In science, Occam's razor is used as a
heuristic technique (discovery tool) to guide scientists in the development of theoretical models, rather than as an arbiter between published models.
[1][2] In the
scientific method, Occam's razor is not considered an irrefutable principle of
logic or a scientific result; the preference for simplicity in the scientific method is based on the
falsifiability criterion. For each accepted explanation of a phenomenon, there may be an extremely large, perhaps even incomprehensible, number of possible and more complex alternatives, because one can always burden failing explanations with
ad hoc hypotheses to prevent them from being falsified; therefore, simpler theories are preferable to more complex ones because they are more
testable.
[3][4][5]