[klodolph]

I would say that this test is especially vulnerable to error, because all the auxiliary hypotheses being tested. The problem here is known as the Duhem-Quine thesis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duhem%E2%80%93Quine_thesis

> The Duhem–Quine thesis, also called the Duhem–Quine problem, after Pierre Duhem and Willard Van Orman Quine, is that it is impossible to test a scientific hypothesis in isolation, because an empirical test of the hypothesis requires one or more background assumptions (also called auxiliary assumptions or auxiliary hypotheses). In recent decades the set of associated assumptions supporting a thesis sometimes is called a bundle of hypotheses.

I’m not going to enumerate the auxiliary hypotheses being tested, but this is a particularly thorny problem in the philosophy of science, and it becomes less tractable as the problems you are solving become more complicated (like this one).

My personal feeling is that the philosophy of science, as a field, is still quite immature.