On 12/17/05, Karl A. Krueger kkrueger@whoi.edu wrote:
OK. I'm not so sure it was, considering the discussion about falsifiability.
Well, let me be more specific: the meaning, in a general sense, is clear. Something which claims to be science but is not science. The specifics of how one defines "science" in this sense is not clear, not only not on Wikipedia but not even in the larger academic context in general, and so things like falsifiability get bandied around as possible approaches to this.
I'm not sure I see a wide variety of "requirements" here. I'm not suggesting any complicated philosophy-of-science laundry list of what makes Good Science, or Normal Science, or whatever. I'm just saying that we're safe calling it "pseudoscience" when someone parades around under the banner of "SCIENCE" but isn't actually doing anything resembling it.
Again, you're begging the question, which is entirely how one tells when one is "resembling it". Science looks like many things, and whether something resembles it depends on whether you stress the similarities or the differences.
FF