system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
"Falsification is Consensual" - What does that mean?

I am reading the book Statistikal Rethinking by Richard McElreath and I came across the statement that falsification is consensual.

What does that mean?

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I was under the impression that a theory (with assumptions, context and predictions/conclusion/hypothesis) is rejected whenever there is contradicting evidence (that fulfills a standard of objectivity, repeatability and such) the theory is rejected.

One could then either modify the theory (changing assumptions or changing context and voila, there is no longer such evidence to be found that it can be rejected.

By that thinking a piece of evidence (not just quantitative, but let's keep it at quantitative)  falsifies a theory.

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What is wrong with this (potentially false) way of thinking considering the statement of "falsification is consensual"?

What am I missing? (Is my thinking even correct?)

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Edit: 

Context was missing. Sorry, about that. 

Here is the passage:   


Falsification is consensual. The scientific community does come to regard some hypotheses as false. The caloric theory of heat and the geocentric model of the universe are no longer taught in science courses, unless it’s to teach how they were falsified. And evidence often—but not always—has something to do with such falsification.

But falsification is always consensual, not logical. In light of the real problems of measurement error and the continuous nature of natural phenomena, scientific communities argue towards consensus about the meaning of evidence. These arguments can be messy. After the fact, some textbooks misrepresent the history so it appears like logical falsification. Such historical revisionism may hurt everyone. It may hurt scientists, by rendering it impossible for their own work to live up to the legends that precede them. It may make science an easy target, by promoting an easily attacked model of scientific epistemology. And it may hurt the public, by exaggerating the definitiveness of scientific knowledge.
gpt
Here is some context from the 1st edition of "Statistical Rethinking" (chapter 1. The Golem of Prague, pg. 9-10, section 1.2.3)  
"**Falsification is consensual.** The scientific community does come to regard some hypotheses as false. The caloric theory of heat and the geocentric model of the universe are no longer taught in science courses, unless it's to teach how they were falsified. And evidence often--but not always--has something to do with falsification.

   But falsification is always *consensual*, not *logical*. In light of the real problems of measurement error and the continuous nature of natural phenomena, scientific communities argue towards consensus about the meaning of evidence...."\[*italics* in original\]

I would say given the further context, that McElreath recognizes science is a social human process. Any theory that is not trivial is an accumulation of multiple lines of evidence and, as such, any theory that is not trivial will not be thrown out overnight from a single contradictory observation. Observations themselves are imperfect with multiple sources of uncertainty and it is a bit daunting attempting scientific inquiry if you throw out an entire paradigm at the first cracks. So the scientific community 'agrees' as evidence accumulates (or with every funeral) that a certain theory has more support than a previous one. 

There are some good youtube videos on different epistemological philosophies (some influential thinkers being: Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend)