Ec wrote in part:
Students of alternative
scientific theories are content to pursue their studies, and have better
things to do with their time than to go out attacking scientists.
You should hang out on alt.sci.physics.new-theories more often.
(Not that I ever go there anymore, so no promises.)
Still, these aren't the same sort of people as chiropractors,
or even serious astrologers.
That something cannot be proven does not make it false.
No, but the attitude of the sceptic (which is most opponents of pseudoscience)
is that something should not be *relied*upon* unless it's been verified.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that chiropractic is pseudoscience
but your family doctor's methods have been verified a good deal
(by which I mean that they've survived several attempts at falsification).
Then the sceptic's POV is that your family doctor is worth turning to
but the chiropractor is more likely just a waste of your time --
so if this POV has any credence in society, then it's dishonest
to suggest that the chiropractor is as reliable as the family doctor.
(This is a more subtle position than what I *think* RK is saying,
and I haven't checked whether, say, Fredbauer is violating it or not.)
In the spirit
of Kurt Gödel there are always things that cannot be proven within a
finite set of principles.
As a mathematician, I'm contractually obligated
to refute misapplications of Gödel's theorems.
Of course, you only said "In the spirit of" ....
Fermat's Last Theorem could not be proven for
300 years, did that make it false during all that time? Were all the
people who insisted on its truth for three centuries to be called
pseudoscientists, or even more slanderously, frauds?
No, but anybody that maintained that it was a theorem
would be called, at best, mistaken. No mathematician
would have *relied*upon* its truth, even one that believed it.
Of course, we're not exactly comparing the same things here,
scientific verification vs mathematical proof.
A basic concept of
logic is that the negation of the statement "All A are true" is "Some A
are false" and NOT "All A are false". The fallacy of the excluded middle
ignores that simple principle.
Aside: Constructivist mathematicians would argue that even
"Some A are false" is too strong. But that's irrelevant here.
-- Toby