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FALSIFIABILITY (OR REFUTABILITY)
A central tenet of science which demands that all claims or assertions investigated by science must be open to being proven false. If a researcher cannot define what would count as empirical or experimental disproof of a claim then the claim itself must fall outside the domain of science. This tenet is consistent with the belief that in science it is possible to prove something false, but not to prove something true. In fact it is assumed that we can never prove something to be true, we can only fail to disprove something and therefore accept its truth for the time being. Science does not simply try to illustrate or demonstrate its theories or hypotheses, rather, it actively tries to disprove them.

Last updated 2002--0-9-


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Athabaca University ICAAP

© Robert Drislane, Ph.D. and Gary Parkinson, Ph.D.
The online version of this dictionary is a product of
Athabasca University and
ICAAP

*This social science dictionary has 1000
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