After pushing back on providing a definition I had asked for, Colin Berry has come up with a definition of pseudoscience from the Rational Wiki (a silly imitation of Wikipedia).
Pseudoscience is any belief system or methodology which tries to gain legitimacy by wearing the trappings of science, but fails to abide by the rigorous methodology and standards of evidence that demarcate true science.
But is this what Colin is really talking about, most of the time, when he uses the term? It seems to me that he means only that if something doesn’t fit his worldview it is pseudoscience.
It is interesting to note the advice from Richard Dawkins on Pseudoscientists at the top of the Rational Wiki page that Colin points us to:
If you are in possession of this revolutionary secret of science, why not prove it and be hailed as the new Newton? Of course, we know the answer. You can’t do it. You are a fake.
Scorch theory anyone? Colin, why not prove it? Or can’t you do it?
BIG QUESTION: Why do the rationalists need their own Wiki? This is a quote from the real Wikipedia:
RationalWiki, a satirical wiki website with articles written from a secular, progressive perspective. The site’s self-stated purpose is to analyze and refute "pseudoscience", the "anti-science movement", and "crank ideas", as well as to conduct "explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism" and explore "how these subjects are handled in the media."[77]
According to an article published in the Los Angeles Times in 2007, RationalWiki members "monitor Conservapedia. And—by their own admission—engage in acts of cyber-vandalism."[13]
And why do we need a Conservapedia?
Colin Berry has resorted to mean and nasty personal attacks. What is he trying to achieve?One needs to load up the ridiculous http://bit.ly/YWrfKJ posting of his and scroll down 4/5 of the way to his personal attacks on Jones and Jackson and the whole of STURP. Did he mention that the rating of a professor that he shows was 1 of 1 and that such ratings are often by disgruntled students. “no Limeys. Frogs, Krauts, Itals, Dagos, Polaks, Ruskies etc? You know, those dodgy unassimilated foreigners with their strange accents,” he writes of STURP. Yeah, right. The Royal Society is going to listen to this elitist, angry man. I say it is time to boycott his blog altogether.