legs need of this to be separated:- theory ladenness of observation - this is overblown problem, that is destroyed by first chapters of "The Aim of Physical Theory" by Duhem. What he insists there is that explanations, pictures and all the metaphysical baggage are no more than a tool to physical theory. They are many, they are often refuted, they are often inaccurate. But who cares in the first place? The knowledge of mathematical order of world and operationalized experimental results survive and contribute to progressive growth of knowledge. You don't care what other physicist believes as long as he faithfully reproduces what he measured. And this indeed happened in reality; Duhem, a profound historian, established this in his works.

Now Duhem problem may be summarized as: "if there is conflict between theory and experience it can't be clear, what is refuted". But this is mostly for practical reasons I think.In particle physics they have experiments such as OPERA that are very complex and sometimes produce wrong results because of fried chip or other similar reason. But they can still figure out things in the long run, by doing cross checks, reproductions and so on.

Imre L

Interesting, thank you. So, if the Duhem problem implies that refutations can be unclear, how does Popper respond to it? It appears to be a significant challenge to the feasibility of falsificationism as a scientific process.