The framework for systems pharmacology style models does not naturally sit with the usual scientific dogma of parsimony and falsifiability based on deductive reasoning. This does not invalidate the importance or need for overarching models based on pharmacology to describe and understand complicated biological systems. However, it does require some consideration on how systems pharmacology fits...

Experts and lay people alike can sometimes find it difficult to demarcate the absurd. Here I propose a set of criteria that may be helpful in achieving this in the realm of healthcare: falsifiability, plausibility and some hallmarks of pseudoscience. Applying this method is unlikely to be fool-proof but it might be a valuable aid in discriminating credible from incredible health claims.

The material in this supplement was not able to be included in the paper. It is meant for those who would like to know more details of the behavior of the two methods for fitting the diffusion model to data. It concerns some additional discussion of efficiency and accuracy of parameter estimates, a discussion of overfitting, presentation of parameter tradeoffs in the model (showing a very stron...

This paper discusses the quality criteria that are used in design and science to evaluate the value of the produced knowledge and artifacts. The scientific criteria discussed are: generizability, falsifiability, truth, novelty, parsimony, precision, accuracy and efficiency. Their design counterparts are also discussed. This comparison may help to guide the design method into a more scientific d...

throughout the years, philosophers and psychologists have striven to solve the mind-boggling question of learning by juxtaposing the two competing theories, namely, empiricism and rationalism. they have usually opted for one and ruled out the other on the grounds that it cannot account for learning because theoretical and empirical evidence discredits it. since 1965, with the publication of cho...

If intelligent design (ID) is to compete with evolutionary theory (ET), it must meet the modified falsifiability challenge, that is, make some deductive or probabilistic observational assertions. It must also meet the modified translatability challenge, which it fails if ET makes all the observational assertions of ID, while ID does not make all the observational assertions of ET. I discuss fou...