The apparent superiority of prediction to accommodation as a side effect: a reply to Maher

Maher ([1990], [1993]) has offered a lovely example to motivate the intuition that a successful prediction has a kind of confirmatory significance that an accommodation lacks. This paper scrutinizes Maher's example. It argues that once the example is tweaked, the intuitive difference there between prediction and accommodation disappears. This suggests that the apparent superiority of prediction to accommodation is actually a side effect of an important difference between the hypotheses that tend to arise in each case. 1 Introduction 2 The coin flip example 3 The example tweaked 4 Diagnosis 5 Accommodation and hypotheses with ad hoc elements 6 Conclusion.