I'm glad to read other people saying this. There is a cult that has arisen surrounding the randomized control trial that really verges on pseudoscience. Rather

I'm glad to read other people saying this. There is a cult that has arisen surrounding the randomized control trial that really verges on pseudoscience. Rather than come up with precise predictions like you mention and then run the experiment to test the prediction, they just kind of use them to see if two groups of people are different, etc. The reason I say this procedure verges on pseudoscience is that it skips the key step of coming up with a real theory that makes predictions. While experiments are great when you can do them, natural observations can also be used to test these predictions just fine.