Not Even Wrong

Key points

Some claims are wrong not because they contradict evidence, but because they can’t be tested at all.

Before entering a debate, ask questions such as this one: “What would it take to prove this wrong?”

The real intellectual strength is knowing our limits and having the humility to say: "I don't know"

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 a