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[35] [2] One difficulty for empiricists is to account for the justification of knowledge pertaining to fields like mathematics and logic, for example, that 3 is a prime number or that modus ponens is a valid form of deduction. The difficulty is due to the fact that there seems to be no good candidate of empirical evidence that could justify ...
There are many philosophical and historical theories as to how scientific consensus changes over time. Because the history of scientific change is extremely complicated, and because there is a tendency to project "winners" and "losers" onto the past in relation to the current scientific consensus, it is very difficult to come up with accurate and rigorous models for scientific change. [17]
Philosophers, such as Karl R. Popper, have provided influential theories of the scientific method within which scientific evidence plays a central role. [8] In summary, Popper provides that a scientist creatively develops a theory that may be falsified by testing the theory against evidence or known facts.
Use of the phrase "working hypothesis" goes back to at least the 1850s. [7]Charles Sanders Peirce came to hold that an explanatory hypothesis is not only justifiable as a tentative conclusion by its plausibility (by which he meant its naturalness and economy of explanation), [8] but also justifiable as a starting point by the broader promise that the hypothesis holds for research.
A type of research study that tests how well new medical approaches work in people. These studies test new methods of screening, prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of a disease. Also called a clinical trial. (NCI) A clinical trial is a research study to answer specific questions about vaccines or new therapies or new ways of using known ...
A thesaurus (pl.: thesauri or thesauruses), sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings (or in simpler terms, a book where one can find different words with similar meanings to other words), [1] [2] sometimes as a hierarchy of broader and narrower terms, sometimes simply as lists of synonyms and antonyms.
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At one time, when false balance was prevalent, news media sometimes reported all positions as though they were equally credible, even though the facts clearly contradicted a position, or there was a substantial consensus on one side of an issue, and only a fringe or nascent theory supporting the other side.