The great scientific achievements are research programmes which can be evaluated in terms of progressive and degenerative problemshifts; and scientific revolutions consist of one research programme superceding (overtaking in progress) another. This methodology offers a new rational reconstruction of science.

Einstein's results again turned the tables and now very few philosophers or scientists still think that scientific knowledge is, or can be, proven knowledge.

Indeed, this epistemological theory of the relation between theory and experiment differs sharply from the epistemological theory of naive falsificationism.

In degenerating programmes, however, theories are fabricated only in order to accommodate known facts

Intellectual honesty consists in stating the precise conditions under which one will give up one's belief.

Research programmes, besides their negative heuristic, are also characterized by their positive heuristic.

There is no falsification before the emergence of a better theory.