Re: Soft science vs. hard science vs. pseudoscience

I think a lot of people would love psychology to be a full-blown pseudoscience because they're afraid of what they may find out about themselves and others, but wishin' don't make it so.

In the sense that if I take this substance I will feel X,Y,Z - then yes, it is a science.

(And by "this substance" it can just as well be food, a concentrated food ingredient, an environmental thing, a pollutant, a prescription drug or a recreational drug. That's unimportant, experimentally)

As soon as I start talking about concepts that I cannot put into an experiment design (whether the experiment is logistically feasible or ethical is a different problem), then it stopped being science. It's "family values" by any other name.