Without more explicit (and testable) details, it is always possible that these benefits would be generated anyway in society, perhaps by religious organizations or the mass media, or that they could be delivered more economically by less fashionable methods, such as reinstituting the draft or spending more money on the police.

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But, as the X Prize Foundation may soon discover, coming up with a clear, testable and useful challenge in, say, education is tricky.

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To make the debate on NHS reform comprehensible, and the claims testable against evidence, what we need is some form of baseline scenario that explains the level of productivity improvement needed to keep health costs below double their present cost.

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Guarente feels that drugs that target SIRT1 might slow aging and have wide effects on other, more testable diseases, such as cancer and heart disease.

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The deals doubled Amgen's research staff to 4, 000, and the firm has worked to sharpen its focus and lift its output of testable drugs.

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Reformers focus only on testable subjects, primarily math and reading, because accountability has become the golden goose of education reform.

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Under capitalism power flows to precisely the people who are willing to stake their money not on gambles or sure things but on testable hypotheses, thus generating knowledge and wealth for society.

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The presence of such testable hypotheses distinguishes investment from both gambling and government planning.

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