> According to your example about the night sky, a claim is merely an observation if everyone will make the same claim in response to the same evidence.

Not exactly, since that's true of established theories also. I would instead say that an observation is something that collects data but doesn't try to integrate it into a general pattern or thesis. For example, in England the peppered moth changed colors between 1700 and 1850. Before 1700 it was light-colored, after 1850, it had fully transitioned to a darker color. We now have an observation, a description. No matter how many times the observation is repeated, we will find once again that the moths change color over time, but we still have no explanation.

Eventually, because of the theory of evolution by natural selection, the color change was explained as resulting from the moth's ability to hide from predators by having the same general color as its surroundings -- and the color of the surroundings had changed as a result of coal-burning. Those moths that happened by chance to have genes for a darker color, were better able to hide from predators. We now have a theory. Our theory can be applied to other neighborhoods, even other species. It's not just a specific statement about a particular moth species in a particular place, it's a general statement about reality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution

> The motives and actions of neither psychiatric pharma, nor society, nor academia even, do not invalidate the possibility that collections of reinforcing ideas and assumptions can explain human thought at some level of neuroscientific abstraction.

Yes, but the principle is not the fact. Also, psychology and neuroscience are as different as two fields can possibly be. Psychology studies the mind, which is a philosophical abstraction lacking a physical embodiment. Neuroscience studies the brain and nervous system, which are physical entities amenable to empirical observations, observations on which similarly equipped observers can (must) agree.

> For better or worse, Jung, Freud, etc have established such systems which can and have been subject to methodical examination and testing by others. That they have subsequently not held up does not mean that the possibility is invalid.

Actually yes, because of the null hypothesis (the precept that an idea without evidence is assumed to be false), it does mean that. An essential property of scientific theories is that they must be empirically falsifiable in practical tests. Some psychological theories cannot be meaningfully tested, which makes them unscientific. Others can be tested, have been tested, and have been falsified, which makes them unscientific.

> And yet entrepreneurs expand knowledge with this all the time, as they make predictions about customer behavior, statistically test, refine, extend...

Yes, but without a theory that both explains and correctly predicts particular outcomes in advance -- that shows and proves a link between causes and effects -- there is no testable theory and there is no science.

> This might not be Los Alamos "science", but it's method is certainly "scientific".

Exercise of a particular scientific method isn't by itself enough to call something science. Were this not true, I could hire some scientists to study astrology and thereby make astrology into a science:

http://arachnoid.com/psychology/index.html#The_Architecture_...

> Should a neuroscientist argue evolutionary anthropology is on shaky ground because we don't understand all the details of the underlying neuroscience?

In a word, yes, he or she should do just that. If there's no structure that connects repeated observations with an empirical, testable theory, it's not science.

Why do I care? Why should anyone care what psychiatrists and psychologists do? Because they have public clinics and, rather than wait for people to call on them for help, they shout from the rooftops about how sick people are, using as "evidence" the symptoms of diseases they voted into existence. Then they prescribe drugs that have no reliable clinical evidence for effectiveness. More here:

"The Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America" : http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/04/28/the-astonishing-rise-...