Many times the first or first few teams won’t know what the confounding variables are and subsequent research is needed to find them. They should still report their initial “hmm, that’s novel” findings even if it later turns out that it’s explained by confounding variables.
*-No true Scotsman
No. This is methodology. The job of a scientist is to advance scientific knowledge. This is as vague as it needs to be.
Popper didn't do science. He did philosophy. He also did a fine job of formalising methods, and abstracting the methods scientists were using into a Scientific Method. This scientific method is a great achievement and a wonderful, multipurpose probe. That does not mean it fits in all orifices. The job of a scientist is not to continue hammering until the probe fits.
Elucidating confounding variables and controlling for them is the entire fucking job of a scientist.
To your example, if they publish a paper that explicitly highlights that it worked well for sedentary kids with typical diets of X, Y, and Z in region Q, then it failing to be a found in other environments isn’t a problem.
It’s a problem when these clowns do a test on one specific group of 20 people and then generalize to, “doing X leads to Y in humans”.
The answer is absolutely not loosening up the constraints. It’s to keep lambasting people who generalize before anything has been reproduced widely.
Popper’s science is fine. Morons who don’t realize what they measured are the problem.