okay so this should start an interesting conversation :)
I would argue that it would be hard to squeeze all people with a science degree into two categories. In fact, this seems like a very reductionist way of approaching just about any topic. But if one ponders about that a bit more one might realize that it is thought itself that tries to categorize just about any topic into neatly ordered sets. Why is that? Probably because we want to simplify things. And why do we want to do that? Because our brain/thoughts are inherently limited and we can therefore not grasp the whole. My point is that there is more than meets the eye: our thinking is a very limited way of making sense of the world around us and within us. But it is the tool that scientists work with, so we are stuck with that human limitation. Once we open our minds to this limitation we start to see more. For example, I might have thought that only what I can see is real. But science has now shown us that the visible light is only a sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. In other words, there is much more than meets the eye and we have to stay open to new possibilities which within our scientific framework should be grounded in experimentation and replication. As such the EU has made some extraordinary predictions which have been confirmed multiple times (e.g. the electric comet theory). It has of course limitations, but to dismiss it simply out of hand (perhaps even without first getting acquainted with it) is not just a hastened decision, but also a very unscientific one. Most scientific progress has come from the "fringes" of the mainstream, that which we might consider orthodox knowledge. So why be so dismissive of something new, rather than looking at a new idea with scientific curiosity and rigor?
"Most scientific progress has come from the "fringes" of the mainstream, that which we might consider orthodox knowledge"
What was before was a science that was just fledgling (protoscience) with the scientific method clearly defined in the 19th century. Although before that the humanity used tools that resembled principles of the scientific method.
Currently, the mainstream understanding of the universe is actually mostly pseudoscience and BS contradicting scientific discovery, starting with including religions or hippy mumbo jumbo beliefs.
You didn't answer my questions.
Exactly! "Give me one miracle, and I will explain the rest" is a quote that comes to mind that I heave heard someone say about Big Bang cosmology. Black holes, Dark Matter/Energy are all ah hoc concepts introduced to explain the deficiencies of gravity (hence the now new introduced concept of "modified gravity"). Plasma cosmology simply argues that we don't need all of that "fancy stuff" when we already know a force that can explain most of what we observe to a high degree: plasma and electricity. In fact, Plasma cosmologists modeled a galaxy formation only with the current known forces (gravity also included!) and ended up with a spiral galaxy! I would call that a pretty successful test (I can provide the paper if you wish).
To answer your questions: I refuse to climb into the boxes you made, so it is "none of the above".