Theory Corroboration and Football: Measuring Progress

How a theory is assessed depends partly on the objective of the appraisal and partly on how the evidence is collected. P1 is a good prescription for using nonexperimental data to appraise whether or not an empirical statistic is as expected on the basis of a theory in an ex post facto fashion. The Popperian falsification prescription is still required to choose between incompatible theories. P4 is used as the major premise of the syllogistic argument form implicated when a theory is being tested experimentally. A significance test is used to make a statistical decision regarding which minor premise to use in the syllogistic argument. The conclusion drawn evaluates the tenability of a theory vis-a-vis a set of experimental data. A theory's verisimilitude depends on a series of experimental converging operations.