Equally overlooked is the fact that psychological theories have done Americans great harm for more than a century, whether invented by personality theorists or testing companies.
Even the 12 billion age, Dr. Schramm cautioned, involved "bending over backwards with assumptions". By resorting to versions of Einstein's old cosmological constant, theorists were testing ways of explaining how the cosmic expansion might have been slower in an earlier epoch, allowing more time for the evolution of stars and galaxies.
Such experiments, theorists say, could test some of the basic tenets of modern physics and light the way to a deeper understanding of nature.
But some key theorists think the test won't fly.
Racial theorists ran microscopic tests of human milk: the whiter the mother, chemists claimed, the less nutritious her milk.
In particular, new-form theorists acknowledge hierarchy but rarely test it in generating a variety of information technology- (IT) related change outcomes.
In what is known as the expressivist argument, disability theorists have argued that prenatal testing followed by selective abortion sends a negative message—"It is better not to exist than to have a disability" (Saxton 2000), "We do not want any more like you" (Wendell 1996)—to existing people with disabilities, particularly those living with disabilities for which testing is routinely done.
And without direct tests of this sort, theorists are often forced to rely on indirect inferences from data which is ill suited for testing and refining theory, although it may concern very important parts of the economy.
"I think we should do more of this, and if the string theorists complain that this is not testing what they're doing, well, they can come up with their own tests".
In 1964, U.K. theorist John Bell devised a way to test that notion.
