How Good is Your Theory? Open Thread I – Starts With A Bang Ethan Siegel proposed this hierarchy:
3. Scientific law - superstrong, very well tested, though may still get some modifications.
2. Validated - strong, but with some problems.
1. Speculative - neither well-supported nor rejected.
0. Ruled out - rejected with the force of scientific law.
(my descriptions) This is for assessing what one sees in news-media stories, because all too often such stories don't present how strong various theories and results are. Furthermore, speculative stuff is often more dramatic than well-established stuff.
His ratings:
(measured off of his graph) There are some problems. In the late 19th cy., one would plausibly have claimed that Newtonian mechanics was close to 3, but a few decades later, relativity and quantum mechanics became very well established, reducing Newtonianism to an approximation for (length)/(time) << c and (mass)*(length)^2/(time) >> h. A very successful approximation nonetheless, and still worth a 3 there.
Here are some notable speculative or controversial hypotheses of the past that are nowadays pretty close to 3:
Continental drift, Late-Pleistocene giant floods, impact cratering, eukaryotic endosymbiosis
Here are some more speculative hypotheses that have gotten a lot of support in recent years, and that may be close to 2:
The RNA world in the early evolution of life, Mars's former ocean, the Moon's origin by a giant impact, cosmic inflation
These ones are closer to 1, I think:
Supersymmetry, grand unified theories, string theory (pretty much 1, I'd say)
3. Scientific law - superstrong, very well tested, though may still get some modifications.
2. Validated - strong, but with some problems.
1. Speculative - neither well-supported nor rejected.
0. Ruled out - rejected with the force of scientific law.
(my descriptions) This is for assessing what one sees in news-media stories, because all too often such stories don't present how strong various theories and results are. Furthermore, speculative stuff is often more dramatic than well-established stuff.
His ratings:
- General relativity: 3
- Dark matter: 2.2
- Cosmic inflation: 1.9
- Extra dimensions: 0.975
- The Earth being 6000 years old: 0.0375
(measured off of his graph) There are some problems. In the late 19th cy., one would plausibly have claimed that Newtonian mechanics was close to 3, but a few decades later, relativity and quantum mechanics became very well established, reducing Newtonianism to an approximation for (length)/(time) << c and (mass)*(length)^2/(time) >> h. A very successful approximation nonetheless, and still worth a 3 there.
Here are some notable speculative or controversial hypotheses of the past that are nowadays pretty close to 3:
Continental drift, Late-Pleistocene giant floods, impact cratering, eukaryotic endosymbiosis
Here are some more speculative hypotheses that have gotten a lot of support in recent years, and that may be close to 2:
The RNA world in the early evolution of life, Mars's former ocean, the Moon's origin by a giant impact, cosmic inflation
These ones are closer to 1, I think:
Supersymmetry, grand unified theories, string theory (pretty much 1, I'd say)
via JREF Forum http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=271819&goto=newpost
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