A bunch of friends were debating about Allopathy vs. Homeopathy. There were for and against each. In the end I was left with these questions.
1. How do you decide something is scientific?
2. Who should decide it ? Are there guardians of Science ?
3. if every theory is wrong until proven right and vice-versa then how can science be in any way effective for theories that are not currently worked on to prove them ?
4. Who and How is it decided that something is science or pseudo science?
> 1. How do you decide something is scientific?<p>Is it a body of knowledge arrived at by means of the scientific method? <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method</a><p>> 2. Who should decide it?<p>Each person for themselves. The whole point of <i>empirical</i> knowledge is that it does not matter <i>who</i> performs the experiment.<p>> Are there guardians of Science?<p>Yes, but they will tell you that the true authority is the real world: the results of experiments.<p>> 3. if every theory is wrong until proven right...<p><i>No</i> scientific theory is <i>right</i>. Science <i>does not and cannot</i> prove anything. This is also something that the guardians of Science will insist on. Even the Standard Model (which has no known violations) has only <i>failed to be disproved so far</i>.<p>I don't understand the rest of Q #3.<p>> 4. Who and How is it decided that something is science or pseudo science?<p>There's a lot of hemming and hawing but it comes down to empirical experiment as the source of confidence in knowledge. (Also, math.)
> How do you decide something is scientific?<p>Science is a method of making a claim, testing it with vivid experiments, testing it more, recording observations, wait for other people to test the claim with their own experiments, and if the tests happen to agree with the claims, it becomes a consensus.<p>You can participate in the scientific verification of a claim by<p>1) By testing it yourself using proper scientific method and proper lab equipment. President requisite is education.<p>2) If you can't afford that, then wait for scientific community to test that. If there is a consensus of statistical certainty from the various scientific institutions you trust, then you can choose to form your facts around those.
Evidence. Replication of results by multiple unrelated investigators.<p>Those two points alone remove a lot of gibberish. Even an appeal to authority is suspect if those first two aren't addressed.