WTF is "alternative" science?

Question

What excatly is alternative science? Either a study is science or it isn't. The laterntaive to science isn't science and so doesn;t belong in the science section.

I certainly hope Yahoo doesn't intend the "alternative category to be the place for psuedoscience: crystal healing, psychism, pixies etc. That would be so wrong in so many ways. There are alreaday appropriate sections for mythology and folklore. They don't need or deserve to be given undue credit by being included as some sort of alternative to science.

Answer 1

I agree that including a section under science called "alternative" lends a legitimacy to the pseudosciences (crystal healing, psychism, pixies, etc.)--by implying that they are, in fact, another science. The fact that such pseudosciences don't follow the Scientific Method doesn't seem to matter to the persons who put this topic here. My guess ... they weren't scientists.

Answer 2

Seems to me it would be alternative topics in science. Stuff we aren't really sure about can be disgusted scientifically here (like aliens, ghosts, teleportation, telekenisis, and yes I realize some of those have much more evidence and understanding than others).

This is a good section to have in the science section. Scientists want to encourage people to use logic and proof to come to conclusions, and there are many subjects that can have science applied to them but that are not yet fully explained by it. Unlike other forums where this sort of thing comes up we can explain things here using fact rather than fantasy or the old "that's stupid" "don't be silly" method which is based just as much on faith as saying something is absolutely true without thinking about it.

Truely fanstastical ideas (like pixies I'd imagine) are easily discounted by science (brain size, evolutionary evidence, lack of evidence of existance, wing/body ratio).

Don't make me get out my copy of Contact to lecture you about "science fiction". ;)

Answer 3

There's alternative medicine - some is good and some isn't. But alternative science? It's either science or it's something else.

Answer 4

My thoughts exactly. If they want to keep this section, I really wish they'd move it out of 'science'.

Didn't they more alternative medicine out of the medicine catagory?

Answer 5

"alternative" science = Joyce Gilchrist


the sometimes dangerous persuasive power of courtroom science http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,109568,00.html

Answer 6

Alternative sciences aren't new; just a rewording of beliefs and systems that are based from Newton and Einstein. From what I understand, it refers to scientific opposition and rationalism. Don't know if this helps, just wanted to answer this. Thanks for reading.