Has a scientific theory ever been disproved by somebody who didn't understand it?

Question

Has a scientific theory ever been disproved by somebody who didn't understand it?

Answer 1

Not that I know of, and if anyone insists that such is the case, I would urge them to show the documentation of it.

Answer 2

What an interesting question.

Theoretically it is possible.  E.g. a physicist could be working on some problem in physics, and come up with a result that completely disproves some obscure theory in astronomy or chemistry that the physicist was not even aware of, or never really understood.

But in practice I can't think of an example where this has ever happened.

If you're asking if a *non-scientist* has ever successfully disproved a theory that they specifically set out to disprove ... without understanding it first ... then no, that is *extremely* unlikely.  

Why?   Because the way you disprove a theory is by showing how it predicts something, and then showing that this prediction is falsified.   People who don't understand a theory, don't understand its underpinnings and assumptions ... and certainly don't understand what it predicts.

You see this all the time with Creationists who try to "disprove" evolution using arguments that reveal that they truly don't understand evolution (as understood by scientists) *AT ALL*.  

The gist of their arguments are "if evolution is true, then we should see X" ... but anybody who understands evolution at all knows that we would *NOT* expect to see X at all.

So the very argument backfires!  Rather than disproving evolution, they have made the theory look *more* attractive to smart people by showing that the theory is rejected only by people who either *CAN'T* understand it ... or who put the belief/rejection question *before* the question of understanding.  The best endorsement of the intellectual worth of an idea is the *lack* of intellectual worth of arguments against it.  :-)

Answer 3

Einstein did to an aethiest teacher.

Answer 4

Sure.

It isn't necessary to understand the whole theory in order to disprove it.

Simply disproving one of the base assertions might be enough to cause the whole thing to unravel.

For example: suppose someone comes up with the idea of building a matter transporter, but it is based on the premise that light is always a particle.  I may not understand their transporter logic, but I could design an experiment that proves light acts as a wave, and not only as a partical.  In doing so, I'd be knocking out the underpinning of their theory, disproving it, without actually understanding the rest.

This happens to a lot of theories.  Often the theories are refined in the process when this happens.  Sometimes the theories are just completely thrown out.

Answer 5

Doubtful...if you don't understand the theory, how would you know when you disproved it?

Answer 6

No, this is impossible. Theories are disproved by experimentation and observation. If you don't understand a theory you cannot experiment. If you do not experiment you usually cannot make observations.

However, other people can disprove theories using others' observations. Someone who doesn't understand a theory can help someone else make observations, and the person who does understand the theory can use those observations to disprove the theory.

Also, Einstein did no such thing. John, if you're referring to some incident where he supposedly proved God existed, this incident is false. Einstein, like many other scientists, was an atheist.