Popper is the missing link of what, exactly?
I strongly suggest that, instead of trying to ascribe characteristics to a field that you do not know at all, you go and take a few introductory science classes. While you keep trying to assign to Popper a significance he does not have, you have yet to mention a single person who actually has impacted the field of life science in the way you imagine Popper has. People who are influential in science are actually discussed within the scientific literature. And that includes Obama and his policies--which you seem to think scientists are ignorant of, only because you know so little about the scientific community.
Among other things, your sarcasm meter. I was mimicking the structure of your earlier post to show by mocking example in another context, how the assertions therein were insufficient to support the conclusions.
The classic example of that form of argument can be summarized by the syllogism, "If that chair had an invisible cat in it, that chair would look empty. But the chair does in fact look empty; there is therefore an invisible cat in that chair."
("If punctuated equilibrium were true, we would find a dearth of apparent transitional forms in the fossil record. But there is in fact a paucity of observed transitional forms in the fossil record; the existence of punctuated equilibrium is therefore confirmed.")
And you are apparently frustrated to the point of ad hominem ("go and take a few introductory science classes"). I won't answer this either way, because I found that when someone is in the kind of mood to retort like that, anything said in response is used merely as grounds to further the attack.
People who are influential in science are actually discussed within the scientific literature. And that includes Obama and his policies--which you seem to think scientists are ignorant of, only because you know so little about the scientific community.
Apparently you misunderstood my comment, and from that jumped to the conclusion that I am ignorant about science.
The actual issue I was addressing, however, was not in that subculture of science consisting of the professors and governmental lab type researchers (and their students and post-docs) who reference one another's papers and prior results, and argue out interpretations in order to develop a consensus on the best model.
That is one form of influence, one of having developed a new area of inquiry, or begun or significantly impacted a model.
But there is an entirely different form of influence, one which is "upstream" of all of this, and it is invisible much as the water spots and dirt on a window are invisible: present all the time, but ignored as part of the sine qua non of much of modern science as we know and practice it.
People who are the MOST influential in science, and who are generally not discussed extensively (other than a perfunctory tip o' the hat at the end of the article), are those who FUND the research: the governmental, military, and other bureaucratic entities who provide the grant money.
'Tis much harder to publish without equipment, lab, or students; and for that you need cash.
See also "anthropogenic global warming" and the antics of the likes of Ben Santer or Michael Mann or James Hansen for more details.
Cheers!