Unbounded lists of qualifying conditions make contact theory unfalsifiable

Evidence

Allport’s hypothesis risks being an open-ended laundry list of conditions— ever expandable and thus eluding falsification (Pettigrew 1986, Stephan 1987). Researchers keep advancing new situational factors for optimal contact. … This growing list of limiting conditions threatens to remove all interest from the hypothesis. Too many factors would exclude most intergroup situations. — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Intergroup Contact Theory, 30

Categorization

• XREF: Directly invokes Popperian falsifiability and the ‘ad hoc rescue’ problem in philosophy of science.
• DEEPTHINKING: Raises the deep tension between a theory that is always right because it is never wrong and one that earns predictive power by risking failure.