On Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 02:42:12AM -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
"Where's the science?" is a reasonable question that pseudoscience fails.
That's an empty generality.
No, it isn't, because ...
Science is in the process, not the results.
... science *is* in the process, not the results. Exactly right!
Calling something "pseudoscience" is not an indictment of the results. It is a statement about the process: that the "results" were not come by using a process which resembles science, despite the proponent's own claims to the mantle of "science".
When someone presents "scientific astrology" -- Google it; it's a real expression! -- we are correct to ask, "Where's the science?" That is to say, "By what process did you come up with this astrology? Where are your data, or observations, or clinical trials, or case studies? What is your method? When did you test your hypotheses? Which ones did you reject as false, and why? Where is your peer review? How can someone else replicate your results to test their accuracy? How would your results differ if the conditions were different -- say, if Mars were in trine to Venus instead of Jupiter?"
If the answer to "Where's the science?" is an evasion -- be it "Oh, have faith!" or "But it's the wisdom of the ancients!" or "The spirits of lost Atlantis revealed it to me!" or "Astrology is more powerful than rational thought" or "We don't have to show you no steeenking science" or "Doesn't it *feel* true?" -- then what we have is indeed fake science -- or, in a word, pseudoscience.