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Imre Lakatos (view source)

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# it is not in organic unity with the rest of the programme (''ad hoc<sub>3</sub>'').
A modification to a research program is deemed '''progressive''' if it expands its scope to a larger set of cases; if some of these new cases are corroborated by experiments and observations, and if the modification is contiguous with the rest of the program.[[CiteRef::Lakatos (1970)]] For instance, if the research program is Darwin's theory of natural selection, a modification which adds the proposition "extraterrestrial beings intervened in human evolution" would not be contiguous with the rest of the program. New empirical content has been corroborated by experiments and observations, and if the modification is in organic unity with the rest of the program. A modification is deemed '''regressive''' if it does not increase the empirical content of a program by making novel predictions or improving its accuracy, or if it introduces excess empirical content, but fails to corroborate any of this excess content empirically, or if it is not in organic unity with the rest of the program. The term ''organic unity'' is intended to mean that modifications should be contiguous with the rest of the program. For instance, if the research program is Darwin's theory of natural selection, a modification which adds the proposition "extra-terrestrial beings intervened with human evolution" would not be contiguous – not in organic unity – with the rest of the research program, and therefore regressive.
Given any modification to a research programme’s protective belt, any research programme P1 would subsequently become P2. In this way we can track changes to research programme P from P1 to Pn and retrospectively ascertain if the modifications made have been progressive or degenerative. However, the degeneration of a research program doesn't necessitate its dismissal. Rather, given research programmes A and B, where programme A has been degenerating and programme B has been progressing, Lakatos suggests that the scientific community should invest most of its resources into A. The community should not invest all resources into A because there have been instances where a degenerative programme has become progressive, such as heliocentrism and atomism. According to Lakatos, working on a degenerative programme is not prohibited, but it is irrational given that it has ceased to bear fruit.
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