Via Wired:
For truly solid-gold, well-established science, let’s stop using the word theory entirely. Instead, let’s revive much more venerable language and refer to such knowledge as “law.” As with Newton’s law of gravity, people intuitively understand that a law is a rule that holds true and must be obeyed. The word law conveys precisely the same sense of authority with the public as theory does with scientists, but without the linguistic baggage.
Evolution is supersolid. We even base the vaccine industry on it: When we troop into the doctor’s office each winter to get a flu shot — an inoculation against the latest evolved strains of the disease — we’re treating evolution as a law. So why not just say “the law of evolution”?
Best of all, it performs a neat bit of linguistic jujitsu. If someone says, “I don’t believe in the theory of evolution,” they may sound fairly reasonable. But if someone announces, “I don’t believe in the law of evolution,” they sound insane. It’s tantamount to saying, “I don’t believe in the law of gravity.”