Just found a random example of PZ repeating the “science doesn’t prove anything” talking point. Why is this still around? Science may not prove anything in the sense of the word used by mathematicians, but that’s not the only recognized sense used in English. For example, it clearly sometimes happens that murder charges are proven, even though they aren’t mathematical theorems.

Side thought: some people think that if something is a “merely verbal dispute,” no one can be right or wrong. Against this, I would like to propose Hallquist’s Rule for Verbal Disputes: “If a strong majority of people use a word one way most of the time, and a minority insists this is wrong to do for deeply misguided reasons, then the minority is wrong in a verbal dispute.”