scientific theory


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Related to scientific theory: scientific method

scientific theory

a theory that can be tested and potentially disproved; failure to disprove or refute it increases confidence in it, but it cannot be considered as proven.
Farlex Partner Medical Dictionary © Farlex 2012

sci·en·tif·ic the·o·ry

(sī'ĕn-tif'ik thē'ŏr-ē)
A proposition that can be tested and potentially disproved; failure to disprove or refute it increases confidence in it, but it cannot be considered as proven.
Medical Dictionary for the Health Professions and Nursing © Farlex 2012
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References in periodicals archive ?
Novel scientific theory is theory that has not been examined or pronounced on by any court, said the Court of Appeals.
The historical and anecdotal overview of how the structure of DNA was deciphered contains in itself the entire gamut of events in the evolution of a scientific theory and model through competitive scientific endeavor--or, to put it in nonscientific language, a race between scientists across continents.
It did not contain diagrams or specific methods and it did not refer to or incorporate any known scientific theory.
These computer models not only lead to prima facie absurd conclusions, they have not successfully predicted any climatic phenomena, thereby failing the most basic test of a scientific theory.
A scientific theory is merely a way of organizing tested and retested ideas to describe the behavior or natural phenomena.
Will we ever discover a single scientific theory that tells us everything that has happened, and everything that will happen, on every level in the universe?
The theory of evolution incorporates the patterns and processes identified by observation and experimentation into a single scientific theory.
He makes the case that a science of intelligent design can incorporate Darwinian mechanisms of natural selection and random variation and thus result in a conceptually more powerful scientific theory. The question of who the designer might be is left to the reader, or perhaps the priests.
Learn about true crimes, forensic techniques based on scientific research, and do an experiment which helps to understand how scientists solve crimes in a title advanced elementary to middle school grades will find key to not just understanding applications of scientific theory, but to appreciating its role in crime-solving.
And therefore it is kept as an ideology and not as a scientific theory which has been proven.
Despite this, string theory lacks the most fundamental aspects of a scientific theory: It cannot be tested, and there is as of yet no experimental evidence of the existence of its superstrings.
The reader is then brought up short when Kern shifts, in his conclusion, to the assertion that, in fact, "science and literature make for an uneasy fit," and that literature seldom uses scientific theory to explain behavior.

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