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===== Why Science Never Proves Anything =====

Science, much like other instances of human thinking, involves the construction of models, or the making of convenient fictions, that help us predict things that may happen in the future and to plot our way forward. As with language in general, it deals with reality in an indirect way. However, through its long history, and especially the last one hundred and fifty years or so, it has learned how to avoid mistakes in practice that rather reliably lead to mistaken conclusions or predictions. The result is that the reliability of, e.g., predictions based on Newtonian physics is expected to be influenced by practical matters such as the accuracy of scales used in an experiment. The better the apparatuses used in an experiment, the closer the results are expected to come to the answers based on theoretical considerations. Before Relativity and Quantum Physics came along, many responsible physicists believed that their models matched reality. But at the extremes of the very large and the very small, the old models broke down.

That cautionary tale makes physicists unwilling to say anything more than that a given theory has been very well substantiated by experiment and real-world utilization of them. Not too long ago there were some experiments to measure the time it took for neutrinos to travel from one laboratory to another a very long distance away. For reasons having to do with parts of the transmission system, the experiments led to the conclusion that neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light. The implication of those results were that physics was in big trouble. Theories would have to be changed or replaced with something new that could account for the super-speedy neutrinos. Later the measurements were shown to have been incorrect, and the hubbub quickly died down. My point, however, is that physicists must take recognizance of the possibility that the next experiment will disprove the theory it tests.

We would all be much better off if we could regard our conclusions regarding people and events in our social world with equal humility.

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