It was in anticipation of this that I described bad science. It is not trivially true but fundamentally true and distinguishes science from nonscience (or bad science). Very few statements actually have this property. Most have faulty reasoning or concepts split from reality.
but I was responding to the proposition that for a statement to be called scientific, there must exist evidence specifically in support of it. The point is not, "is there any basis for making such a statement", but "is the existence of evidence necessary and/or sufficient for a statement to be scientific".
The existence of evidence IS necessary, but not sufficient for a statement to be scientific.
I think what you mean by "specifically" is some sort of observation that seals the divide between a fact of reality and a speculation. But if that were true, it would no longer be a speculation.
If your argument is that speculation can be scientific I agree in the sense that scientific methods can be used to secure knowledge up to the point of the unknown aspect of the speculation, and that the speculation can be made in a manner that does not contradict with what is known about reality. That is to say, hypothesizing and theorizing are, of course, scientific. They cannot have meaning however outside the observations that stimulated their suppositions.
There is no evidence for the existence of extra physical dimensions in nature...but while the first idea is scientific.
If I didn't have to go buy a birthday pizza, this in itself could be an interesting discussion. I'm not convinced that the supposition of extraphysical dimensions in nature (the phrase itself is a contradiction as there is no nature (physical) outside of nature, but I know what you mean) doesn't break from reality. Is science fiction "science"?
Tut, tut. I didn't say "extraphysical dimensions", but "extra physical dimensions", meaning physical (real) dimensions that are additional to the ones that we are at liberty to move about in. That's pure conjecture--no evidence whatsoever--but if they do exist, there may be experimentally testable consequences, and that is what makes it science.