Any Definitive Predictions?

Robert Oldershaw
1 min readFeb 21, 2018

By definitive predictions, I mean those that are:

  1. Feasibly tested,
  2. Made prior to testing,
  3. Quantitative (or qualitative if they are highly diagnostic),
  4. Non-adjustable (i.e., cannot be fudged; no moving goalposts),
  5. Unique to the theory being tested.

This used to be the norm in science. Einstein insisted on this and so did most of his peers. There is nothing wrong with speculation, but it should not be treated the same as definitively predictive science.

Some journals require authors to list funding sources. I would like to see authors required to provide a list of definitive predictions, or acknowledge a lack thereof.

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