Quote Originally Posted by gregs656 View Post
That is part of the reason, sure. have you heard the phrase 'extrodinary claims require extrodinary evidence. Pseudoscience will claim big and provide little evidence.

Science has to be empirically testable and falsifiable, consistent, useful, based upon controlled and repeatable experiments (repeatable is very important), progressive and it can't be dogmatic.

A pseudoscience may have a few of those characteristics, but not all.

Pseudoscience is a sales technique.

In my humble opinion, psychology is not a science and it is a great modern tragedy that is is viewed as such.

edit: I did give two definitions of what science is, by the broader one, just about any skill or technique is science - makes sense to me!
Don't some psychologists have skill and employ technique?

So the requirement for evidence is there, but what is good evidence. Is a person born under a certain sign and possessing of the qualities associated with that sign good evidence? What about a million people?

I'm curious about your inclusion of the word "useful" in your definition of science. Can you explain why you've put that in there? Also, what do you mean by dogmatic? I think that is a word that is often thrown around without a clear definition. Einstein was pretty dogmatic when he said that God does not play with dice - but there are arguments that he did not approach quantum mechanics scientifically. Then again, some say that quantum mechanics itself is not scientific. Both sides have their reasons... I'm sure.

Pseudoscience is a sales technique - so it is the way in which people push their claims, not the actual claims, that is pseudoscience?

I'm not challenging what you are saying, just trying to draw out and understand as much of your view as possible.

I'd also like to say that psychology is an interesting field in this discussion, because some say that a true science which is not yet fully developed or advanced may appear as a pseudoscience, and some say that psychology is still in it's early stages. One could say, depending on one's definition of science and pseudoscience, that psychology is currently a pseudoscience but could develop into science.