Comment by pdonis

> It's quite obvious from your position on this matter that you're not a practicing scientist

You're correct, I'm not. But I'm also not scientifically ignorant. For example, I actually do understand how GPS works, because I've read and understood technical treatments of the subject. But I also know that I don't have to have any of that knowledge to know that my smartphone can use GPS to tell me where I am accurately.

In other words, it's quite obvious from your position that you haven't actually thought through what the test I described actually means.

> To understand the predictions, as it were, you do have to understand the experiments; if you don't, you have no way of knowing if the predictions actually match the outcomes.

Sure you do. See my examples of GPS and astronomers' predictions of comet trajectories downthread in response to MengerSponge.

It's true that for predictions of things that the general public doesn't actually have to care about, often it's not really possible to check them without a fairly detailed knowledge of the subject. But those predictions aren't the kind I'm talking about--because they're about things the general public doesn't actually have to care about.

> There is; it's called a textbook.

Textbooks aren't independent. They're written by scientists.

I'm talking about a record that's independent of scientists. For example, being able to verify that GPS works by seeing that your smartphone shows you where you are accurately.