The Problem With Tricky Problems

The prevailing scientific paradigm positions science as the authoritative method for understanding virtually all of objective reality. Yet major domains—such as criminal investigations—systematically exclude science from addressing core problems. Here we demonstrate that science consistently fails with a significant class of phenomena: those where motivated adversaries can strategically subvert evidence. This observation challenges the universalist view and logically leads to a new framework—Polytactics—which partitions problems by the plausibility of strategic subversion. Polytactics offers simple resolutions to several longstanding issues in the philosophy of science, including the demarcation problem, the inconsistent treatment of conspiracies, and the unresolved status of reproducibility. Moreover, Polytactics offers a theoretical foundation for science, that connects scientific, humanities-based, and criminal/intelligence methods, showing that each emerges as a necessary adaptation to different levels of adversarial risk. All three approaches can be derived from a shared underlying principle: the degree to which strategic subversion affects evidentiary reliability. Thus, Polytactics repositions science from a universally applicable method to one component of a broader, axiomatically grounded system. Beyond offering resolutions to key philosophical puzzles, Polytactics undermines scientism and naturalism, suggests that the scientific dismissal of conspiracies may often be invalid, and reveals that the scientific worldview may be systematically distorted—leaving society vulnerable to strategic manipulation if these conceptual blind spots remain uncorrected.