Falsifiable Quotes & Sayings

Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality. — Karl Popper

Science does not limit itself merely to what is currently verifiable. But it is interested in questions that are potentially verifiable (or, rather, falsifiable). — Sam Harris

The past is always triple-A. We can all remember what the past was. But if we try to make the future triple-A, we have no future. The future is always single-B. — Michael Milken

A good scientific law or theory is falsifiable just because it makes definite claims about the world. For the falsificationist, If follows fairly readily from this that the more falsifiable a theory is the better, in some loose sense of more. The more a theory claims, the more potential opportunities there will be for showing that the world does not in fact behave in the way laid down by the theory. A very good theory will be one that makes very wide-ranging claims about the world, and which is consequently highly falsifiable, and is one that resists falsification whenever it is put to the test. — Alan F. Chalmers

A good scientific theory is one which is falsifiable, which has not been falsified. — Richard Dawkins

When I was about 13 or 14, I had an English teacher who made a deal with me that I could get out of doing all of the year's regular work if I would write a short story a week and on Friday read it to the class. — Victor Salva

In science, if an idea is not falsifiable, it is not that it is wrong, it is that we cannot determine if it is wrong, and thus it is not even wrong. — Michael Shermer

I think our science is a marvelous tool. Of course it has its politics, its failings, its mistakes, like all other human endeavors, but I think the methodology of our science - using it to postulate and to use the proper approach of creating falsifiable hypotheses and then testing them to see if they ring true, and then progressing by finding the anomalies to our theoretical structure, and then improving our theoretical structure to take care and test the anomalies - is the way to go, because that helps us discover what the universe.is all about and our relationship to it. — Edgar Mitchell

Religion demands complete conviction, but science advises against that. It demands understanding instead of belief, so it must be based on verifiable evidence; it must explain related observations with a measurable degree of accuracy; it must withstand continuous critical analysis in peer review; and it must be falsifiable too. If it doesn't fulfill all these conditions at once, then it isn't science. If it meets none of them, it could be religion. — Aron Ra

Falsifiability for a theory is great, but a theory can still be respectable even if it is not falsifiable, as long as it is verifiable. — Brian Greene

That was very close to getting killed. Usually at pop festivals we have people jumping on stage. — Alice Cooper

Now, I normally do not like it when people sing near me, much less at me. I don't care if they're good, bad, or mediocre. It's all the same. Unless you're signed to a major label with music I can find on iTunes, I don't want to hear your live performance. It's why I can't watch American Idol. I keep worrying the contestants will mess up and be embarrassed, and then I'll be embarrassed for them. — Lauren Morrill

As someone who has long loved history and reads a lot of history, especially when you get a distance like 130 years, these people can seem almost mythical, and you need something tangible to make them real. — Candice Millard

A falsifiable theory is one that makes a specific prediction about what results are supposed to occur under a set of experimental conditions, so that the theory might be falsified by performing the experiment and comparing predicted to actual results. A theory or explanation that cannot be falsified falls outside the domain of science. For example, Freudian psychoanalysis, which does not make specific experimental predictions, is able to revise its theory to match any observations, in order to avoid rejecting the theory altogether. By this reckoning, Freudianism is a pseudoscience, a theory that purports to be scientific but is in fact immune to falsification. In contrast, for example, Einstein's theory of relativity made predictions (like the bending of starlight around the sun) that were novel and specific, and provided opportunities to disprove the theory by direct experimental observation.
[The folly of scientism] — Austin L. Hughes

How about that one? Is that a constellation?" I asked, pointing upward. We were down in the small valley where the truck was parked. Alex sat leaning against a rock; I was between his legs with my back against his chest, his arms around me as we stared up at the stars.
"Yeah, that's the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades." He bent his head, and I caught my breath as his warm mouth nuzzled at my neck. I hadn't gotten even remotely used yet to how good it felt to be kissed by Alex.
"It's so sexy how you know all of this," I said when I could speak again.
"Yeah?" I heard the grin in his voice. "I know the summer constellations, too. Will that get me bonus kisses?"
"I think it might, actually. — L.A. Weatherly

The problem with intelligent-design theory, is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable. Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet - a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school's science curriculum. — George Will

Okay, are you really 'experimenting'? How do you know if you're really experimenting? You're working on it methodically and you're publishing the results! It's not an experiment if you don't publish the results in some verifiable and falsifiable form, okay? — Bruce Sterling

Methodological naturalism is a "ground rule" of science today which requires scientists to seek explanations in the world around us based upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify — Robert T. Pennock

Science is defined in various ways, but today it is generally restricted to something which is experimental, which is repeatable, which can be predicted, and which is falsifiable. — Walter Lang

John could have prevented all of this from happening, but instead chose to educate us through the obscenity of proof. — David Price