infrastructure. The 1990s saw a surge in futures studies in preparation for the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, which were adopted in 2000 as international development goals for the year 2015. Throughout the 1990s large technology foresight programs were launched which informed national and regional strategies on science, technology and innovation. Prior to the 1990s foresight was rarely used to describe future studies, futurology or forecasting. Foresight prognosis relied in part on the methodologies developed by the French pioneers of prospectives research, including Bertrand de Jouvenel. Foresight practitioners attempted to gather and evaluate evidence based insights for the future. Foresight research output focused on identifying challenges and opportunities, which was presented as intelligence at a strategic level. Practitioners tended to focus on particular companies or economic regions, while making no attempt to plan for specific problems. In the 1990s several future studies practitioners attempted to synthesize a coherent framework for the futures studies research field, including Wendell Bell's two-volume work, The Foundations of Futures Studies, and Ziauddin Sardar's Rescuing all of our Futures. Pseudoscience critique Futurology is sometimes described by scientists as pseudoscience. Science exists in the realm of the certain and builds knowledge through attempting to falsify predictions. Futures studies, however, exists in the realm of the uncertain but also builds knowledge through attempting to falsify predictions and exposing uncertainty. Forecasting and futures techniques Futures techniques or methodologies may be viewed as "frameworks for making sense of data generated by structured processes to think about the future". There is no single set of methods that are appropriate for all futures research. Different futures researchers intentionally or unintentionally promote use of favored techniques over a more structured approach. Selection of methods for use on futures research projects has so far been dominated by the intuition and insight of practitioners; but can better identify a balanced selection of techniques via acknowledgement of foresight as a process together with familiarity with the fundamental attributes of most commonly used methods. Scenarios are a central technique in Futures Studies and are often confused with other techniques. The flowchart to the right provides a process for classifying a phenomenon as a scenario in the intuitive logics tradition. Futurists use a diverse range of forecasting and foresight methods including: Framework Foresight Prediction markets Causal layered analysis (CLA) Environmental scanning Horizon scanning Scenario method Education and Learning Delphi method, including real-time Delphi Future history Monitoring Backcasting (eco-history)