Science, pseudoscience and nonscience

Main articles: Pseudoscience and Nonscience
Any established body of knowledge which masquerades as science in an attempt to claim a legitimacy which it would not otherwise be able to achieve on its own terms is not science; it is often known as fringe- or alternative science. The most important of its defects is usually the lack of the carefully controlled and thoughtfully interpreted experiments which provide the foundation of the natural sciences and which contribute to their advancement. Another term, junk science, is often used to describe scientific theories or data which, while perhaps legitimate in themselves, are believed to be mistakenly used to support an opposing position. There is usually an element of political or ideological bias in the used of the term. Thus the arguments in favor of limiting the use of fossil fuels in order to reduce global warming are often characterized as junk science by those who do not wish to see such restrictions imposed, and who claim that other factors may well be the cause of global warming. A wide variety of commercial advertising (ranging from hype to outright fraud) would also fall into this category. Finally, there is just plain bad science, which is commonly used to describe well-intentioned but incorrect, obsolete, incomplete, or over-simplified expositions of scientific ideas.
The status of many bodies of knowledge as true sciences, has been a matter of debate. Discussion and debate abound in this topic with some fields like the social and behavioural sciences accused by critics of being unscientific. Many groups of people from academicians like Nobel Prize physicist Percy W. Bridgman,[16] or Dick Richardson, Ph.D.—Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin,[17] to politicians like U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and other co-sponsors,[18] oppose giving their support or agreeing with the use of the label "science" in some fields of study and knowledge they consider non-scientific, ambiguous, or scientifically irrelevant compared with other fields. Karl Popper denied the existence of evidence[19] and of scientific method.[20] Popper holds that there is only one universal method, the negative method of trial and error. It covers not only all products of the human mind, including science, mathematics, philosophy, art and so on, but also the evolution of life.[21] He also contributed to the Positivism dispute, a philosophical dispute between Critical rationalism (Popper, Albert) and the Frankfurt School (Adorno, Habermas) about the methodology of the social sciences.[22]