On Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 10:29:59PM -0500, Fastfission wrote:
I think you entirely missed my earlier point.
- The question is not about what "pseudoscience" is supposed to
*mean*. The definition is clear.
OK. I'm not so sure it was, considering the discussion about falsifiability.
- The quesiton is about how we decide who falls under it or not. In
practice this is difficult, because many forms of things which are considered "legitimate" science do not meet all of the "requirements", and many things which are not considered legitimate science do meet some of them.
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.