[doctorcroc]

It's a good question -- the way I look at it is that science is the realm of the things we understand using our mathematical representation of natural phenomena (eg. physics, etc). However, it would be foolish to believe that this set of knowledge represents entire understanding of the universe. Thus, given the premise that there is a large (probably near infinite) set of things we don't know outside of our current understanding, I try to keep an open mind towards things that seem estoeric or unfounded.

But how to distinguish this from absolute nonsense? Intuition is probably the number one thing -- what smells like BS? It's not a perfect substitute for objective knowledge, but I think as engineers and scientists, we undervalue our subjective life experiences in shaping our view. Also, it helps to have a discerning eye for the macroscopic message the author is trying to deliver. Many times, we tend to attack the articulation or delivery of a thought, and miss the underlying message. In the context of the author of that article was saying, we can all agree that we have a poor understanding of pharmaceuticals (SSRI's in particular), and it helps to stay with the feeling of depression to know what your body is trying to convey to you, rather than flood the body with more input to make the "negative" emotion leave. I took that thought and discarded all the other specifics -- because I don't expect anyone to be 100% right, and hence I take the kernel in each viewpoint and leave the husk.