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Comment by AlecSchueler | Hacker News Reader

I had a similar thought, something like varying levels of ambient humidity closer to the washroom. The experiment needs to be repeated in more controlled conditions. Surprised to see the HN crowd taking this obvious pseudoscience at face value.

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experiments are not pseudoscience; we teach kids science via science fair projects doing very similar types of experiments.

Pseudoscience is generally when you have an explanation for something but no evidence, and generalize that theory to explain too much

No, experimenting is not pseudoscience, but taking a single flawed experiment communicated anecdotally with no mention of setup or control and then moving into discussion about the "results" as if it was performed in any way reproducibly is pseudoscience. It presents itself as science but when you pick it apart it's actually lacking many mainstays of what we'd call scientific methodology.

It's not necessarily false, it's just less rigorous.

So we can call it light science. Or amateur science?

People shouldn't be discouraged from practicing science.

Or we could call it pseudoscience? The rigour is what makes it science. Maybe it's false, maybe it's not, but right now we can only speculate.

I'm not discouraging anyone; in fact, I'm encouraging repeating the experiment with more rigour, that is calling for more science.

I'm surprised to see experimentation being dismissed so readily.

Calling for more rigorous experimentation is not a dismissal of experimentation. It's healthy to be critical about experimental methodologies and to call for more rigour before conclusions are drawn.

There have been several experiments that have showed similar findings, and I looked through half a dozen or so and didn’t find any that showed otherwise. Here’s one that you can browse:

https://www.eurekaselect.com/article/75099

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