IANAL

Often on /. you will see people when talking about legal matters say IANAL (which stands for I am not a lawyer) but you don't see people say things like IANAS (I am not a scientist) my presumption in this matter is that the disclaimer exists because dispensing legal advise while not a lawyer is a crime, perhaps there should be a law against dispensing bad science as well and we could stop the scientists for Exxon (the earth isn't getting hotter crowd) and the Ignorant Design people (I'm no kin to a monkey) people from representing their bullshit as science. Note I'm not saying that they shouldn't be allowed to freely speak their ideas about things, but representing those ideas as science is wrong.