Your response is completely orthogonal to what I said. I'm not too interested in hashing out the basics of the philosophy of science for the purpose of pedantr

Your response is completely orthogonal to what I said. I'm not too interested in hashing out the basics of the philosophy of science for the purpose of pedantry on the internet. That said-- Specific theories and predictions of phrenology were debunked and discarded with evidence. That happens to make almost all the utility evaporate, but that's not to say there's not quite any left. Of course, there's a whole lot of predictions and data from alchemy that became the body of knowledge of chemistry, too, even if a lot more evaporated. The other thing to point out is that the overall scientific method itself has evolved and is still evolving. Debating various kinds of errors and their nature made in the 18th century when even early 19th century practice was sufficient to refute them is not likely to be productive.