have no definition at all. Listeners are often forced to interpret the statements according to their own preconceptions. For example, what is "biocosmic energy" or a "psychotronic amplification system?" Pseudo-masters often attempt to imitate the jargon of scientific and technical fields by spouting gibberish that sounds scientific and technical. Pseudo-masters would be lost without the term "energy," but their use of the term has nothing whatsoever to do with the concept of energy as used by physicists.

• Appeals to the truth-criteria of scientific methodology while simultaneously denying their validity. A procedurally invalid experiment that seems to show that astrology works is advanced as "proof" that astrology is correct, while thousands of procedurally sound experiments that show it does not work are ignored. The fact that someone got away with simple magic tricks in one scientific lab is "proof" that he is a psychic superman, while the fact that he was caught cheating in several other labs is ignored.

• Claims that the art it studies is unstable. The pseudo-masters can only perform under certain vaguely specified but vital conditions, such as when no doubters or skeptics are present, when no experts are present, or when no one is watching. Science holds that genuine phenomena must be capable of study by anyone. A pseudo-master who claims to be impervious to pain, but does not permit himself to be kicked by a Taekwondo master is probably lying.

• Explanations tend to be by scenario. The pseudo-master tells a story, but nothing else; there is no description of any possible physical process. For instance, a pseudo-master claims that ninja were able to leap straight up onto the roof of a hut, and despite the laws of physics ruling the feat impossible, the pseudo-master gives no reason how this was done. Pseudo-masters provide stories, not genuine theories.

• Appeal to the ancient human habit of magical thinking. Magic, sorcery, and witchcraft. These are based on spurious similarity, false analogy, false cause-and-effect connections, etc. That is, inexplicable influences and connections between things are assumed from the beginning, not found by investigation. For example, a pseudo-master says that if you fight the way a tiger fights, you will be a great fighter.

• Relies on ancient thinking. The older the idea, the more attractive it is to pseudo-masters. An idea that is transparently wrong and has long been discarded by science seems to appeal to pseudo-masters.

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