Physicist Wolfgang Pauli dismissed a muddled theory with this single, scathing line: “That is not only not right; it is not even wrong.” It sounds pedantic, but Pauli’s point is an important one. Some claims are wrong not because they contradict evidence, but because they can’t be tested at all. And that distinction is just as relevant when debating on social media today as it was when applied in the field of 20th-century physics.
Some claims are simply false because they go against something that we’ve accepted as truth. Those statements are easy enough to handle—we can test them, debate them, and make corrections if necessary. But other claims seem immune to contradiction. Even when…
Physicist Wolfgang Pauli dismissed a muddled theory with this single, scathing line: “That is not only not right; it is not even wrong.” It sounds pedantic, but Pauli’s point is an important one. Some claims are wrong not because they contradict evidence, but because they can’t be tested at all. And that distinction is just as relevant when debating on social media today as it was when applied in the field of 20th-century physics.
Some claims are simply false because they go against something that we’ve accepted as truth. Those statements are easy enough to handle—we can test them, debate them, and make corrections if necessary. But other claims seem immune to contradiction. Even when said claims don’t hold up, they still manage to slip through scrutiny. You know the ones: A conspiracy theorist might say, “The government is run by aliens,” or a wellness coach might say, “Your energy is blocked.” You can’t exactly disprove these statements, but that’s not because they are true. It’s because they were crafted to be impossible to test.
Even if people make these statements with good intentions, the statements themselves are not harmless. Unfalsifiable claims waste time, make people anxious, and generate debates that divide families. In an age where attention is currency, the unfalsifiable claim is a weapon that we need armor against.
The good news is that there is such armor. We don’t have to disprove every wild claim. Instead, we can start with a better question: “What would it take to prove this wrong?” And if the answer is “nothing could,” then you’ve found the tell: It’s not an argument. And not only is it not an argument, but it’s a mere smokescreen from which you’re free to step away. Knowing when not to engage in debate is a skill in itself, so spotting the unfalsifiable helps us conserve energy for conversations that actually require our attention.
Extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence
Once you start looking, “not even wrong” statements turn up everywhere. They often sound profound, even comforting, but have a certain vagueness that helps them avoid scrutiny.
“This crystal will cleanse your aura by balancing your chakras” may sound *plausible *to some—but of course, if the aura cleansing doesn’t have the desired effect, the person who made the claim doesn’t need to accept responsibility. They could say, for example, that it was your own skepticism that ruined the process. As for ourselves, instead of asking “Does this crystal work well for cleansing my aura?”, we really should ask, “How could I measure whether it has?”
In her book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, Barbara Ehrenreich argues that the self-help industry thrives on exactly these vague, unfalsifiable ideas. Because they adapt to every outcome, they are impossible to disprove. The solution, she argues, isn’t blind negativity but a healthy dose of skepticism. As she puts it, “The point is to acquire the skills not of positive thinking but of critical thinking, and critical thinking is inherently skeptical.”
A classic self‑help trick is to offer claims that explain any possible outcome. Something like the “secret affirmation” may work for many people, guaranteeing they’ll get what they focus on—unless they didn’t, in which case they clearly didn’t focus hard enough. A successful outcome proves the law, and failure also kind of proves it.
Conspiracy theories take this one step further, even where the lack of evidence becomes part of the proof: “A secret group controls everything, and the reason there’s no evidence is because they’re powerful enough to hide it.” Any document disproving the claim is clearly disinformation put out by the group. The idea can’t ever be challenged because it absorbs the challenge into itself.
“I don’t know”
Unfalsifiable claims are seductive because they fit perfectly into how our brains work. As psychologist Daniel Kahneman puts it, we’re “story processors, not logic processors.” Faced with too much complexity, we reach for neat, satisfying narratives, and an unfalsifiable claim is exactly that: a tidy story, carefully built to resist interruption by inconvenient facts.
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The urge to share opinions, even when we know little, is wired into us. Research from university professor Asher Koriat on the “feeling of knowing” shows that when we recognize a topic but don’t fully understand it, our brain still generates a strong sense of familiarity. This creates an illusion of competence that makes us speak up, even when we really shouldn’t.
That’s part of why unfalsifiable claims spread so easily. They feel familiar and obvious, so people feel compelled to repeat them, without ever stopping to ask if these claims are actually useful. And it also explains why it’s so hard, yet so important, to say “I don’t know.”
If the culture treats having an opinion as proof of intelligence, the real intellectual strength should be knowing your limits and having the humility to stay silent rather than defend an untestable belief. The physicist Richard Feynman offers a principle for this intellectual honesty: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”
And perhaps more selfishly: If the economy is built on clicks, outrage, and endless engagement, our attention is the real prize. The ability to spot an unfalsifiable claim—and simply walk away—might be one of the most powerful skills you can cultivate. Every minute you don’t spend trapped in a circular argument is a minute you can use on questions that might genuinely change your mind—or someone else’s.