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No refutation is clean

One never tests a hypothesis alone: a disproof says a piece is at fault, not which one. Falsifiability does not suffice to govern how the sciences move.

Objects to Critical rationalism

Kuhn · The Structure of Scientific Revolutions · 1962

1. Critical rationalism makes refutation the heart of science: a theory falls as soon as a fact contradicts it.
2. But one never tests a hypothesis alone, always with a bundle of auxiliary hypotheses. A disproof says that one piece is at fault, not which; one can always save the theory by correcting another piece.
3. In fact, no great theory has been dropped over a single anomaly: scientific communities change frameworks for historical, social, aesthetic reasons as much as logical ones. 'Falsifiability' does not by itself govern how the sciences move.

Therefore So clean demarcation by refutation is a reassuring myth: the boundary of knowledge is blurrier, more historical, than critical rationalism claims.