Is it accurate to say that science disproves things?
A. But science does disprove things. And, in fact, an essential element of the scientific process is — this is why the testable hypothesis is so important. A theory is not a useful theory unless we can generate it from — generate from it testable hypotheses. And science will occasionally disprove those hypotheses. And I mentioned earlier, I think I mentioned rather briefly, that the most popular hypothesis as to how amino acids are joined together inside the ribosome which has been that ribosomal RNA acts as a ribozyme, an acid based catalyst, to put those together. Now looks as though it’s been disproven by experiments that I mentioned before that were done by Al Dahlberg at my university. That’s a classic case of a really, really useful testable scientific hypothesis whose disproof leads us, hopefully, in a more productive direction. So in a few years, we’ll find out what the real chemical mechanism is of bond formation.
