Donald Trump: king of the unfalsifiable
Falsifiability is a standard of evaluation that was introduced by the philosopher of science Karl Popper. According to Popper, a theory or hypothesis is falsifiable (and thereby refutable) if it can be logically contradicted. The usefulness of falsifiability is to make a theory or a claim predictive and testable. Falsifiability is what makes a theory strong. Until it can be falsified, a theory isn’t useful in practice. Unfalsifiable theories are weak theories. Disputing them becomes academic.
So what does all that mean? Consider the claim that psychic phenomena are real. Often self-proclaimed psychics will qualify their “powers” by making exceptions to their usefulness, e.g., there’s an unbeliever in the room or the planets aren’t properly aligned, and so on. When the end result is that the psychic is unable to improve on random chance, their alleged powers have no use. Put another way, it doesn’t matter if psychic powers really exist or not, if they are not falsifiable the whole thing might as well not be true because they have no predictive value. Thus psychic powers, if they are a thing at all, are good for nothing.
The point, however, is that psychic powers are, in fact, falsifiable. The problem is that most psychics resist having their powers tested under reliable laboratory conditions over which the psychic has no control, and tend not to believe results when they are.
Unfalsifiability is a mainstay of modern Republican discourse. Whether they are conscious of it or not, Conservatives deliberately strive to make their policy positions unfalsifiable by constantly shifting the rules. The net effect is to render any argument against their position invalid — by definition. It is an illusion, of course, but an effective one that they exploit.
Take Covid vaccinations as a case in point. It has become a common claim with many Republicans that not only are vaccines ineffective but their side-effects are deadly. That is a claim that is immediately falsifiable. Conventional statistics have shown over and over the exact opposite, that vaccines are in fact very effective and their efficacy is demonstrated in powerful ways.
One demonstration of vaccine efficacy comes from the statistic that the vast majority of people who die from Covid are unvaccinated. Conversely, statistics show conclusively that deaths from Covid vaccine side effects are vanishingly small and frequently in doubt. The anti-vaxxer solution to this glaring problem with their point of view is to deny the truth of the statistics or declare them “fake news.” Their arguments are clearly lazy and lack scientific rigor and, above all, artificially render their position unfalsifiable.
When we allow claimants to be in charge of the rules, falsifiability goes out the window. Republicans rig the game in advance by automatically proclaiming all evidence that agrees with their position as true and all evidence contradicting their position as “fake news.” Victory becomes a fait accompli, but it does so at the expense of falsifiability. That is the true weakness of most conservative claims. They cannot rely on falsifiability to back them up.
This frequently leads to embarrassment. We see it all the time when a Republican politician is caught in an untenable position during an interview. Their response is to filibuster and employ whataboutisms as a tool of misdirection. They cannot quietly sit back and let the science and the statistics argue for them. This is a real problem for them and they know it. They know their position must remain unfalsifiable.
Donald Trump is, of course, the king of the unfalsifiable. In his world and the MAGA realm of true believers, only that which supports their lies has merit, and anything that contradicts them is automatically dismissed without evidence. Trump frequently hangs up on or walks away from interviews that don’t go his way. This self-indulgent orgy of convenience is unacknowledged by practitioners either out of unselfaware ignorance or deliberate and cynical calculation.
Either way it explains in part why Republicans hate and mistrust science so much. Supporters of science and scientific truth (such as Dr. Fauci) have become their villains. Arguments that cannot stand up to the rigors of falsifiability have no place for them. It’s a weakness, and the smart ones among them notice it, and they hope that no one else does. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.