Which concept states that a theory must be capable of being proven wrong; otherwise it is not useful scientifically?

Which concept states that a theory must be capable of being proven wrong; otherwise it is not useful scientifically?

• A. Falsifiable
• B. Theory
• C. Inductive reasoning
• D. Deductive reasoning

Answer: (A)

Falsifiability is the idea that a scientific theory must be testable in a way that could, in principle, show it false. This keeps science open to correction: if new observations don’t match the predictions, the theory can be revised or discarded. A truly scientific theory makes clear, testable predictions so that potential disconfirming evidence could exist. For example, a theory that predicts a specific outcome under certain conditions could be falsified by an observation that contradicts that outcome; since this could happen, the theory remains scientifically meaningful even though it hasn’t been proven true in every case. This differs from the other concepts because a theory is simply the explanatory framework, while inductive reasoning describes forming generalizations from data and deductive reasoning describes deriving conclusions from general principles. Those are methods of reasoning, whereas falsifiability is about whether a theory can, in principle, be tested and potentially disproven.

Falsifiability is the idea that a scientific theory must be testable in a way that could, in principle, show it false. This keeps science open to correction: if new observations don’t match the predictions, the theory can be revised or discarded. A truly scientific theory makes clear, testable predictions so that potential disconfirming evidence could exist. For example, a theory that predicts a specific outcome under certain conditions could be falsified by an observation that contradicts that outcome; since this could happen, the theory remains scientifically meaningful even though it hasn’t been proven true in every case.

This differs from the other concepts because a theory is simply the explanatory framework, while inductive reasoning describes forming generalizations from data and deductive reasoning describes deriving conclusions from general principles. Those are methods of reasoning, whereas falsifiability is about whether a theory can, in principle, be tested and potentially disproven.