Word.ws English Dictionary

cargo cult science

cargo cult science noun: practices which have the appearance of being scientific, but do not actually follow the scientific method.

Noun

cargo cult science (uncountable)

  1. Practices which have the appearance of being scientific, but do not actually follow the scientific method.

Origin of cargo cult science

Coined by American physicist Richard Feynman in 1974 in his commencement address at Caltech, in reference to cargo cults.

Questions about cargo cult science

What does cargo cult science mean?
Cargo cult science means practices which have the appearance of being scientific, but do not actually follow the scientific method.
What part of speech is cargo cult science?
Cargo cult science is a noun.

Words near cargo cult science in the dictionary

  1. cargo bin
  2. cargo bins
  3. cargo container
  4. cargo containers
  5. cargo cult
  6. cargo cult science
  7. cargo culting
  8. cargo cults
  9. Cargo Fleet
  10. cargo hold
  11. cargo holds

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cargo cult science (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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