Ej heller bör man nöja sej med att tidigare forskning man själv eller andra gjort stämmer överens med nya resultat. Jag kopierar Poppers lista för hur lätt man kan gå i fällan som forskare (på engelska):
- It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory — if we look for confirmations.
- Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory — an event which would have refuted the theory.
- Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.
- A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
- Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.
- Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of "corroborating evidence.")
- Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers — for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such a rescuing operation as a "conventionalist twist" or a "conventionalist stratagem.")
Vad tycks? Det ska väl inte vara så svårt att bygga en vetenskaplig teori om man bara följer dessa råd. Jag tar upp detta med anledning av diverse debacle inom IPCC och framför allt bland de som gör politik till vetenskap, vilket inte minst grekerna fått erfara. Mer i detta ämne kommer så småningom.
"Politik är konsten att leta efter problem, finna det överallt, feldiagnostisera det och applicera fel lösningar på det."
