Every thread these guys come with the same silly prattle. Every thread, someone has to laboriously explain to them the meaning of "theory" in science, and then they run along only to troll on the next crevo thread. This is as tiresome as it is inane.
Historical scientists are just as captivated by falsificationism as experimental scientists; as three eminent geologists (Kump et al., 1999, p. 201) counsel in a recent textbook discussion of the extinction of the dinosaurs, ‘‘a central tenet of the scientific method is that hypotheses cannot be proved, only disproved.’’ Nevertheless, there is little in the evaluation of historical hypotheses that resembles what is prescribed by falsificationism. The big bang theory of the origin of the universe provides an excellent example. It postulates a particular occurrence (a primordial explosion) for something we can observe today, i.e., the three-degree background radiation, first detected by satellite antennas in the 1960s. Traces, such as the three-degree background radiation, provide evidence for historical hypotheses, just as successful predictions provide evidence for the generalizations tested in experimental science. There is little or no possibility of controlled experiments, however, because the time frame required is too long and/or the relevant test conditions too complex and dependent upon unknown or poorly understood extraneous conditions to be artificially realized.A theory with "smoking gun" evidence is much closer to the path that ID takes than some would like to admit. I think this is why the falsification process of experimental science is played up in evolution threads.
This doesn’t mean, however, that hypotheses about past events can’t be tested. As geologist T.C. Chamberlin (1897) noted, good historical researchers focus on formulating multiple competing (versus single) hypotheses. Chamberlin’s attitude toward the testing of these hypotheses was falsificationist in spirit; each hypothesis was to be independently subjected to severe tests, with the hope that some would survive. A look at the actual practices of historical researchers, however, reveals that the main emphasis is on finding positive evidence— a smoking gun. A smoking gun is a trace that picks out one of the competing hypotheses as providing a better causal explanation for the currently available traces than the others.