Karl Popper is famous for a breakthrough idea in science theory that looks obvious in hindsight. Throughout history, science was plagued by the question when something can be said to be true. When are you entitled to say that all metals are magnetic? Or all swans are white? Those sentences are impossible to verify, because you cannot go out there in the universe and test the magnetic properties of every asteroid you find.
Popper solved that problem with something he called “Falsification”. Simplified, he said it’s ok to consider something to be true, until we find evidence that counter the claim.
For example, it’s ok to consider “All swans are white” to be true, until you find a non-white swan.
That implies two things: First, every theory - in order to be considered scientific - must tell you how you could prove it wrong - it must be falsifiable. Second, you actually have to go and check.
That was a great insight that solved a lot of science’s problems in the late and middle 20th century. But it was also quickly abused. Because the flip side of that idea is: If you find just a tiny hole in the reasoning or the data of a huge corpus of scientific work, falsification gives you an excuse to dismiss the whole concept.
This is how climate-change deniers work: They ignore the fact how incredible it is that theoretical climate change models work at all, and just look for incorrect predications or questionable assumptions, completely ignoring the bigger picture of how our understanding of climate change evolved.
Another way falsification is abused is by claiming that a scientific theory like the theory of evolution is a religious believe, and not a scientific theory, because it struggles to express ways how it could be falsified. And in the eyes of anti-evolution ways of thinking, if you cannot readily show how your theory can be disproven, it must be non-science.
Falsification was all about advancing knowledge and understanding, not about sowing doubt, misrepresenting the scientific qualities of disputed ideas, and outright dismissing big ideas because some detail is off.
In a great essay, Marina Benjamin details the weaponisation of Poppers great idea.
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