This I also disagree with. Scientific theories are no more amenable to rigorous disproof than they are to rigorous proof: it is always possible to retain a theory, whatever the evidence, by modifying auxiliary hypotheses, and sometimes that's clearly the right thing to do. I'm no philosopher of science, but my impression is that falsification is pretty much dead as a demarcation criterion for science. In practice, one produces evidence for and against theories.
No, falsification is still alive and is ESSENTIAL for something to be a scientific theory. If it's not falsifiable, it's not science! Yes, sometimes the theory can be modified to fit the new data, but sometimes it can't . Either way, the original theory was shown to be false.
This is just the very basic scientific method, which I was taught in grade school. And this is the way science is done professionally, whether you agree with it or not. I am really surprised at how many folks here misunderstand or disagree with the scientific method! I am new to posting here; my initial impression is that this crowd is either not very scientifically literate or is intentionally being disingenuous to promote some agenda other than science.
If you want another opinion, take a look at
"scientific method" in wikipedia. Here's an excerpt:
Falsifiability, or the elimination of plausible alternatives. This is a gradual process that requires repeated experiments by multiple researchers who must be able to replicate results in order to corroborate them. This requirement, one of the most frequently contended, leads to the following: All hypotheses and theories are in principle subject to disproof. Thus, there is a point at which there might be a consensus about a particular hypothesis or theory, yet it must in principle remain tentative. As a body of knowledge grows and a particular hypothesis or theory repeatedly brings predictable results, confidence in the hypothesis or theory increases.
And here's an excerpt from the entry on
"science":Scientists never claim absolute knowledge of nature or the behavior of the subject of the field of study. Certain scientific "facts" are linguistic (such as the fact that humans are mammals), but these are true only by definition, and they reflect only truths relative to agreed convention. These deductive facts may be absolute, but they only say something about human language and expression, but not about the external world. This part of science is like mathematics.
Another part of science is inductive, and attempts to say something about the external world which is not true by definition, but can be shown to be true in specific instances by experiment or observation. Unlike a mathematical proof, a scientific theory which makes statements about nature in an inductive way, is always open to falsification, if new evidence is presented. Even the most basic and fundamental theories may turn out to be imperfect if new observations are inconsistent with them. Critical to this process is making every relevant aspect of research publicly available, which permits peer review of published results, and also allows ongoing review and repeating of experiments and observations by multiple researchers operating independently of one another. Only by fulfilling these expectations can it be determined how reliable the experimental results are for potential use by others.