Healthy Evolution of Science

[Robert L. Oldershaw]

If you want to keep the evolution of scientific knowledge
honest and healthy, then Definitive Predictions are a
sine qua non [mandatory requirement].

Definitive predictions are:

Made PRIOR to the testing.
Are FEASIBLE.
Are QUANTITATIVE.
Are NON-ADJUSTABLE [no fudge, please].
Are UNIQUE to the theory being tested.

String Theory, the Multiverse of 10^10000 random universes,
Boltzmann Brains, Anthropic Reasoning, most
quantum gravity theories, etc., etc., etc.,...,
are not testable in a definitive manner.
They are untestable pseudoscience.

Ask the proponents of these theories to specifically identify
and defend the Definitive Predictions of their Glass Bead Game
theories and watch the squirming start, the beads of sweat forming
on the high foreheads.

Time to get back to traditional science: study nature
[not get intoxicated with abstract mathematics], identify
empirical patterns, derive definitive predictions based on
the identified patterns, test the predictions, and accept the
results [if you look everywhere in the world for magnetic monopoles
and the results are relentlessly negative, then assume
they probably do not exist].

Yours in real, testable science [not post-modern pseudoscience],
Robert L. Oldershaw
www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw