Sure there is, but not necessarily (only) in the way that was originally implied. Science, generally speaking, involves observation and inference. A scientific

Sure there is, but not necessarily (only) in the way that was originally implied. Science, generally speaking, involves observation and inference. A scientific approach to airplane security would therefore (to simplify greatly) involve looking at what has happened in the past to inform our decisions for the future. In the past (2001), terrorists attacked airplanes using tactics and weapons we were unprepared for. It seems reasonable, then, to think that if there is another terrorist attack on an airplane it will follow this pattern: it will use tactics and weapons we are unprepared for. So checking 13 inch Macbooks more closely than 11 inch Macbooks (assuming taking the thing out of its case actually does anything) just means that terrorists should find ways to put a sufficiently-powerful bomb in an 11 inch Macbook in order to be successful. Our approach, therefore, is completely unscientific because it assumes that terrorists today will continue to use the tactics they used yesterday, or were planning to use yesterday, when we know from observation and inference ("science") that this is not the case. Note that there have been several attempted attacks since 2001. None have been successful, and none of them, not a single one, was foiled, even partially or with assistance from, TSA. Each of these attempts exploited a weakness in the TSA processes. Seems like the terrorists are better at "science" than the TSA are.