George good points. I may be in error but I think ML provided a long time ago, after we collectively badgered him, that he would do this (whatever we call it) and keep some records but he was not doing a scientific experiment. It was first and foremost a kid's pond. I have always viewed it as just that a practical experiment but with an engineer keeping the data. A practical experiment plus expert data keeping that is common to engineers. I admire the trait that engineers always seem to have " I have to quantativly know why ". That makes them good record keepers.

You are correct on the definitions. I know most of us can not do a true scientific experiment for a lot of reasons from inadequate training to facilities to time to desire. It is next to impossible to isolate one factor and test for it in a single pond with any degree of accuracy as is generally done in a true scientific experiment. There are a lot of papers written by experts where they test for multiple criteria but they use a large variety of scientific methods to quantify the correctness of the methods wrt the data tested and the potential for error. I know you have seen many scientific experiments like that.