Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by the American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It is variously defined as a scam, a business, a cult, or a religion. Hubbard initially developed a set of pseudoscientific ideas that he represented as a form of therapy, which he called Dianetics. An organization that he established in 1950 to promote it went bankrupt, and his ideas were rejected as nonsense by the scientific community. He then recast his ideas as a religion, likely for tax purposes and to avoid prosecution, and renamed them Scientology. In 1953, he founded the Church of Scientology which, by one 2014 estimate, has around 30,000 members worldwide.

Key Scientology beliefs include reincarnation, and that traumatic events cause subconscious command-like recordings in the mind (termed "engrams") that can be removed only through an activity called "auditing". A fee is charged for each session of "auditing". Once an "auditor" deems an individual free of "engrams", they are given the status of "clear". Scholarship differs on the interpretation of these beliefs: some academics regard them as religious in nature; other scholars regard them as merely a means of extracting money from Scientology recruits.