Falsifiability

How does the brain generate consciousness? Baroness Susan Greenfield: ANU

I was listening to this presentation by Susan Greenfield about some scientific work in neuroscience. Several ideas captured my full attention. One was this expression of a key scientific concept:

«…I don’t care if this is right, at all. That is not important. What does matter is that it is testable; and that’s why it is important that we can at last use science to develop falsifiable hypotheses.»

The concept of falsifiability is essential because it helps us to ponder how much of “science” there is in any given idea or system of related ideas —a scientific theory. By concepts like this of falsifiability we can now know that phrenology is a pseudoscience.

Falsifiability is a very important concept that must be understood in order to identify a scientific endeavor. I would go so far as to suggest that it is a very useful intellectual pattern to follow when building opinion on other matters. I wonder if scholars in non-natural sciences fields, like political science, adhere to this intellectual standard of falsifiability when they are doing research.

Is it the case? It sounds like falsifiability should be the basis for demarcation in any kind of science, but it is too early for me to accept that; that is, before doing some research among what social scholars have to say on the matter.