[Mamzelle]

I suppose I use "junk science" in much the same way that skeptics refer to "superstition."

But if it can't be reproduced, it's not science. If there's no doubleblind, it's not science.

Another way you can tell real science from junk is the way the scientist qualifies his assertions. For instance, pharmeceudical studies are mazes of qualifications--that's because if the lab manager makes assertions too boldly, his medicines will kill people and his career will be over.

But the Carl Sagans and paleantologists can make such "it is understood that Nellie Neanderthal got a divorce from Hymie Sapiens oh...hans vavink in air...about ten million years ago." Who's to say the divorce didn't take place?

[js1138]

Another way you can tell real science from junk is the way the scientist qualifies his assertions.

Real scientists qualify their assertions. Science writers for Time Magazine and PBS might not.

We just had one of these threads pulled because one poster insisted on posting quote fragments expressing qualification, truncated in a way that implied the opposite of what the scientist believed. So if a scientist expresses himself carefully, his words are shredded and reprocessed to use against him. Just an observation, but I found about a dozen web sites devoted entirely to this process, usually having such headlines as "Scientists speak out against evolution."

[PatrickHenry]

But if it can't be reproduced, it's not science. If there's no doubleblind, it's not science.

Astronomy therefore is not science, by your personal definition. Nor is geology. Nor climatology. I believe your definition is limited only to the so-called "experimental sciences," which are not the only sciences.