In summary, science progresses by testing predictions against real world data obtained from direct observations and rigorous experiments.
The crime waves that afflicted many parts of the world and then, against all predictions, collapsed, were ascribed, in an article published by Mother Jones last week, to the rise and fall in the use of lead-based paint and leaded petrol.
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Commodity prices are collapsing everywhere in the world, validating the long-held predictions of bears like Gary Shilling and Nouriel Roubini.
Organisations like Google.org will scour search patterns around the world, expanding their search-based predictions of influenza to other infectious diseases.
And a lot of the predictions about the end of world are as authentic as those offered by the Mayans.
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Fortunately, we have enough real-world tornado data to test how well the competing predictions match up with reality.
But this argument is reminiscent of the Club of Rome's dire predictions in the early 1970s that the world would soon run out of natural resources.
This puts alarmists in the embarrassing position of defending predictions that are not coming true in the real world.
For weeks other startup CEOs and investors in the tech world have been telling me to take a look at Hashable, calling it the next Zynga, Facebook or Twitter. (Such predictions seem to be a favorite pasttime in the New York tech world these days).
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Predictions when it turned 50 that it was doomed to irrelevance in a world dominated by America, China and India proved wide of the mark.
This is the traditional weekend for looking at the upcoming Apple announcement on Wednesday, which the whole world is pretty sure is going to be the next iPhone, and make some predictions.
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They did so against the background of grim predictions of climate change in the next century, including the possibility that the world's forests could themselves become producers rather than consumers of carbon dioxide.
Let us also remind ourselves that these predictions are coming from some of the most sophisticated market-watchers in the world, with all of the resources and research and equipment and data and full-time dedicated staffers that most investors could only dream of.
This morning, Pfizer, the world's largest drug maker, posted earnings and sales that fell far short of the predictions of Wall Street analysts as cholesterol drug Lipitor, the company's crown jewel and the top-selling medicine in the world, lost ground to cheaper generic rivals.
All of these predictions shift, however, if economic troubles in America spread to other parts of the world, says Gartner Research analyst David Cearley.
Perhaps if the head of some respected scientific organization made such claims, we would chalk up the ridiculous predictions as an early sign of dementia and mercifully decline to report the predictions so as not to embarrass the person as he or she checks out of the real world.
Back to my 1982 essay: predictions about future society populated by personal robots have been around nearly a century, yet much of our world has not changed that dramatically.
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