ZEIDE'S LOGIC, AND CONCLUSION, "Falsification without verification (and hence induction) cannot exist", are invalid

Professor Zeide decries Popper’s view (Zeide 2010) of science. . . the view that science must be based on falsification rather than verification: scientific theories can be decidedly falsified, but never inductively verified : e.g. one negative instance (a black swan) is sufficient to reject a hypothesis (that all swans are white), while no number of white swans can prove it. Professor Zeide says “To Popper (1983), science has no certainty, no rational reliability, no validity, no authority”. Ziede clearly prefers the positive concepts of “certainty, rationality, reliability, validity and authority”, to the negative concept of falsification. In everyday human affairs, and particular in relation to human characteristics, I think we would all agree with this preference for the positive characteristics listed than the falsification relied on by a “doubting Thomas”. Perhaps the list of positive characteristics, so desirable in everyday life, have led Professor Zeide to misinterpret Popper’s falsification view of the scientific method. I had thought that all modern scientists regarded their theories as only “the best so far”, and that empirical evidence may at some future date refute the theory and require the development of a better theory which also explains the new evidence as well as the old. This is a philosophy most certainly adopted by most forest modellers, since the incantation, “no model is perfectly correct, but some models are a better approximation than others”, is frequently quoted. Consider Galileo/Newton’s theory of relative velocities in inertial frames of reference (those travelling relative to each other at constant velocity). This theory was falsified by the observation that the speed of light was constant in all inertial frames of reference, and Einstein’s Special theory of Relativity was developed to encompass this new empirical fact. It is clear that Einstein’s theory is rich in its structure and its predictions, (all of which have been verified), and that the new theory is a substantial positive improvement over the previous theory. The fact that the Galileo/Newton theory was falsified has not impoverished science, it has enriched it. Professor Zeide seems to confuse the use of verification with acceptance of the validity of the inductive step. A failed falsification attempt is a verification