In science, it's easier to disprove a universal hypothesis. Youonly need to find one counter-example to bust the entirehypothesis. You might hypothesize, “Man-made industrial era carbonemissions are solely responsible for causing global warming.” Thatis a universal hypothesis because, by identifying a single warmingperiod that occurred prior to industrialization (e.g., the MedievalWarm Period), you can disprove this universal hypothesis.

You might say, “Why not add appropriate hedging language to makeit harder to disprove the hypothesis?” A non-universal hypothesismight be: “High carbon levels in the atmosphere may increase globalwarming.” This wording makes it more difficult to disprove thehypothesis. You can find a period where high carbon levels existduring an Ice Age era (some research suggest this may have been thecase), but that does not disprove the hypothesis (since thehypothesis contains the word “may”). In addition, the hypothesiscontains no baseline to reference any increase. Failing to see anincrease may not disprove the hypothesis because temperatures mayhave actually been lower if carbon content would have beenlower.

This represents a hypothesis that's virtually impossible todisprove. You might think this is an ideal hypothesis, but then youwill have exited the realm of science and entered the world ofpolitics. In science, the only purpose of creating a hypothesis isto discover a theory, i.e., a universal truth. To discover auniversal truth, you need a universal hypothesis. Any lesserhypothesis has no value in science or truth, telling you a lotabout politics.