Abstract

Frederick Suppe would have us reject hypothetico-deductivism, Bayesianism, and Inference to the Best Explanation, on the grounds that none of these philosophical models can account for the argumentative structure that virtually all data-based papers in science share, a structure exemplified by W. Jason Morgan's landmark paper in plate tectonics. At the core of that putative universal structure is a strategy whereby recalcitrant data are given interpretations designed to show that the theory or scientific model being advanced need not take them into account. Pity Karl Popper: immunizing stratagems are the soul of scientific argument.