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Popper might say it's silly to pretend that our knowledge of nature, even our best knowledge, is certain when it isn't, or that the value of that knowledge is dependent on it being so.

The problem I have with the skeptical view is not that I think we know everything we need to know. We certainly do not and it would be a silly claim to say so. However, what I disagree with is that we cannot have certainty about anything. Scientists go through great trouble, sometimes working decades to prove one little point. I think it is a disservice to such seekers of truth to say that nothing is ever proven.

Further, while we have gone into some interesting side issues as a result of this question no one yet has been willing to deny that the Earth goes around the sun or that the parent's genes are the source of the child's (that of course would be an absolute contradiction of evolutionary theory if denied!). I mean, does anyone here really believe that in a hundred or a thousand years such will be proven to be false?

Popper wasn't a skeptic, he was a philosophical realist. And we indeed cannot have certainty (in the straightforward sense of the term) in ANY claim about the natural world because our information is ALWAYS incomplete and there is ALWAYS the possiblity that new facts or knowledge will undermine our previous claims.

This is NOT skepticism. It does NOT mean that our knowledge of the natural world is not good, or valid, or useful, or anything of the like. All it means is that our knowledge is always subject to improvement or revision.

Honestly, scientists can never shoot for absolute certainty. They can shoot for high statistical probability that an observation will be repeated; however, there is always the tiniest possibility that something else might crop up. At least this is how my junior high school science teacher explained it 25 years ago. Of course, nowadays junior high school teachers (and, indeed, any public school teachers) are barely able to sign their own names so I can understand where misunderstandings might arise.

Scientists go through great trouble, sometimes working decades to prove one little point. I think it is a disservice to such seekers of truth to say that nothing is ever proven.

You chided me for playing with symantics, but now you are playing with symantics.

There was a fairly lengthy period between the general acceptance of the heliocentric solar system and Newton's equations for gravity. During these centuries, the only advantage of heliocentrism was that it simplified calculations -- and that only after Kepler.

There are always periods in science when paradigms are accepted without the seal of formal proof.