Science cannot prove anything. For a proof, you have to have the all encompassing, absolute truth. That's not what science is about, though. Most people don't seem to understand it. Science is the way. Not the goal. Science gives you an explanation. The best explanation we have at the moment maybe, but it never claims that there will never ever be a better one in the future. We might find out something that changes everything.

When I tell you that the hammer you hold in your hand will fall on your foot if you drop it, it will most likely be true. The reason for this is, according to our current understanding, gravity. Gravity, that is the currently established theory, is a force that makes every mass attract every other mass in the universe, according to the laws Newton formulated. We even have pretty accurate formulas that can tell you just how strong these masses will attract each other.

This theory is "good enough" for a lot of things. It was at least enough for us to leave our home planet and travel to the moon that orbits it. And, just in case some Moon-landings-deniers will butt in, can we at least agree on having sent some probes there? If not, I'll settle for stuff like the ISS which also relies on Newton being at least kinda-sorta correct.

But then there's Mercury. And Mercury is, well, it isn't quite orbiting the way it should. For the longest time we thought that there must be another planet closer to the sun, because that Mercury didn't fly right. Something had to disturb its orbit. And for quite a while the working theory was that there's another planet, closer to the sun, that we just cannot observe because it's SO close to the sun that it disappears in the corona and we can't see it.

Until about a century ago that Einstein dude came and said something about heavy masses actually not only affecting other masses but actually light and hell, even time. At first that sounds completely out of whack, but then we made some observations, and that also explained why Mercury keeps wobbling like that.

So our new working theory is that relativistic model on top of Newton's. And it fits pretty neatly. It's actually like that this part is "done". There is no unexplained stuff anymore, everything's wrapped up neatly. Of course, there are a lot of other theories still under heavy construction. That dark matter/dark energy thing alone is a bit one. Maybe we will find it. Maybe some new Einstein will come along and give us a neat discovery that allows us to formulate (and test!) a new theory that suddenly makes that dark matter/energy go poof just like that "innermost planet" went away when the wobbling Mercury was explained by relativity that worked far better than the old theory of that phantom planet.

Science will never present an ultimate, final proof. It offers a working theory. Something that is, according to the currently available information, good enough at explaining what we observe. One day a better theory will come along and we will adjust our working theory, and it will fit our observation better. That's an ongoing process, one that will most likely never come to an end, at least as long as we don't stop wanting to know more about the world that surrounds us.

IIRC it was a pope who said that the bible should be used as a guide for getting into heaven, not as a guide to find out how the heaven works (in reply to the question whether the whole Big Bang thing could be real).

Can you show an example where continued and repeated observations were ignored to "preserve" a theory?

If you have a model that explains our observation better, we're happy to hear it.

A working theory is just that. A theory. It's what people came up with based on what they can observe (the funny part is that the same is actually true for all the religious texts that explain how the world came to be. Man observed his universe and, lacking any other kind of explanation, invented some Gods that explain his observation. Sadly, these theories were not improved over time but enshrined as "holy texts").

New observations will be made over time. At least I'd hope so. These observations now either fit into the theory (now that would be great) or they don't. If they don't, it's time to fiddle with the theory. Dark matter and dark energy are indeed a bit of a puzzle since we can observe their gravitational effect, but it doesn't interact with the rest of the universe in any other way. It's just "there". There are actually quite a few ideas what could be behind it, but for a theory they pretty much all lack the "angle" to test them.

That's ok and fine. I'm a very liberal kind of person, and hence everyone has the right to believe whatever they want to believe. God on a fluffy cloud, Zombie Jesus and the egg hiding bunny, fat smiling guy who teaches about having no wanting in your life is the road to ascension, hell, even the gobbelygoo about some alien body snatchers that came here on intergalactic spaceplanes and got dumped into volcanoes. Whatever floats your boat, if you feel better with that whole gunk, have fun!

Just keep it out of schools, science and laws. Don't mix fiction with reality.

I stopped listening when one of them wanted to argue that the King James book was God's word.

God's word? That book is a translation of a (very bad, I may add) translation of a translation of a translation. And possibly you have to add another "of a translation" in there, the jury's still out on that one.

That's like a homeopathic dose of God's word.

Unless you got a better theory, I guess there's little alternative.

And no, "a wizard did it" is NOT a theory!

I'm just wondering, do people distrust science, or do they distrust corporations? I trust science that it is capable of producing vaccines that are perfectly safe (well, as safe as a medical treatment can become, there's always a minimal risk involved, but in general the gain outweighs the risk by some margin). I don't trust corporations to not cut corners and endanger lives if they can get away with it while making a buck.

I'm kinda glad I am NOT living in your country. Laws here specifically state that he must not.

I still change the lock as one of the first actions when I move into a new apartment.

Idiot. That buggy piece of crap damned near destroyed the ship almost every time it was used. They should've spaced the twit who came up with the idea before they had a chance to implement it..

Probably doesn't know what cope d'etat means, either.

That article has more holes than my old socks, and it even smells way worse.

Determining "rich" and "poor" by education is, well, rich. One could also say that the workload on college educated people went through the roof, while low skilled labour was laid off (which is one of the reasons why college boy gets to work overtime since he now has to write his own letters, clean his own desk and empty his own basket).

Of course that results in way more leisure time for the uneducated. Hey, if you have no job, you have 24 hours of leisure time a day, beat that when you're employed!

That's why I love my rooms pointing towards the west, it makes getting up with the first ray of sunlight so much easier.

Or, just so you understand, just because YOU didn't hear about it doesn't mean it didn't exist and others (like, say ME) didn't know about it. The difference is, with closed source, an NDA can efficiently keep me from telling you earlier.

In other news, Comcast announced record profits today. First-quarter earnings up thirty percent.

I sometimes wonder whether some people actively try to nitpick about details that don't matter at all...