netizenk

While I agree with you in principal, for the purposes of communicating with general public, which was the main point of the topic, the word 'hypothesis' would most certainly appear even more 'flaky' to 'it's just a theory' people... I like your answer a lot, especially the quoted part... It is the truth after all that in science there are no definitive answers as even the basic laws of nature are not untouchable since we seriously take the possibility that in some other region of the universe these could be different... That is actually one of the best things about science, the fact that there are no dogmas and nothing is beyond reproach and questioning.. the fact that this honesty and openness of science is perceived as weakness by uninformed and openly abused by ignorant reminds me of a plot of some Greek Tragedy unfortunately...

Agree with you completely that it's just a symptom and the cause is a systemic scientific illiteracy but treating a symptom usually helps make the patient feel better so why not?

Because an 'idea' is just an idea... until scientific method is applied to it and it is supported by experimental evidence... In other words, if you have a 'great idea' that would amend or challenge an existing scientific theory the burden of proof is on you because it requires a lot of evidence for something to become a scientific theory in the first place. To make your 'great idea' at all interesting to science, you need to apply the scientific method to your idea, you need to come up with and execute good experiments and you need to gather evidence. Once you have that and it supports your idea, it will be much easier to grab the attention of the scientific community which will bring more experiments and more scrutiny to your idea and if it stands that test it will move up to the level of hypothesis and eventually become a new theory as evidence mounts. To just toss a 'great idea' not supported by any evidence out there and expect anything but skepticism is a sign of misunderstanding of how science works...

Over and over again I am disappointed and appalled with how general public perceives the word 'theory' as used in science to mean the exact same thing it does in some casual everyday conversation... that is, speculation, guesswork, opinion... On a personal level, it is annoying to watch scientifically illiterate people dismiss a scientific theory as 'just a theory', but, more importantly, I feel it's detrimental to goals of science to have this general public 'it's just a theory' sentiment floating around allowing loud, ignorant people to dismiss scientific theories backed up by evidence accumulated over hundreds of years as comparable to some outrageous nonsense backed up by no evidence at all... Anyway, does anyone else share the sentiment and would like to see science and the scientist move away from word 'theory' and replace it with something else and if so what would you replace it with?