When Does a Scientific Framework Become Unfalsifiable?
A new paper applying Lakatos’s philosophy of science to deep time
I’ve just published a preprint examining a question that’s been nagging at me: what would it actually take to challenge the claim that Earth is 4.5 billion years old?
Not whether the claim is true. That’s a different question. I’m asking something more fundamental: what evidence would scientists accept as counting against it?
The Pattern
Consider what happens when anomalies arise:
Soft, flexible tissue discovered in a dinosaur bone dated to 68 million years ago? Develop a new preservation hypothesis (iron crosslinking) based on 2-year lab experiments, then extrapolate across seven orders of magnitude.
Radiometric dates that contradict each other? The concordant ones confirm the timeline; the discordant ones reveal open systems, contamination, or inappropriate methods.
A fossil appears in the “wrong” stratum? Reworking, range extension, incomplete record.
An organism supposedly extinct for millions of years turns up alive? Lazarus taxon - it was there all along, just not preserved.
The pattern is consistent. Anomalies arise. Auxiliary hypotheses absorb them. The core commitment - the timeline itself - never faces challenge.
Lakatos and Research Programmes
The philosopher Imre Lakatos gave us tools to analyze exactly this situation. He observed that scientists don’t abandon theories when they encounter apparent refutations. Instead, they modify auxiliary hypotheses while protecting core commitments. This is normal - all scientific frameworks work this way.
The critical question is whether a framework is progressive (generating novel predictions that get confirmed) or degenerating (producing only post hoc accommodations of known anomalies).
And there’s a deeper question: can proponents specify, in advance, what observations would challenge the core? If every conceivable anomaly gets absorbed into the protective belt, the core has achieved practical unfalsifiability. It may still be true - but it’s no longer functioning as an empirical hypothesis. It’s become a governing assumption.
What This Paper Does (and Doesn’t) Claim
Let me be clear about what I’m not arguing:
I’m not claiming deep time is false
I’m not endorsing any alternative chronology
I’m not suggesting scientists are acting in bad faith
I’m not saying the framework should be abandoned
I am arguing that the framework’s epistemological status differs from how it’s typically presented. When we apply the same critical standards to deep time that we’d apply to any other paradigm, a specific pattern emerges - one that Lakatos’s methodology helps us identify and articulate.
The paper draws exclusively on mainstream peer-reviewed literature. The anomalies discussed aren’t fringe claims; they’re acknowledged in Nature, Science, and disciplinary journals. The question is how the framework responds to them.
The Standing Invitation
The paper ends with an invitation: proponents are welcome to specify, in advance, what empirical findings would lead them to revise or abandon the deep time hard core rather than adjust auxiliary hypotheses.
If such conditions can be articulated, the framework’s scientific status is clarified. If they cannot, the practical unfalsifiability documented in the paper stands.
This is how philosophy of science is supposed to work - applying symmetric standards to all frameworks, including dominant ones.
Read the full paper: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17770068
James (JD) Longmire ORCID: 0009-0009-1383-7698