Reply #5: If people actually understood

[SheilaT]

the difference between "theory" and "hypothesis" it would be slightly easier.

My son the physics geek got me to stop using the word theory when I really mean hypothesis.

In fact, the use of the term "Conspiracy Theory" is wrong. It should be Conspiracy Hypothesis. What's interesting, is that I know use the word hypothesis (correctly, I hope) when before I would have said theory in the most casual of conversations. Someone will say tell me about something or another going on, and I'll ask, "Do you have any hypothesis about why that's happening?" And invariably they'll use the word hypothesis back to me. Of course, my friends are all intelligent and well educated people, and even though many of them are church-goers, they're not fundamentalists who don't understand such things as science and the scientific method.

Just a random thought here: I wonder how anyone who'd a fundamentalist, Bible-believer, young-earther can make it through medical school.