[gpm]

> proving something by proving that disproving it is impossible.

No, I take issue with this phrasing as well. There are things that can neither be proven or disproven (by godel's theorem), proving that disproving it is impossible would not have been sufficient.

Without having read beyond what is in the article, I imagine what they must have shown is that

1. For all systems x, if x does not obey Batchelor's law than neither would the thing they are talking about in the 4th paper.

2. The system they are talking about in the 4th paper obey's Batchelor's law.

The immediate corollary is all systems obey Batchelor's law, otherwise you would have a contradiction (the 4th system both would and would not).

[JadeNB]

> No, I take issue with this phrasing as well. There are things that can neither be proven or disproven (by godel's theorem), proving that disproving it is impossible would not have been sufficient.

Yes, but this is only a trivial mis-speaking in what is obviously meant to be a description of proof by contradiction: proving something by showing that its opposite is impossible (not that disproving it is impossible).

[flafla2]

Interesting, I'll have to take a closer look at the papers themselves (although I am a mere mortal with insufficient background to get it fully).