Nope. Again, a conclusion such as "that they were a contributory factor of unknown or unspecified significance" is an unfalsifiable statement. It's actually one of the most pathetic statements you could make in a scientific paper. If there was an actual measurable linkage, the conclusion wouldn't be worded that way. Actually stating the linkage with measurable data would be a falsifiable statement.
It is extremely falsifiable. H>0 leaves more than half the possible outcomes as falsifying.
Yeah, no, sorry. What you posted isn't "evidence" in this article. It's a conclusion drawn by another source that was analyzed in this paper for the validity of its claim. According to the authors of this article, that conclusion didn't hold up under review of the available data.
No, it actually doesn't. Any conclusion that claims the statement is false can be rebutted using no data because the original conclusion contains no supporting data.
Sorry but the testimony of people actually involved in the conflict is evidence and good evidence at that.
Okay I'll put you in the "cyanide positively contributes to human lifespan is unfalsifiable" camp.
Except that isn't unfalsifiable. The effects of cyanide on humans is widely known and well documented.
In the same way that "cyanide positively contributes to the lifespan of humans" is falsifiable, "the drought in Syria contributed to the Syrian civil war is falsifiable." In fact, in the face if such scant evidence the only thing you would need to falsify it would be one Syrian farmer who said the Syrian civil war was actually delayed or buffered by the drought.
The authors actually used the word "essentially." I apologize for omitting "essentially" from my posts. You are correct that it only takes one Syrian farmer to technically make it falsifiable.
The authors are absolutely right to use essentially, because the drought contributed to the conflict and the only remaining question is "to what degree?"
Except that it hasn't been proven that it did contribute to the conflict. It has only been hypothesized that it contributed. As the article being discussed clearly shows, none of the conclusions from scholarly articles claiming a definitive linkage actually held up to scrutiny. That doesn't mean that a linkage doesn't exist, it means that a linkage hasn't been proven yet.
You're actually doing exactly what the authors rightfully criticized as "essentially unfalsifiable." Your rebuttal can always be "One Syrian farmer said the drought caused it." Even if I find 1,000 Syrian farmers that state it didn't, you have one Syrian farmer to cling to as evidence the drought contributed to the conflict.
Brad's grandmother said bacon cured her breast cancer. Sure she had surgery to remove the cancerous tumor and lymph nodes, had chemotherapy, and even radiation, but she ate bacon everyday and her cancer went away.
pilt, there's all the evidence you need. JimmyBob says bacon and beer cure cancer. We can safely ignore any and all evidence to the contrary.
Haven't we been told that the nitrosamines in bacon cause cancer? Of course, those poor mice were injected with the equivalent of 30 pounds of bacon per day for months before developing cancer. I'm surprised they didn't turn into pigs before they got cancer.
That's called staking out a defensible position. 1,000 Syrian farmers stating that the drought delayed or buffered the conflict would completely falsify the hypothesis. But no amount of farmers saying it had zero impact can falsify just one farmer who said it did. Again the reason it is essentially unfalsifiable is because everyone know the direction the drought pushed things, it is absolutely falsifiable if we consider the possibility that the drought made things better.
Evidence that the bacon made the cancer grow prior to removal would falsify this.
If JimmyBob's cancer said to me "that bacon and beer ****ed me up fam." I would have to reject the hypothesis: bacon and beer have no effect on cancer.
Everyone knows that someone who is already convinved that climate change played a role in the Syrian civil war despite a lack of evidence will continue to believe it played a role regardless of what the evidence actually says.
