that was an excellent explanation and good examples, Wolfgang.

To add a bit, from the philosoper/logician's view, much of the difficulty in communication and some of the common errors used by non-scientists are explained by reference to the logical fallicies, especially the "Fallacies of Ambiguity" I link to. (Much more explanation on the pages, but here are short definitions)

Equivocation (The same term is used in two different ways)
Amphiboly (The structure of a sentence allows two different interpretations)
Accent (An emphasis suggests a meaning different from what is actually said

People very commonly make mistakes of Ambiguity in their discussions, and arguments, and it can take quite awhile to understand what makes an argument 'valid' or not. A 'valid' argument has nothing to do with truth or reality, but merely refers to the internal structure.
.....Thus, it is possible to be 'right', but for the wrong reasons and with invalid arguments, or to be 'wrong', using perfectly 'valid' (internally consistent) arguments. This is why I constantly say things like "If your premises are correct, then your conclusions make sense." Too many of the discussions/debates here get heated as a result of BOTH logical fallacies and people accepting different beginning premises.

Science tries to work with the idea that ALL theories start as equals, but some fail because they break the rules of internal logic even before they are tested objectively. Simply saying "well, WE have a different kind of test and different concept of 'proof'" doesn't stand up. There's no way to stop folks from saying that, or from accepting 1st premises that in principle cannot be tested, but perhaps they will gradually soften their rhetoric about their subjective experiences having the same standing as those which are empirically testable......perhaps.....