Quote Originally Posted by Stubear View Post
Science: Comparing two or more similar things in an environment where the variables are known and posting an unbiased account of the results.

Science is watertight, clear, concise and backed up by empirical evidence that was generated using a fair and unbiased experiment.

Pseudoscience is fluff, smoke, mirrors, political spin or uses falsified evidence. I'm not saying its always wrong, but it is definately misleading and uses a bit of truth to cover a load of junk.

Science has a scientific process that it follows, pseudoscience doesnt.
By your definition of science, it sounds like a double blind taste test to determine which of two types of chocolate tastes better would be scientific. While the process may be scientific, I don't think the results are. Or I could compare the temperatures of two beakers of water by smelling them. I'm comparing them, I know the variables, and the test is unbiased. Is that science?

Why is science watertight? What about the process makes it so? How many scientific papers do you read that are clear and concise?

To say that science has a scientific process is quite circular. What are the criteria for a process to be scientific. For all you've said, though there is a start in your first section, there is very little definition. You've said what science is as the result of it following a "scientific process" - watertight, backed up, evidence based - but nothing about what defines something as scientific.

Quote Originally Posted by khaos View Post
Pseudoscience is practiced by philosophers, observing phenomena and theorizing models.
Like Einstein and all other theoretical physicists?

Quote Originally Posted by Seraphim View Post
After a quick trip through cyber-space in search of info on black holes, I came across the Hubble official site, which had some stuff on black holes.

OK, so the theory is that a black hole is a collapsed giant star, right?

But through the laws of conservation of matter, don't both the star and the resulting black hole both have to have the same mass? Just because it collapses, and gets smaller, does not therefore increase it's mass, and make it all of a suddden a different gravitational force. The gravity per unit area would certainly be higher, but the overall mass must still be the same. And on a cosmic scale, does it matter if the mass is a few thousands of miles in diameter, or the size of a loaf of bread, if the nearest object is x millions of miles away?



Another ψάρια-science topic (since it may fall niether ubnder science, nor psuedo-science, I'm making a third category: fishy science): the Big Bang and the expanding universe.

So, if the theory is that the universe was created all of a sudden in the Big Bang. What was there before? What is outside of the bubble of our expanding sphere of the known universe? Is science saying that there is such a thing as nothing? An absence of anything?
Black holes - when the volume decreases, objects are able to get much, much closer to the black hole, and that is where gravity increases dramatically. Yes, if you are 10 light years away there is no difference, but when you are just outside the event horizon there is a huge difference.

Big Bang Theory - while the theory may be largely incomplete, that does not make it non-scientific. The structure of the universe, cosmic background radiation, the expansion of the universe, and a number of other carefully documented phenomena can be explained through a theory such as the big bang theory. Is the theory correct? Maybe. Is it a scientific theory? Yes.

Quote Originally Posted by Seraphim View Post
The press headlines may say so, which sells papers, but I think the facts say differently:
Pseudo Black Hole Created in Lab - Yahoo! News



They have developed things that mimic certain aspects of black holes, they have not created mini black holes.
Black holes have been created in labs, and they are created in our atmosphere all the time as well. The black holes that I am speaking of fit the only important definition of a black hole, which is the ratio of mass to radius - namely the Schwarzchild radius.

Quote Originally Posted by khaos View Post
The big bang theory is obviously pseudo science! its definitely not been studied and no numbers ever agree. Its as classic an example as geocentricism. Scientists observe somethings and make a guess, then set out proving that guess, rather than investigating.
In what way is the big bang theory geocentric?

I'm sure there are scientists who are out there trying to prove the big bang theory, but there are lots of others seeking out alternate explanations.