An honest scientist would pose this as a null hypothesis and begin attempting to falsify it. Which is what molecular biologists are doing when they study the various abiogenesis hypotheses that don't exist.
There are many problems in science that cannot be solved in an afternoon. How many years passed between Copernicus and Newton, or between Newton and Einstein? How long did it take to build a coherent table of chemical elements? Do we have one now?
"An honest scientist would pose this as a null hypothesis and begin attempting to falsify it."
It is already falsifiable. The test will be if scientists are be able to assemble simple (or even complex) life forms from nonliving matter in the lab. If however, any life forms are shown to spontaneously arise from nonliving matter (in a naturally occurring environment), it would falsify this hypothesis.
Both of these directions are already being explored and will be regardless of the ID debate.
If it is shown that simple life forms do self organize like the elements of the periodic table, then this ID hypothesis will be proved wrong.
There are really only a very limited number of possibilities for the origin of life. ID has the only current scientific hypothesis for the origin of life.
"How long did it take to build a coherent table of chemical elements?"
Dimitri Ivanovitch Mendeleev invented the periodic table of elements. The table contained elements that had not yet been discovered but have subsequently by later scientists. A very interesting story found here;
http://www.zephyrus.co.uk/dimitrimendeleev.html