Does "go into the woods and gather herbs" follow the scientific method if I write my observations neatly in a blog post?
The author says they will accept that their homebrew worked if they get a positive antibody test (yet, plenty of people will get a positive antibody test without any administration of homebrew or vaccine); but will not accept that it failed if there is a negative antibody test.
As such, their hypothesis is not falsifiable and it is not science.
I think you misunderstand what "falsifiable" means. This hypothesis is absolutely falsifiable. He just doesn't have the resources to conclusively falsify this hypothesis, because he's working with a small sample size and doesn't have affordable access to testing for immunity in the mucus lining.
The hypothesis "my homebrew works at scale" is falsifiable. As you say, that really isn't under test, nor is it a hypothesis the author cares about.
The hypothesis "my homebrew has worked on me" is what the blog asks ("I'm curious whether it will work - or whether we'll be able to tell that it works."). That is not falsifiable.
I know you used "pretty strongly" as sarcasm, but falsifiability is absolute - and this is not.
(On your later point about my claim that this is not scientific, we are back to the comparison with gathering roots and berries - either both are, or both are not)
> I know you used "pretty strongly" as sarcasm, but it's not falsifiability is absolute - and this is not.
I'm having a very hard time parsing what you're saying. At this point, it looks like you're trying to make an argument that "falsifiability" must mean that it is both possible and practical to reject a hypothesis with 100% certainty, and if you can't then you're not doing science. Would you care to explain more clearly why the position you're taking is less extreme and absurd than that?
(Additionally, I did not use "pretty strongly" in any sarcastic way. I used it to acknowledge the possibility of confounding factors that I did not care to enumerate, which mean that even the experimental outcome of getting COVID-19 after inoculation with the homemade vaccine would not be a 100% certain rejection of the hypothesis that the vaccine conferred some protection against COVID-19. But if you're operating in a mindset of 100% certainty being achievable and necessary for science, then I can see how you would misunderstand me.)
This is equally science as going into the woods, picking some berries and roots, grinding them and put them up your nose, doing an antibody test, and writing your conclusions up in a blog post. There's no difference.
(But, yes, I think that writing hypotheses with 100% falsifiability, before challenging them practically, is quite a good definition of "scientific method", based on Karl Popper's work. You can compare with what Wikipedia has to say.)
Edited to respond to your edit: The word falsifiability is deliberately used to distinguish that we are talking about False, the Boolean state. The confounding factors are important - the confounding factors here mean I can't prove it False; there are no circumstances whereby the author has to accept that their hypothesis was False.
> (But, yes, I think that writing hypotheses with 100% falsifiability, before challenging them practically, is quite a good definition of science)
It seems like you're still not making the necessary distinction between whether it is possible for an experiment's outcome to falsify the hypothesis, vs whether it is guaranteed that the experiment will falsify the hypothesis if it is in fact wrong. The latter is an unreasonable requirement to make part of your definition of science.
> there are no circumstances whereby the author has to accept that their hypothesis was False.
The author described such a circumstance, but then explained that he did not have access to the necessary lab testing to actually do so. The hypothesis is falsifiable in principle even if the researcher does not expect to have the equipment necessary to measure falsification by that outcome.
The author says they will accept that their homebrew worked if they get a positive antibody test (yet, plenty of people will get a positive antibody test without any administration of homebrew or vaccine); but will not accept that it failed if there is a negative antibody test.
As such, their hypothesis is not falsifiable and it is not science.