Majority Quote by David Deutsch

Theories are not rejected by cirsumstantial evidence: it takes a theory to beat a theory.

— George Stigler

The common idea that scientists reject a theory as soon as it leads to a contradiction is just not so. When they get something…

— Vannevar Bush

If you can't think of an observation that could disprove a theory, that theory simply isn't scientific.

— Jerry A. Coyne

A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong

— Francis Crick

Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete

— Isaac Asimov

Unfortunately, in the field of evolution most explanations are not good. As a matter of fact, they hardly qualify as explanations at all; they…

— Norman Macbeth

But some of these theories are so bold that they can clash with reality: they are the testable theories of science. And when they…

— Karl Popper

[Those] who have an excessive faith in their theories or in their ideas are not only poorly disposed to make discoveries, but they also…

— Claude Bernard

The test of a theory is its ability to cope with all the relevant phenomena, not its a priori 'reasonableness'. The latter would have…

— John Polkinghorne

If the experiments which I urge be defective, it cannot be difficult to show the defects; but if valid, then by proving the theory,…

— Isaac Newton

Every theory presented as a scientific concept is just that; it's a theory that tries to explain more about the world than previous theories…

— Marvin Harris

The incorrectness and weaknesses of a theory cause other minds to formulate the problems more exactly and in this way scientific progress is made.

— Robert Barany