"I 'm going to play devil 's advocate for a moment . Suppose this expedition had set out and had n't found the transitional fossil . Would we accept this as falsification of the hypothesis on which the prediction was based ? I suspect not , as we know that fossilisation ( in the first instance ) and the uncovering of said fossils ( in the second ) are contingent , not necessary , events . By Popperian criteria , if we would not accept a nil result as falsification , we can not trumpet a positive result as validation ."
"I think reason why the `` hypothesis validated `` card has been played here is because : 1 . The time window for the expected transitional form is about ~20 ma , a narrow window by geological timeframes . Given this the researchers examined the stratigraphic column to select locatities where the rocks were of the corresponding age and selected sites accordingly . 2 . Tiktaalik was expected to live in a certain type of environment , and this expectation was used to further narrow the localities that would be explored as potential deposits for containing the expected `` transitional `` form . 3 . Having selected the locality , expeditions were mounted and successfully recovered remains of the anticipated beastie . Upon analysis it was found to lie in terms of evolutionary development between the most derived/advanced fish and most primitive tetrapods that had been previously known . Given the huge expanse of the Earth 's surface 1 and 2 helped the researchers select comparitively tiny areas to examine and the fact they found what they ( roughly ) expected to find says their hypothesis ( we will find remains of transitional form x at locality y ) was borne out . If no remains had been found then further expeditions might have been successful and the hypothesis could of been validiated at a later date . If they had found , lets say a more primitive form than the previously most advanced fish or a more advanced tetrapod than the previously most primitive form then I think that might amount to a falsifiaction . Having said all that I think that to claim a hypothesis was validated in this instance is slightly confusing as palaeontology is like archeology- you can never be 100 % sure everthing has been found and one small discovery can force a rethink of what that had been established up to that point . Also , IIRC , none of the three articles in nature make any reference to a hypothesis being validated I 'd describe it more as being an expectation being fufilled ."
"Would we accept this as falsification of the hypothesis on which the prediction was based ? , if we would not accept a nil result as falsification , we can not trumpet a positive result as validation ."
"to claim a hypothesis was validated in this instance is slightly confusing as palaeontology is like none of the three articles in nature make any reference to a hypothesis being validated I 'd describe it more as being an expectation being fufilled"