ABSTRACT
The destruction of a theory modus tollens is a matter of deductive logic; whereas that the “confirmation” of a theory by its making successful predictions involves a much weaker kind of inference. The writing of behavioral scientists often reads as though they assumed—what it is hard to believe anyone would explicitly assert if challenged—that successful and unsuccessful predictions are practically on all fours in arguing for and against a substantive theory. Upon some complicated, unknown mathematical function of the finite list of “important” determiners is then superimposed an indefinitely large number of essentially “random” factors which contribute to the intragroup variation and therefore boost the error term of the statistical significance test. Meanwhile the eager-beaver researcher, undismayed by logic-of-science considerations and relying blissfully on the “exactitude” of modern statistical hypothesis-testing, has produced a long publication list and been promoted to a full professorship.
