Scientology has as one of its biggest criticisms that it doesn't follow or yield to scientific method. The term scientific method is to a very strict standard misleading. Now don't get me wrong - Scientology is a fraud that intentionally was made to deceive, fool and even covertly enslave victims. The "research" Ron Hubbard claimed is almost all entirely false or at best knowingly and intentionally misrepresented.

But the blanket term scientific method includes the way a chemist would work and a theoretical physicist and a psychologist. They use very different procedures to investigate ideas and observable phenomena.

Science is ultimately the study of nature. It includes looking at and measuring and thinking about nature. It has gained tools that are used to try to eliminate or reduce errors. The tools are also used to try and make developments measurable, quantifiable and repeatable in comparable situations. It's also meant to have falsifiable claims. That means ones that can be supported by observations or shown to be less likely or wrong.

To be clear Scientology is packed with claims that truly cannot be verified or falsified. Many of Hubbard's claims are backed up by his alleged "whole track research". That's his term for events thousands, millions, billions, trillions and quadrillions of years ago which he claims exact knowledge of. There's no realistic way to prove or disprove the events he claimed, but they are the foundation that many hundreds of his other ideas rest upon.

A claim that cannot be proven, meaning supported by relevant evidence or falsified, meaning shown to be contradicted or disproven is often seen as outside of science. Efforts to reduce the effects of confirmation bias are also seen as part of science and many tools fit this description. To help illustrate my point I have quoted an article that lays out the term scientific method and why some frown on its use.

Begin quote: The scientific method. Many science textbooks, including those in psychology, present science as a monolithic “method.” Most often, they describe this method as a hypothetical-deductive recipe, in which scientists begin with an overarching theory, deduce hypotheses (predictions) from that theory, test these hypotheses, and examine the fit between data and theory. If the data are inconsistent with the theory, the theory is modified or abandoned. It’s a nice story, but it rarely works this way (McComas, 1996). Although science sometimes operates by straightforward deduction, serendipity and inductive observations offered in the service of the “context of discovery” also play crucial roles in science. For this reason, the eminent philosopher of science Popper (1983) quipped that, “As a rule, I begin my lectures on Scientific Method by telling my students that the scientific method does not exist…” (p. 5).

Contrary to what most scientists themselves appear to believe, science is not a method; it is an approach to knowledge (Stanovich, 2012). Specifically, it is an approach that strives to better approximate the state of nature by reducing errors in inferences. Alternatively, one can conceptualize science as a toolbox of finely honed tools designed to minimize mistakes, especially confirmation bias – the ubiquitous propensity to seek out and selectively interpret evidence consistent with our hypotheses and to deny, dismiss, and distort evidence that does not (Tavris and Aronson, 2007;Lilienfeld, 2010). Not surprisingly, the specific research methods used by psychologists bear scant surface resemblance to those used by chemists, astrophysicists, or molecular biologists. Nevertheless, all of these methods share an overarching commitment to reducing errors in inference and thereby arriving at a more accurate understanding of reality.

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