The TOE is the best explanation we have for the present-day and past era diversity of life forms, for at least three reasons:
--all the available evidence so far (in fields as distinct as genetics, biogeography, comparative anatomy, botany, physical anthropology) supports it;
--it works in real life applications like CSI, epidemiology and agriculture;
and
--predictions based on it (like the discovery of DNA, the physical locations of fossils and the genetic differences between chimps and humans) have been upheld by investigation.
If it could be falsified very easily with common sense, it would have been done by one of the many scientists who challenged Darwin's big idea back in the 1800's. They tried to falsify it, and attempts to solve the problems they found with the theory have led to new discoveries that expanded the useful applications of the TOE.
We are far less likely to be tricked by a "Piltdown Man" hoax today, because we have studied and classified so many thousands of primate skulls, jaws, teeth, etc. We know what the remains of a monkey, gorilla, chimp, baby human and prehistoric human look like. We are less likely to mistake a juvenile chimp skeleton for a short elderly prehistoric human and vice versa.
If it just needed better technology to falsify it, it would have been done by one of the many 20th and 21st century scientists vying for Nobel Prizes, genius grants, PBS shows, TED talks and other forms of contemporary nerd recognition.
As it stands, you only need to discover
one thing out of order-- like the fossilized remains of a chihuahua eaten by a T-rex, or a 4 billion year old rock with flowering plant pollen trapped inside-- it to call the TOE into question. That evidence would have to be examined by every scientist alive, including me, before it could be taken as factual--you would need way more than a few fuzzy photos on a website. It would have to be dated with everything available. New dating systems might have to be developed to test the new evidence. But realize, every system for dating prehistoric objects that has ever been developed
reinforces the TOE.
I am therefore confident at the 95% interval that falsification of the TOE
will never happen. But being a scientist means that I have to leave open that 5% possibility that every working scientist in the field has been wrong and nobody has ever caught any of the previous generation's mistakes.
It could happen--and the sound you hear is me
not holding my breath.
