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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> Which is not necessarily true - for example, many arguments against the theory of evolution question whether it is a falsifiable theory

The “theory of evolution” is a large composite explanatory story wrapped around a large number of testable (mostly thoroughly tested) hypotheses. It's falsifiable by falsifying any of the components, though the replacement is liable to look remarkably similar but for who the falsified piece is addressed, and still likely to be called the “theory of evolution” even though the content is different.

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Of course, any number of subsets of the theory being disproved could falsify the super-set theory. But if there are two super-set theories, and you cannot falsify one over the other, then those collections are not falsifiable.

Some philosophers argue that all the subsets of evolution - genetics, mutations, natural selection could still support permanence of species with local changes. Until you can create an entirely new species in a laboratory without direct gene editing, there cannot be positive proof for evolution - but till that is done, there is no negative test that would disprove that evolution is the consequence of all its component hypotheses.

Personally, I don't see any reason to doubt evolution, considering it is neat and beautiful. But at the same time, I can see that it hasn't been built via the same scientific method seen in physics.

> Until you can create an entirely new species in a laboratory without direct gene editing, there cannot be positive proof for evolution

Being able to do that is no more positive proof of evolution than any of the more or practical tests. Also, speciation has been observed and created in controlled settings without direct gene editing (indeed, some before gene editing was even a thing), so if it was positive proof of evolution, we could mark that off as proven absolutely.

What is the scientific method used in physics

Again, even this has variations - Einstein's method of arriving at SR and GR differed entirely from the way experimental physicists arrived at QM

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