Science or Pseudoscience?

Because of the spread of education to a large amount of people, science isn't anymore a stronghold of few elected, but has become a public-domain knowledge, at least for some more popular fields. This is of course a positive development, because more people have the opportunity to contribute to it, but has also some negative relapses, such as the spread of Pseudoscience. It can be indeed difficult for non-scientist to discern whether or not a branch of science is genuine. The boundaries between them can be hard to be found, even though pseudoscience is characterized by some feature that makes it different from the real one:

1. Ipse dixit : it is based on dogmatic beliefs and principles of authorities that reject any possible (and often plausible) confutation;
2. Spreading through the public: while scientific theories are usually reviewed by professionals before being released, pseudoscience usually bases its spreading on cultural reasons an economical goals. It is sold directly to the public, without any scientific demonstration;
3. Non-testable ideas: usually pseudoscience operates in fields where its theories cannot be tested in any meaningful way. This often leads the public to misguided judgment: if a fact by chance agrees with the theory is considered as a proof, otherwise it's just not mentioned.

The last one was also one of the main point of Karl Popper's "demarcation problem". He tried to distinguish empirical science, such as the 1919 test of Einstein's general relativity from others such as Freud's theories. While relativity could have been falsified if solar eclipse data didn't show the required starlight deflection, Freud theories could not be disproved. This absence of any testable hypothesis led Popper to declare "falsifiability" as the criterion of separation.

This criterion anyway cannot work in any field of science, because many theories, such as String Theory or Neuroscience are not falsifiable. Those one require a different demarcation, that can be found under a more pragmatical aspect. If a new theory generates interest in a part of scientific community, and leads to development in that field, producing new lines of research or new discovery, it could be indeed considered real science. It should be a democratic process the one that decides whether a science is real or not, and not some abstract criteria proposed by philosophers.  If any theory will be able to produce any significant development in any other field, it cannot be indeed considered as pseudoscience.