 Another approach notes that scientists operate with competing theories and that the role of novel confirmations is to decide between them. Thus, a consequence of a theory T is a ‘novel prediction’ if it is not a consequence of the best available theory actually present in the field other than T (e.g., the prediction of the Mercury perihelion by Einstein’s relativity theory constituted a novel prediction because it was not a (straightforward) consequence of Newtonian mechanics; Musgrave 1974: 18). Operating in a Lakatosian framework, Frankel claims a consequence was novel with respect to a theory and its research programme if it is not similar to a fact which already has been used by members of the same research program to support a theory designed to solve the same problems as the theory in question (1979: 25). Also in a Lakatosian framework, Nunan claims that a consequence is novel if it has not already been used to support, or cannot readily be explained in terms of, a theory entertained in some rival research program (1984:  279).[6]