Most popular "food science" falls into this trap, as far as I've seen. Even my preferred resources such as seriouseats or America's Test Kitchen. A teaspoon of

Most popular "food science" falls into this trap, as far as I've seen. Even my preferred resources such as seriouseats or America's Test Kitchen. A teaspoon of vodka in the dough makes the pie crust flakier? At the very least it seems like one could say "we cooked 5 pies each way, and a blind taste test found that 4/5 tasters rated the batter with vodka as flakier". That seems like the minimum amount of effort to call something scientific. It doesn't require any specialized equipment or training. We're not even getting into detailed methodology, or significance testing. Yet still, even the best sources I see make completely opaque claims such as "we found reverse creaming makes the cake more dense and buttery, while traditional creaming results in a traditional fluffy cake".