True, Craig, but if we start out with an incorrect basis, then bending toward perfection is nothing but a best attempt like clowns with big shoes picking up beach balls while kicking the beach balls out of reach.
I am a structural philosopher, and the realm of science is not singular, but has two realms within it.
* Golden
* Silver
The Golden realm is available when results are repeatable. We can then even make the strongest demands, such as falsification for proposals.
The Silver realm, however, does not contain repeatable results. Demands must be tempered for the silver realms, because they are over-asking. Falsification is over-asking, for instance, for theories how the prior state of the universe ended.
A common example for a silver science is Archaeology. The artifacts are real and golden, but they cannot be repeated. As such, proposals how finds are linked can therefore not be scrutinized with demands for falsification. The artificats show that something really existed once, and yet we cannot recreate that environment and/or the life form or the artifact itself.
The same for my Big Whisper theory that way too many scientists removed from the table -undiscussed- based on their incorrect demand it can be falsified. We cannot recreate the materialization process and must accept the facts from our material universe as evidence that there was a prior state from which it derived (nobody disagrees here, but set one step in that realm that is not exactly like they all try to agree on and they all scream bloody murder).
Newton would approve the basic setup of the Big Whisper model: What goes in, must come out, and an inward motion is also what created the damage in that prior state. Not the whole transformed, but some parts got damaged and became matter.
https://fred-rick.medium.com/the-big-whisper-theory-for-dummies-38333ffabe0c
Here is my latest article, if interested to learn how matter can fully be explained (but the source for its energy not).
Tim made a good point that scientists cannot claim what I call the gold standard when they are involved in a silver realm of science.
