7 Things You Should Never Say To A Scientist

6. Yeah, But It€™'s Only A Theory

One of the most misunderstood terms in popular science knowledge has to be "theory".

Everybody has seen or heard it used as a stick to beat everybody from evolutionists to climate scientists with, and this is down to the difference between its colloquial and scientific meanings.

In day-to-day life, it's not incorrect to use "theory" to mean "I have a vague hypothesis", but in science, you have to be dead sure before you start throwing the T word around. In a scientific context, a theory is a way of describing demonstrable facts and laws.

For example, Evolution by Natural Selection is a theory. Evolution is the "fact" bit, we know that living things evolve, the "by natural selection" bit is the theory that describes its mechanisms.

The thing is about saying something is just a theory is it makes it sound as though that isn't a big deal.