> At this point, we've really nailed down Have we really nailed it down? Except within a certain faction of purists who want to purge science of anything that

> At this point, we've really nailed down Have we really nailed it down? Except within a certain faction of purists who want to purge science of anything that cannot be falsified in the short term, and outside of textbooks influenced by their opinions, I don't see any consensus on what constitutes the scientific method and what falls outside of it. How do we know that there won't be further "major modifications" over the next 100 years? Modern people often suffer the illusion that they exist at the apex of history, and their proud claims of perfection just as often fail to stand the test of time. > It took a long time simply because falsifiability wasn't an ingrained scientific process in the age of Copernicus. No, it took a long time because the technology needed to falsify geocentrism simply did not exist until the mid-19th century. Likewise, we currently do not have the technology to test large parts of contemporary theoretical physics. In fact, it seems to be in the very nature of theoretical physics that its predictions are hard to test. I can't think of a single major advance in modern physics that took less than a decade to test conclusively. > 500-year experiments should be very low on the list I agree. But when it comes to highly abstract theories of cosmology, do we really need to compile a list of priorities at all? It's not as if string theorists and multiverse proponents are asking for funding to send probes to outer space. It's all armchair speculation at this point, and nobody's forcing anyone to believe anything. If we as a society can afford to throw money at SF films and number-puzzle games with a high "geek factor", surely we can afford to let some professors engage in geeky speculation for a few more centuries? Because that's all I mean by "support to the best of our abilities". Just keep respecting them as fellow scientists whose conjectures unfortunately cannot be tested within their lifetime. Acknowledge that a small fraction of our scientific workforce needs to be engaged in such long-term projects, and take comfort in the fact that this fraction will always remain small. Or have we become so insecure, narrow-minded, and obsessed with short-term ROI's that we cannot stand the sight of as-yet-unfalsified theories occupying the precious pages of our journals?