falsify
/ˈfɔːlsɪfʌɪ
/ /ˈfɒlsɪfʌɪ/verb (falsifies, falsifying, falsified) [with object]
1Alter (information, a document, or evidence) so as to mislead: a laboratory which was alleged to have falsified test results...
- He cites evidence that doctors or medics falsified death certificates to cover up homicides.
- No interest is served when it's easy to duplicate or falsify an identity document.
- The defendant is also alleged to have falsified an accounting document on a loan facility in August 1996.
Synonyms
forge, fake, counterfeit, fabricate, invent, alter, change, doctor, tamper with, fudge, manipulate, massage, adulterate, pervert, corrupt, debase, misrepresent, misreport, distort, warp, embellish, embroider, colour, put a spin on
rare vitiate
2Prove (a statement or theory) to be false: the hypothesis is falsified by the evidence...
- Therefore the Earth's eigenvibrations falsify the Inside-Out theory, but can be easily understood in terms of the Earth's spherical shape, volume and density.
- When Saturn didn't move as predicted, either Newton's theory was falsified, or there was another massive object perturbing the orbit - this turned out to be the planet Uranus.
- I've already named lots of things that could be found that would falsify evolutionary theory completely.
Synonyms
disprove, show to be false, prove unsound, refute, rebut, deny, debunk, negate, invalidate, contradict, confound, be at odds with, demolish, discredit
informal shoot full of holes, shoot down (in flames), blow sky-high, blow out of the water
formal confute, gainsay
rare controvert, negative
2.1Fail to fulfil (a hope, fear, or expectation): changes falsify individual expectations...
- Her claim in this action falsifies no legitimate assumption or expectation.
- My learned friend reminds me that I should conclude my response to your Honour Justice McHugh's observations about falsifying the expectations of parties, or that what happened falsified someone's expectation.
- This is because any ‘false trading’ would falsify expectations and therefore change agents evaluations of their assets.
Derivatives
falsifiability
- Therefore, Popper argues for the hallmark of science being falsifiability, the willingness to state under which conditions one will consider one's bold hypothesis to have been falsified.
- One of the core tenets of modern science is falsifiability.
- The problem here is that falsifiability applies at the level of specific scientific claims whereas both evolution and ID are collections of such claims.
falsifiable
/ /ˈfɒlsɪfʌɪəb(ə)l / adjective ...- As a means of solving the problem British philosopher Karl Popper proposed the principle of falsifiability - if a theory is falsifiable, then it is scientific; if it is not falsifiable, then it is not science.
- They seem to think that one can make up any theory, no matter how ridiculous, and unless it is dramatically falsifiable, it's just as valid as a theory that starts with known facts and basic truisms about human behavior and builds from them.
- The model spews out implications that are demonstrably falsifiable given an appropriate dataset; i.e., if one can lay one's hand on a dataset, then the model's predictions can be verified as either true or false.
Origin
Late Middle English (in sense 2): from French falsifier or medieval Latin falsificare, from Latin falsificus 'making false', from falsus 'false'.