It's basically impossible for people outside the scientific community related to a specific field to independently test or verify extremely progressive science in that field; if scientists working in that field are unable or unwilling to validate extremely progressive theories that is a separate problem from the fact that, to the layman, those theories are entirely indistinguishable from pseudo-science.
I can understand why an organisation like TED would prefer to err on the side of false positives over true negatives when it comes to their bullshit detector.
"It's basically impossible for people outside the scientific community related to a specific field to independently test or verify extremely progressive science in that field..."
That's not necessarily true. For example, a statistician may not know anything about biology or medicine, but she could prove that a paper in a biomedical research journal was worthless by showing that the authors didn't get statistically significant results or made errors in their statistical computations.
Or someone with no knowledge of the field at all could notice that a paper that was cited as a supporting reference for a claim had been later withdrawn by its authors after being busted for scientific misconduct.
I can understand why an organisation like TED would prefer to err on the side of false positives over true negatives when it comes to their bullshit detector.