[unishark]

If you can't control the experiment and identify causation or limit the number of changed variables, you really shouldn't even use the word "experiment".

Sure there's an upside in letting smart people try to figure things out. But there's a downside in legitimizing the practice. Especially since academia isn't so just about intelligence but as much or more about self-agency. The people who push hardest for agendas get the funding, write the books, etc.

[Frippy]

I'm not sure what a better word would be. We use the same word informally to describe how babies learn—they poke and prod at their environment and see what happens. Just because they aren't rigorous doesn't mean the process doesn't give them some idea (with an implicit confidence level, of course) of how things work.