I think he's trying to make a point similar to the one made by Asimov: https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.ht...

Completely agree. I think people are too hung up on the "falsifiability" term and don't look at the bigger picture

As your link puts nicely: "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

We're not saying they're equally falsifiable though. We have p values and sigmas and statistics to deal with different levels of wrongness and likeliness of being wrong. Nobody's saying that DNA and a bacteria causing influenza are equally likely to be wrong or equally wrong or something. The problem is saying that dna's existence is not falsifiable. That is an incorrect statement. That's all that's being pointed out.

When the likelihood of something starts to drop far below "universe spontaneously stops existing at the same time you're hit by lightning while checking your winning lottery ticket" levels, it might be valid to not treat it as a real option.

And that's what we do in science - after 5 sigma in physics, it's discovered. But remember, an experimental error is a thing, measurement error is a thing. We've been caught on that before, and while something like "this thing exists" is not as likely to be overturned (though things we were very sure existed have been overturned as new instruments and tools became available), our understanding of what that thing does and how it interacts with other things leave room for compounding uncertainty. The great thing is, we have tools in statistics to put a number to that likelihood and allow people to make the subjective calls of what they're willing to treat as an axiom and move on regarding.

> Dna could be falsified

Cool! That’s an interesting idea. I could see particular attributes of DNA being corrected, but How would a molecular basis for inheritance be disproven? After all, we see the molecule on microscopy, we modify it, etc. A dis-proof would have to remain consistent with all of that. What would that look like?

I think "could" is different from "will" - dna's existence is so heavily demonstrated that the chance of somehow disproving is is basically nil. But, the fact that we could disprove it (we look at it and don't see it there) helps us confirm its existence - in general in science something has to be falsifiable to be able to be demonstrated to be likely to be true if that makes sense, otherwise there's no way to obtain more evidence.

So it could be disproven, but will it? No. It definitely exists. But could it? Yep, that's how we know it exists in a scientific context. It's a bit counterintuitive, but it's the language of science. You see it in how physicists talk about discoveries - how many sigma they are. That's basically saying how likely it is the null hypothesis (sort of the falsification of the discovery) is true - and there's a point where it's so low (5 sigma traditionally) that it is considered "discovered." But that discovery is qualified with the chance that it's falsifiable.

I don't know if that was a clear explanation - if not let me know so I can try clarifying. It was something that took me a while to wrap my head around - that it's only demonstrable if falsifiable, but it's a core part of a lot of scientific theory today

The existence of DNA will never be falsified. The experiments which discovered DNA happened. New experiments don't make old experiments un-happen. Similarly, the fact DNA->RNA->protein is how it works at least some of the time isn't going to become false.

Those experiments could be wrong. They likely aren't and are like however many sigma accurate to the point that for all intents and purposes it's guaranteed to exist, but there's a reason that physisicts waited for 5 sigmabaccuracy before announcing the higgs for example. Other things people were really confident about existing because they thought they saw it, like a bacteria that causes influenza, with their own eyes, turned out to be false. you intellectually honest thing to say is that yes it is incredibly incredibly incredibly likely that DNA will not be falsified. But you can't say that with absolute certainty. it's not like in mathematics where you create the rules of the game and then can prove that within those rules you can accomplish XYZ which is a proof. We didn't write the rules of the universe.

OK, let's explore this concept a bit more: Could a future experiment disprove the existence of Mount Everest?

Yes. It could all be a conspiracy or some sort of insane natural illusion. Or a dream.

Will a future experiment disprove it though? Of course not. But could one? Sure. There's an important distinction.

Also, we could end up redefining what we mean by a mountain, or come to some scientific consensus that somehow redefines mount Everest as not a mountain or something. I know that's not in the spirit of the question you posted (Pluto may be declared to not be a planet, but nothing actually changed and it doesn't know we put it in a different bucket). The height could be redefined, etc. All that is super nitpicky and of course, I'm being a bit unreasonable in this response, there will not be any experiment that disproves its existence. But there still could. In the binary of is there any possibility however minuscule or not, the coin lands on the side of there is a possibility.

The important point is falsifiability works as a tool here that actually helps continuously support the mountain's existence. If it was impossible to falsify and you could not conduct experiments where you would be able to evaluate whether or not the mountain is actually there, you'd have no way of being actually sure. One experiment is just looking at it. You could not see anything and falsify it, but because it's a testable hypothesis, you have run an experiment providing more evidence for its existence. It's why non-falsifiable statements are looked down on science. If it wasn't possible for a future experiment to disprove the existence of the mountain, many or all scientists would say it's either a meaningless question or a question of faith instead.

Sure, the existence of Mount Everest could be an international conspiracy for example. Or, you could be dreaming right now, and when you wake up you'll google "Mount Everest" and find no such thing exists