You cannot stress the ideas of testing and prediction too much. Every hypothesis is tested against another hypothesis even if that hypothesis is just the null-hypothesis. With this I am not implying the null hypothesis is unimportant, the particular null hypothesis chosen must be testable and predict an outcome different than alternative hypothesis.

I’ve run across a number of people, primarily creationists, who believe the Bible stories can be tested and result in the same outcome as non-Biblical geology/archeaology/physics/… , who do not understand the results of tests have to be unique and usually exclusive.

Before getting to the four steps, it is important to note that nowhere in this definition is there any room for democracy, personal preference or being “even handed” with the other side. In a scientific debate, once sufficient data comes in, there is always a winner and a loser.

This quote needs to be repeated frequently.

Well done LVQ.