ABSTRACT
It is some time in the 1980s: the (UK) Physiological Society is in session. A dynamic young American visitor is conducting his audience through a sequential investigation. Three times in the allotted 10 minutes of his talk he says: ‘So we challenged that hypothesis by…’, and then describes his team’s next experiment. To those who know a little philosophy of science, this is pure Karl Popper: conjectures, followed promptly by checks of what each conjecture would predict-i.e. by attempts at refutation.
