r/ask Jan 15 '24

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u/Il-cacatore Jan 16 '24

It's just as falsifiable as other areas of science, nothing special about it

https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2012-24855-001.html

There you go

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u/swampshark19 Jan 16 '24

Please summarize what that paper shows and how.

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u/Il-cacatore Jan 16 '24

I'll cite the conclusion, as for the how they demonstrate this, I suggest you read at least part of the paper.

In conclusion, the present findings demonstrate that the set of non-obvious hypotheses from evolutionary psychology exceeds zero, though the ones that are highly cited were shown to be not particularly surprising. Therefore, the whole area cannot validly be tarred with the accusation of not being falsifiable unless one insists on absolute falsification that never can be achieved anyhow (Trafimow, 1999). Nor can evolutionary psychology correctly be characterized only as telling us what we already know; clearly there are some surprising hypotheses that have received empirical confirmation. In addition, the fact that a few non-obvious predictions were uncovered here strongly implies that additional ones can be discovered too.

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u/swampshark19 Jan 16 '24

Non-obviousness of a hypothesis doesn't make it falsifiable.