On 12/03/2009 04:57 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Theories are a dime a dozen in this business. As far as I know none of them makes useful predictions -- or even testable predictions! So they are useless. Heck, they aren't even theories, just speculation. A theory is not viable unless it can be tested and falsified.
If I recall correctly, Hagelstein's theory based on phonon coupling to the lattice made testable predictions. However, that was a number of years ago, and since the theory seems to have sunk without a trace, I'd have to guess that it was, indeed, "falsified", so to speak.
