ASSESSING THE FALSIFIABILITY OF EXTREME LINKING

Tractable Falsifiability

We propose to strengthen Popper’s notion of falsifiability by adding the requirement that when an observation is inconsistent with a theory, there must be a “short proof” of this inconsistency. We model the concept of a short proof using tools from computational complexity, and provide some examples of economic theories that are falsifiable in the usual sense but not with this additional requir...

The falsifiability of actual decision-making models.

Jones and Dzhafarov (2014) provided a useful service in pointing out that some assumptions of modern decision-making models require additional scrutiny. Their main result, however, is not surprising: If an infinitely complex model was created by assigning its parameters arbitrarily flexible distributions, this new model would be able to fit any observed data perfectly. Such a hypothetical model...

Falsifiability is not optional.

Finkel, Eastwick, and Reis (2016; FER2016) argued the post-2011 methodological reform movement has focused narrowly on replicability, neglecting other essential goals of research. We agree multiple scientific goals are essential, but argue, however, a more fine-grained language, conceptualization, and approach to replication is needed to accomplish these goals. Replication is the general empiri...

On the diversity principle and local falsifiability

This manuscript concerns the methodology of evaluating one particular aspect of TCS (theoretical computer science) papers in general, and AGT (algorithmic game theory papers) in particular. This aspect refers to the potential practical applications of these papers. There are multiple other aspects that contribute to the evaluation of papers, such as their mathematical content, aesthetic appeal,...

A mathematical framework for falsifiability