Scientific Progress

[ReneZ]

The big problem here is that compatible does not mean correct (at all!).

Such a blanket statement would seem to imply that investigations found to be compatible are guaranteed to be flawed and inaccurate.

I wouldn't call this a blanket statement, just a simple, basic statement.

"guaranteed to be false" also does not follow logically from what I said

One can have compatible hypotheses, and they can both be false.
One can have compatible hypotheses that are both correct.
It is also entirely possible (and this is what we are deailing with most of the time) that it is (as yet) impossible to say whether they are false or correct.
I could go on... one could be correct and the other not.

How can a theory be proved or disproved, if not by checking if the theory aligns with the evidence?

Comparing with evidence is better than providing compatible hypotheses, but being compaible with the evidence is still not good enough. If there are several mutually exclusive hypotheses that are all compatible with the evidence, then we still do not know.

It gets worse when the 'compatibility' is subjective.
It gets even worse when it is so subjective that it hardly convinces anyone.