Wrong In Theory Is Worse Than Wrong In Fact

Recently, Tucker Carlson has committed the all-too-common mistake of suggesting that evolution by natural selection is an unproven idea, because evolution is merely a “theory.” As he put it on Joe Rogan’s podcast, “Darwin’s theory’s totally unproven – that’s why it’s still a theory, almost two hundred years later.” 

This is an elementary misunderstanding of what “theory” means in a scientific sense. In the minds of people who make this mistake, theories are as-yet unverified ideas that...