The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests. We reject them without ever bothering to test them. For example, consider the theory that eating a kilogram of grass is a cure for the common cold. That theory makes experimentally testable predictions: if people tried the grass cure and found it ineffective, the theory would be proved false. But it has never been tested and probably never will be, because it contains no explanation – either of how the cure would work, or of anything else. We rightly presume it to
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