Truth and Science.

[Kephalos]

This is the question of this post: Does a theory have to be true to be scientific? Or can the scientific character of a theory be defined to be independent of whether it's true? Geocentrism, for example, is a false model of the universe/solar system tangled with religious belief today, but this is because at the time Christianity and Judaism emerged, most people believed in geocentrism, so naturally they used it in their religious texts; today some religious fanatics defend geocentrism for apologetic purposes, but there were non-Christian philosophers and astronomers (like Aristotle and Ptolemy) that apparently believed (mistakenly, as others at the time argued and scientists would confirm many centuries later) in a geocentric system for arguments that they set down in their writings. Maybe holding out, insisting on a refuted scientific theory is what makes things like geocentrism unscientific -- the Greek astronomers made a good faith mistake, but the modern geocentrists (and yes, there are such people) cannot be said to be doing that.

 

[theablekingedgar]

there are no facts, period, IMHO.
Scientific fact is merely what the consensus based on what the scientific method is presenting.
New evidence can shift or overturn a consensus at any time.
As being with ultimately limited perception, it's a wonder who we can think anything is factual.

 

[tony_goth]

A scientific theory may be true or false, but its true or false quality has to be verifiable.

At least that's what I was taught at college (as I remember).

 

[noname3788]

It really depends on how you define science or the scientific method, and that's actually still an ongoing debate in philosophy. A commonly used approach to define it would be the one proposed by Popper in the 1930's: Science has to make specific, concrete predictions that can be tested (and therefore evaluated). From this perspective, geocentrism would be scientific, but quickly be recognized as straight up false in today's world. But it still has some problems, various parts of psychology would hardly classify as scientific by this approach due to vague statements, weak correlations and high variance of the results, leading to somewhat ambiguous states and unclear results. To take a third example, astrology would not be scientific due to it's descriptions being way too vague and astrological prediction basically applying to everyone independently of their star sign.

I also recommend the following wikipedia page for an overview of other approaches.