Testing a Hypothesis about the Supernatural

[Angrboda]

More food for thought:
"The demarcation between science and pseudoscience is a fuzzy line. Science vs. pseudoscience is a false dichotomy, like religion vs. cult, where there is a spectrum between the two."

Here's a quick and dirty list of some traits of pseudoscience (I believe from Michael Shermer). It seems most attempts to describe pseudoscience focus on empirical claims and the behavior of their defendants, which may make the pseudoscience/goddidit analogy a hard fit. Perhaps it's a question better addressed by appealing to fundamentals regarding the philosophy of science (see Popper comment below).

• Hostility towards scientific criticism
  
• Make a virtue out of ignorance
  
• Reliance upon testimony or anecdotal evidence rather than research
  
• Fundamental principles are often based upon a single case
  
• Claims often promise easy and simplistic solutions to complex problems or questions
  
• Utilize scientific sounding, but ultimately meaningless, language.
  
• Use bold or absolute statements.
  
• Attempt to shift the burden of proof away from themselves
  
• Vague reference to data
  
• Failure to consider all hypotheses

Anatomy of Pseudoscience [For more detail, explanation, and examples, see the original article]

• Use of vague, exaggerated or untestable claims
  
• Over-reliance on confirmation rather than refutation
  
• Lack of openness to testing by other experts
  
• Absence of progress
  
• Personalization of issues
  
• Use of misleading language

Derived from: Wikipedia || Pseudoscience

...Popper proposed falsifiability as an important criterion in distinguishing science from pseudoscience.

To demonstrate this point, Popper gave two cases of human behavior and typical explanations from Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler's theories: "that of a man who pushes a child into the water with the intention of drowning it; and that of a man who sacrifices his life in an attempt to save the child." From Freud's perspective, the first man would have suffered from psychological repression, probably originating from an Oedipus complex, whereas the second man had attained sublimation. From Adler's perspective, the first and second man suffered from feelings of inferiority and had to prove himself, which drove him to commit the crime or, in the second case, drove him to rescue the child. Popper was not able to find any counterexamples of human behavior in which the behavior could not be explained in the terms of Adler's or Freud's theory. Popper argued it was that the observation always fitted or confirmed the theory which, rather than being its strength, was actually its weakness.

Wikipedia || Pseudoscience