N.Wells
Posts: 1836
Joined: Oct. 2005
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| Quote (GaryGaulin @ Jan. 15 2015,17:31) | From:
http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin....y216034
| Quote (Texas Teach @ Feb. 02 2013,18:51) | | The usual mad-on for falsification, plus a bonus. He seems to think that falsification is unnecessary because you can only use to prove false theories false. This is similar to afdave's problems with the idea. Gary doesn't seem to get that falsifiable isn't the same as false, and thinks it's better to just look for "incoherence" in ideas to tell whether they're true or not. Some of us realize it's possible to write a completely logically coherent idea that is dead wrong. |
Texas Teach just proved that they have been teaching what university level science educators now consider to be a "myth".
| Quote | Black_Rose - Thursday, January 15, 2015 2:45:00 PM
How about the myth of Popperian falsification? |
| Quote | Laurence A. Moran - Thursday, January 15, 2015 3:58:00 PM
Yeah. That too. |
| Quote | Joe FelsensteinThursday, January 15, 2015 4:23:00 PM
Popperian falsification is believed by many biologists to be the basis all inference in biology. But in molecular phylogenetics the data are a stochastic outcome of random processes. There is no outcome of the data that is absolutely impossible, no matter what the hypothesis. So the whole framework of Popperian falsification collapses.
The same is true in other disciplines, as long as there is some random noise in the observations.
Popperian falsification has, in effect, been falsified. Most philosophers of science know this, but many biologists haven't got the news. |
http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2015.......6378745 |
With respect to my last post and your reply, I second NoName's response, and emphasize that your nonsense falls far short of being a theory.
With respect to falsification, it has been standard for decades that some areas or endeavors in science do not proceed by falsification. Nonetheless, you aren't in one of those areas.
Falsification remains critically important in many areas of science. It is, for example, how geology got past biblical interpretations and why those remain wrong. However, not everything in science hangs on falsification all the time. One can usefully collect molecular data and perform phylogenetic analysis without reference to Popper ("let's see what our data shows about the relationships of whales, hippos, deer, and elephants?"), but if you are testing phylogenetic hypotheses (e.g. a test of the hypothesis that "according to molecules X, XX, and XXX, whales are more closely related to hippos than deer, elephants, or sea lions" versus the various alternative hypotheses), then one is statistically testing outcomes against hypothetical relationships and discarding the hypotheses that fit least well with the data. This is a slightly weakened version of Platt's strong inference, but using abduction rather than falsification sensu stricto. However, again, you aren't doing anything even remotely like that. In contrast, you aren't ground-truthing your model, you aren't considering alternative hypotheses / explanations, and you are not especially attempting to model anything real or to demonstrate that what you are modelling is real. You aren't making logically valid predictions. You aren't supplying relevant supporting evidence. You don't have operational definitions, or even regular definitions. Your model doesn't even address the most important assertions in your reeking pile of not-a-theory. Without those sorts of things, even if you happened to be 100% right (not that there's any chance of that), no one would accept your conclusions, no one could tell that you were right, and no one would pay any serious attention to your stuff. It's just rubbish, Gary, so unless you are willing to do something scientific, give it up and go do something more useful for you and your family.
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