On 12/16/05, Karl A. Krueger kkrueger@whoi.edu wrote:
The issue is whether the practitioners are in fact *doing science* ... whether they're coming up with their claims by studying the world and participating in processes such as peer review and repeating of experiments and observations ... or whether they're just pulling their claims out of wishful thinking or their religious text or whatever, and just _call_ them "science" for political or economic benefit.
Pseudoscience isn't about the subject matter -- it's about the method, and the difference between what the practitioners *say* about the method, and what they actually *do*.
I think you entirely missed my earlier point.
1. The question is not about what "pseudoscience" is supposed to *mean*. The definition is clear. 2. 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.
FF