The philosophy of phenomenology argues that the rules of positivism, although noble in intent, are impossible to follow in practice. Blind adherence to the rules of positivism, argue phenomenologists, ignores the true nature and obscures the real value of science. Given that humans are thinking beings, the rule of phenomenalism becomes not only restrictive to the social sciences, which seek to understand the thinking of individuals and collectivities, but in itself a contradiction in that scientists are the thinking beings who are making observations about reality. Reality, however, always reflects abstractions drawn from sense data. Another approach to verifying the truthfulness of statements about reality is to assess them as logical conclusions of laws established a priori through the human experience.
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man. The Law used as the initial explanans might be an accidental law, one that appears to be true, but is not. That is, prediction does not mean explanation. A set of observations that support a law do not verify the law because the next observation might falsify the law. To very briefly summarize an excellent volume of work by Karl Popper regarding the problem of induction, scientific inquiry can falsify a theory, but can never verify it.