There’s an article on falsifying a scientific hypothesis – to go directly click The Criteria For Falsifying A Scientific Hypothesis — Manhattan Contrarian
A falsifiable theory is one that makes predictions which can be tested and potentially contradicted by empirical evidence, meaning there exists some observation or experiment that could show the theory to be incorrect (Popper, 1934) It’s good to be able to check a theory’s reliability.
We proved an explanation incorrect – some fairly big names in polling had explained that American Indians tend not to answer polls – and we wound up with 2 communities on the same reservation, one predominately White, the other predominately Native (like 80+ percent on both) and we had our quasi-random experiment. By the time we were done checking, we found the answer – there are more Indians to a PO Box than Whites. When the conventional wisdom is falsified, the research makes for a good thesis.
The Contrarian’s article deals with how, in general, the climate alarmists don’t state their hypotheses in a manner that allows testing – and then they show hurricanes over the last 45 years or so:
It’s a hard data set to use as proof that tropical storms are getting worse – for any reason, not just anthropic global warming.
I liked the article – we need people explaining how to test the hypothesis. I was one of the lucky researchers who found data that absolutely falsified my hypothesis – despite the statistics supporting it. If you want a fairly fast read on a subject you’ve heard lots about, click the link and read the article.
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