Do they do double-double-blind experiments? That would be where the results included some from people getting placebos, where they (and the administrators)
believed it was the real stuff, and others where it was the real stuff, but everyone thought it wasn't? (McGrath)
Yes, they do, though less often than the usual placebo control experiments. If in such a group (they believe they get a placebos but get the 'real thing', whatever that is in that context) the effect is larger that in the usual placebo control group that is taken as a strong indication that the effect is more than mere placebo action.

Troll, tell me more about this 11-year-old girl's test. I haven't heard about it.. (Mark Cohen)
If I am not mistaken this questions has not been answered yet: the original article was Emily Rosa, et al., "A Close Look at Therapeutic Touch." The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Vol 279, #13, 1998-APR-1

I have the impression that some of you don't see the within-science focus of Park's argument. It is true, he is also concerned about what he terms pseudoscience and junk science. These happen outside of science and use scientific jargon with little or no evidence. He is more concerned with what he terms pathological science (and freudulent science) when within science researchers "are inclined to see what they expect to see" and fool themselves.

Nobody (well, nearly) within science is seriously concerned about crackpots who think that UFOs come from the inner of the earth controlled by still surviving Nazis or other stuff. The real concern starts when something within science goes wrong (N-rays, polywater, cold fusion,...) and large amounts of money and brain power are spent uselessly.

Park has provided a useful detection kit for bad science (and, as a collateral benefit, for pseudoscience as well) and bad science includes a couple of things you have mentioned.

It's a method of gaining knowledge, like 'personal experience' is, just a bit more reliable than that.

And, since there are so many new things discovered by science, any scientist claiming that things do not exist until they can be scientifically proven would only earn the laughter of her colleagues. Usually, most scientists subscribe to the idea that there is an outside real world that also exists even if we do not think about it...

Wolfgang