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You should phone up CERN and tell them to call off the search for the higgs boson. Karl Popper may have prescriptively described science as working in one part
by JetSetWilly 10y ago
You should phone up CERN and tell them to call off the search for the higgs boson.
Karl Popper may have prescriptively described science as working in one particular fashion, but in the real world it doesn't work that way at all, when you look at what scientists actually do.
- deathhand 10y agoFor tangible objects I agree. This thread is originally talking about social issues however. Social issues can be hypothesized in any way because there is such a wide variety of human behavior.
- guscost 10y agoThe Higgs is what Popper called a "risky prediction" in his writing. Not seeing a spike (the expected outcome without the theory) would have falsified it, so it qualifies as science. You could say that 125 GeV was one of a few different predictions, but it was still risky to predict a spike somewhere around there. Also the hardcore Popperians will reply that many people who the mainstream considers scientists don't actually do science ;)