"The junkyard is full of unproven hypotheses," Mr. Brown said about intelligent design.

A 'theorem' is a proven result, and a 'conjecture' is a proposed but unproven hypothesis.

Therefore, despite their "affinity", the common ancestry of Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman remains an unproven hypothesis.

However, these remain unproven hypotheses.

"Many of the allegations against vaccines," Halsey said in one interview, "are based on unproven hypotheses and causal associations with little evidence."

The discoveries of Darwin and Freud came from unproven hypotheses, which seemed "unscientific" to the more traditional Protestants.

As Mr. Langone points out, speculation, unproven hypotheses and circumstantial evidence characterize explanations for much of the virus's most enigmatic behavior.

A grouping of Illyrian with the Messapian language has been proposed for about a century, but remains an unproven hypothesis.

It is therefore understandable to press ahead with the Commission's work, but unreasonable to present unproven hypotheses as conclusions.

Rejecting a plausible but unproven hypothesis too early tends to bias the subsequent analysis, because one does not then look for the evidence that might support it.