Rejection without falsification on the history of testing the homogeneity condition in the theory of consumer demand

The analysis of consumer demand is used as an example to illustrate the interplay between theoretical and empirical research in economics. A few simple assumptions and axioms lead to testable implications such as homogeneity of degree zero in prices and incomes of Marshallian demand functions. What are the implications of the resulting tests? We argue that the tests should not be interpreted as intentional efforts to falsify the micro-economic theory of consumer behaviour. The case study is a history of rejections without falsification. Instead, we interpret this episode as a sequence of sophisticated specification searches.