Falsificationism falsifies itself: it is a theory scientists refuse to abandon despite mountains of observations that falsify it
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(Falsificationism is the theory that scientists abandon a theory when they find evidence against it. This essentially never happens.)
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Replying to @Meaningness
Agree about the sociology of science here, but to me falsification is about the conditions under which knowledge grows.
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Replying to @KevinSimler @Meaningness
Falsification is the ideal towards which science (and scientists) should strive. Whether they live up to it is a secondary question.
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Replying to @KevinSimler
I think the actual issue is whether a group is open to the possibility of adopting an alternative theory—not “falsification” as such.
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Replying to @Meaningness @KevinSimler
The processes by which an epistemologically sane group considers & eventually adopts a better theory are complex, >
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Replying to @Meaningness @KevinSimler
and are, empirically, not well-described by falsificationism.
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Replying to @Meaningness @KevinSimler
isn't it driven by "weight of evidence" in some sense? Don't you think any formalism ever captures this reasonably well?
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Replying to @_Srijit @KevinSimler
Falsificationism considers a single theory in isolation. A weight of evidence theory is about comparing two theories.
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Replying to @Meaningness @KevinSimler
So you disagree with Deborah Mayo then? Shouldn't we ever abandon a theory without something ready to turn to?
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I think we sometimes should. But falsificationism is the claim that scientists actually do [they don’t] or always should [usually wrong].
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