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<blockquote>I then discussed a number of scenarios of theory replacement ''allowed'' by the first law, such as the replacement by negation, the replacement by an answer to a different question, the replacement that involves the rejection of the question, and the replacement by a higher-order proposition. The only scenario, I argued, that the first law ''forbids'' is that of the rejection without any replacement whatsoever, as in the cases of element decay. The very existence of the phenomenon of element decay, therefore, poses a problem for the first law: if element decay is forbidden by the first law, then does this imply that the first law has been falsified? This brought us to our dilemma: either (1) exclude the cases of rejection without replacement from the scope of scientonomy and admit that the first law is a tautology or (2) include the cases of rejection without replacement into the scope of scientonomy and admit that such cases present a serious anomaly for the first law. </blockquote>

<blockquote>My solution was to opt for the first option, as it seemed to be the lesser of two evils. In support of this option, I indicated how the procedure of limiting the scope is ubiquitous in many other fields of inquiry; thus, there is nothing inherently vicious in excluding certain non-epistemic phenomena (such as element decay) from the scope of our discipline. I also drew parallels between the scientonomic first law and Newton’s first law: while the latter too has been considered tautological, not many have thought that it is necessarily a serious problem. Thus, the tautological nature of our first law is not inevitably problematic. It is still unclear at this stage whether this should prompt scientonomers to consider alternatives to the first law.[[CiteRef::Pandey (2023)|p. 43]]</blockquote>