[rramadass]

What Smolin is trying to point out are the meta principles which underlie the feedback loop of the Scientific Method itself. Once the principles are adhered to, the loop becomes commonsense. This is because all of "doing Science" are human activities where we discover knowledge through three means viz. 1) Authority(Textual/Oral) 2) Reasoning 3) Experience. All three have to be considered to come to a definite conclusion. The submitted article ignores this trifecta and seems to conflate "Empiricism" solely with external validation.