What's the difference between confute and refute?

Confute


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To overwhelm by argument; to refute conclusively; to prove or show to be false or defective; to overcome; to silence.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The apparent differences between the glutamate-induced current and nerve-evoked synaptic response revealed by TI-233 can be explained by open-channel block of the glutamate-activated ion-channel, and do not confute the hypothesis that glutamate is the natural transmitter substance at this junction.
  • (2) The results also confute interresponse-time theories of schedule performance, which require interval and ratio contingencies to produce different response rates.
  • (3) Arguably, though, Stone and Kuznick's contention is less readily confuted.
  • (4) These results confute the suitability of this agent for the treatment of benign skin disorders.
  • (5) The Author, following a critical approach focussed on society's response to deviance and on the means of social control which society applies to defend itself from crime and criminals, confutes the thesis according to which the demise of public execution is generally considered as a step in the evolution of the humanitarian ideal of total abolition of the death penalty.
  • (6) The difference does not confute the hypothesis that glutamate is the natural transmitter substance at the crayfish NMJ, notwithstanding the fact that the action of the transmitter candidate on the postsynaptic membrane must be identical in every respect with that of the transmitter.
  • (7) administration of Diazepam is confuted and the risks of such a methodology in subjects with severe cerebral damage or in the third age, are pointed out.
  • (8) This enables us to confute the claim that psychiatric syndromes are not clinically specific.

Refute


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To disprove and overthrow by argument, evidence, or countervailing proof; to prove to be false or erroneous; to confute; as, to refute arguments; to refute testimony; to refute opinions or theories; to refute a disputant.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The operational meaning of all the resulting theorems is that when any of them appear to be refuted experimentally, the presence of more than one parallel transport pathway (that is, of membrane heterogeneity transverse to the direction of transport) can be inferred and analyzed.
  • (2) The results presented refute arguments that these enzymes proceed by a concerted mechansim and support the intermediacy of aminoacyladenylates.
  • (3) Theories of urea formation during allantoin degradation in Glycine max have been recently refuted.
  • (4) A mitochondriogenic mechanism of calcification could not be confirmed nor refuted by this study.
  • (5) The probability that the initial situation is correct--the proband and the cohabitant's six children are all legitimate-is "practically refuted": W = 0.03%.
  • (6) The IFS says similar declines emerge if you set the figure as low as 40% of median income – utterly refuting Nick Clegg's toxic line dismissing the threshold as just "poverty plus a pound" .
  • (7) Molly Prince, managing director of the company, refuted the Guardian story with some lustily expressed but random facts: "CPUK have not only purchased tents for everyone (some stewards wanted to use their own but it was too wet to put them up, they insisted in having a go!).
  • (8) The need for neighboring states to use their data to confirm or refute findings is stressed.
  • (9) Hume, whose grantmaking credentials include leading a £500m cancer and palliative care grant programme for the Big Lottery Fund, refutes the notion that hospices will lose out.
  • (10) Additional studies are highly desirable to confirm or refute these findings, which, if valid, mean increasing lung cancer hazards caused by a decrease in ventilation in future energy saving unless special measures are undertaken to reduce radon daughters in dwellings.
  • (11) This did not happen and, on the evidence presented in this paper, the Fry theory of the pathogenesis of the deviated nasal septum is refuted.
  • (12) Marshall refuted claims CSIRO was moving away from public good scientific research , labelling it disturbing and untrue.
  • (13) This explanation was refuted, as all thymic subpopulations were found to express CD1, albeit with differences in antigen density, whereas all extrathymic subpopulations lack CD1.
  • (14) Location of En at the MN locus would not, however, refute the theory that Wra and Wrb cannot function in the absence of En.
  • (15) The hypothesis that the function of recA gene is to convert the unidirectionally replicating machinery in the free state to the bidirectionally replicating one in the integrated state is refuted accordingly.
  • (16) Observation refutes Freud's often quoted statement that masturbation is further removed from the nature of women than of men.
  • (17) Use of such data led to a false impression of drug efficacy, an impression later refuted when proper control studies demonstrated that the range of disease was much greater than had been previously supposed.
  • (18) Results refute the assertion that people who stutter are more anxious or depressed than those who do not.
  • (19) The claim made by astrologers that people can be characterized according to their sign of the zodiac (sagitarius, taurus, cancer, scorpion) must be refuted.
  • (20) Predictions from the chiasma map can be confirmed or refuted only by genetic evidence for which the estimates of this paper serve as initial values to begin maximum likelihood iteration.