'Extraordinary Evidence Demands Extraordinary...'

[JimBowie1958]

The commonly repeated phrase 'Extraordinary claims demands extraordinary evidence.' would seem to be an example of confirmation bias.

An assertion or claim only seems to be extraordinary due to existing theories or experience sets. The Confirmation Bias' fallacy says that we tend to tailor evidence to meet our expectations and so we shouldn't allow our expectations to influence our perceptions. The scientific method is alone the valid method to be used.

How is demanding a higher level of evidence for anything that disrupts our current view of Reality NOT confirmation bias and a violation of objective testing?

 

[JimBowie1958]

bump

 

[Steven_R]

I'm not sure the two statements are in conflict. If a new discovery fits in with what we already know or what we have predicted, then there is less of a hurdle to being accepted by the scientific community. That doesn't necessarily mean scientists will cut corners or just blindly accept that new discovery, after all some careers are built on tearing down the wok of others, just that it is somewhat easier for the community to roll the new knowledge into what we already know.

By contrast, something that upsets the apple cart of our view of any subject is going to be held to closer scrutiny, if for no other reason than it is something new.

 

[JimBowie1958]

I'm not sure the two statements are in conflict. If a new discovery fits in with what we already know or what we have predicted, then there is less of a hurdle to being accepted by the scientific community. That doesn't necessarily mean scientists will cut corners or just blindly accept that new discovery, after all some careers are built on tearing down the wok of others, just that it is somewhat easier for the community to roll the new knowledge into what we already know.

By contrast, something that upsets the apple cart of our view of any subject is going to be held to closer scrutiny, if for no other reason than it is something new.

Hmmm, I disagree.

Say we have two sets of circumstances.

In set 1, we have new phenomena that have no established theory to explain them.

In set 2 we have a new phenomena but we also have some established theories that are impacted, say Theory A is contradicted and Theory B is caused to be seen in a different perspective.

In set 2, we would look at testing any theory to explain the new phenomena taking into consideration Theory A to see if we can contrast which theory is true, and with Theory B we might also design tests to clarify how the two impact each other.

But theories to explain set 2 phenomena would be no more 'extraordinary' than set 1.

In fact anomalies are quite ORDINARY in science, and contradictory evidence and theories should never be considered 'extraordinary', as I understand it.

For example the split light experiment contradicted existing theories at the time it was discovered to be an anomaly, and the proposed theories to explain it were not extraordinary at all, except to an instinctive notion of how the universe may work.

We also have the so-called 'Black Swan' phenomena which essentially states that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And yet the suggestion that black swans existed prior to their discovery would certainly have been considered 'extraordinary' in 1500. Does that mean 'extraordinary' evidence would have been required by the natural science establishment?

And what is 'extraordinary evidence' anyway? You have to prove it ten times over? The evidence has to be double plus good? What does the phrase 'extraordinary evidence' mean?

 

[whitehall]

Pop-culture astronomer Carl Sagan is responsible for the phrase. Sagan also told the world that the planet was doomed if Saddam ever lit off the oil wells during the Gulf War. Saddam lit them off, American technology put them out and the world barely burped. Extraordinary claims call for mundane evidence.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Pop-culture astronomer Carl Sagan is responsible for the phrase. Sagan also told the world that the planet was doomed if Saddam ever lit off the oil wells during the Gulf War. Saddam lit them off, American technology put them out and the world barely burped. Extraordinary claims call for mundane evidence.

Lol, true, but maybe we can say with some truth that 'Extraordinary claims require more complex evidence?'

 

[alang1216]

I'll use evolution vs. creationism/ID as an example of the requirement of extraordinary evidence.

Evolution is science. It is based on evidence and postulated mechanisms and is falsifiable. ID is not science as there is little or no evidence for it and I've never seen a mechanism proposed beyond "God did it". There is no way ID could be true unless a supernatural mechanism is invoked and that is why it is NOT science. Science is only the study of the natural world.

To say ID is true some proof or evidence of the supernatural is required and that would be by definition, extraordinary.

 

[percysunshine]

Sooo...if an experiment is conducted 100 times, by independent investigators, using independent equipment, always giving the same result is compared with experiment #101 which gives completely different results....it is wrong to focus attention on experiment #101?

Kind of counter intuitive in the empirical end of stuff.

 

[Derideo_Te]

Sooo...if an experiment is conducted 100 times, by independent investigators, using independent equipment, always giving the same result is compared with experiment #101 which gives completely different results....it is wrong to focus attention on experiment #101?

Kind of counter intuitive in the empirical end of stuff.

Not in the least! If experiment #101 produced a different result using the same elements and procedure means that there is another variable. Either something additional and/or missing or a step performed out of order.

A lot of discoveries are made "by mistakes" rather than intentionally. Finding out what caused the different result is important and if new knowledge is derived then that is all too the good.

 

[JimBowie1958]

I'll use evolution vs. creationism/ID as an example of the requirement of extraordinary evidence.

Why cant we discuss the proposition without getting entwined in hot buzzword 'examples'?

You are not clarifying anything but only causing more obfuscation by bringing up an emotion laden topic.

Evolution is science. It is based on evidence and postulated mechanisms and is falsifiable. ID is not science as there is little or no evidence for it and I've never seen a mechanism proposed beyond "God did it". There is no way ID could be true unless a supernatural mechanism is invoked and that is why it is NOT science. Science is only the study of the natural world.

I agree, but actual ID, not the thing fundamentalists use the term to mean, is a theological concept, not a scientific theory, so it's fairly irrelevant to what we are talking about.

To say ID is true some proof or evidence of the supernatural is required and that would be by definition, extraordinary.

No, it does not require extraordinary proof, but only nonscientific proof.

And what is supernatural today often becomes ho hum science fact tomorrow, like the beginning of the universe with a Big Bang or the existence of other universes besides this one.

So there is nothing 'extraordinary' about what people call the miraculous, not at all.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Sooo...if an experiment is conducted 100 times, by independent investigators, using independent equipment, always giving the same result is compared with experiment #101 which gives completely different results....it is wrong to focus attention on experiment #101?

Kind of counter intuitive in the empirical end of stuff.

Not in the least! If experiment #101 produced a different result using the same elements and procedure means that there is another variable. Either something additional and/or missing or a step performed out of order.

A lot of discoveries are made "by mistakes" rather than intentionally. Finding out what caused the different result is important and if new knowledge is derived then that is all too the good.

But the scientific establishment has long been known to resist new theories, like any that try to explain #101. It usually requires a generational change of the guard for the people in these institutions to finally accept the new theories, and the more ground shaking or extraordinary the theory the much higher the resistance.

So 'extraordinary evidence standard' = 'suppression of new thought' = 'confirmation bias'.

Pretty straight forward.

Woops, don't mean to offend you there, Derideo.

 

[alang1216]

To say ID is true some proof or evidence of the supernatural is required and that would be by definition, extraordinary.

No, it does not require extraordinary proof, but only nonscientific proof.

And what is supernatural today often becomes ho hum science fact tomorrow, like the beginning of the universe with a Big Bang or the existence of other universes besides this one.

So there is nothing 'extraordinary' about what people call the miraculous, not at all.

To call something supernatural or miraculous is to say it appears impossible, we don't understand it, and it is beyond our ordinary experience.

Sorry you don't like my ID example, do you have one you prefer?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I'm not sure the two statements are in conflict. If a new discovery fits in with what we already know or what we have predicted, then there is less of a hurdle to being accepted by the scientific community. That doesn't necessarily mean scientists will cut corners or just blindly accept that new discovery, after all some careers are built on tearing down the wok of others, just that it is somewhat easier for the community to roll the new knowledge into what we already know.

By contrast, something that upsets the apple cart of our view of any subject is going to be held to closer scrutiny, if for no other reason than it is something new.

There is actual evidence that everything we know about the formation of planets is wrong.

The Last Word On Nothing | Anti-Copernican Shock

You can subject it to all the closer scrutiny you want, the apple cart is not only overturned, it has been totaled as a result of this data. We need to start completely from scratch if this is going to make sense.

That said, the saying "Extraordinary claims demands extraordinary evidence," applies to claims that fall completely outside known reality. Examples of this would be this would be claiming to have proven the existence of God, saying that you are a time traveler from the future, or claiming that ghost are real.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Sooo...if an experiment is conducted 100 times, by independent investigators, using independent equipment, always giving the same result is compared with experiment #101 which gives completely different results....it is wrong to focus attention on experiment #101?

Kind of counter intuitive in the empirical end of stuff.

That happens all the time, just not 1 out of a hundred times. Sometimes, very rarely, a random outside even changes the result of the experiment. The real trick is finding out what happened.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I'll use evolution vs. creationism/ID as an example of the requirement of extraordinary evidence.

Why cant we discuss the proposition without getting entwined in hot buzzword 'examples'?

You are not clarifying anything but only causing more obfuscation by bringing up an emotion laden topic.

Evolution is science. It is based on evidence and postulated mechanisms and is falsifiable. ID is not science as there is little or no evidence for it and I've never seen a mechanism proposed beyond "God did it". There is no way ID could be true unless a supernatural mechanism is invoked and that is why it is NOT science. Science is only the study of the natural world.

I agree, but actual ID, not the thing fundamentalists use the term to mean, is a theological concept, not a scientific theory, so it's fairly irrelevant to what we are talking about.

To say ID is true some proof or evidence of the supernatural is required and that would be by definition, extraordinary.

No, it does not require extraordinary proof, but only nonscientific proof.

And what is supernatural today often becomes ho hum science fact tomorrow, like the beginning of the universe with a Big Bang or the existence of other universes besides this one.

So there is nothing 'extraordinary' about what people call the miraculous, not at all.

If someone proved that the paranormal world actually existed, science would be right there studying it. I realty do not understand why people think the paranormal, or even miracles, if proved true, would be outside the realm of science.

 

[Steven_R]

I'm not sure the two statements are in conflict. If a new discovery fits in with what we already know or what we have predicted, then there is less of a hurdle to being accepted by the scientific community. That doesn't necessarily mean scientists will cut corners or just blindly accept that new discovery, after all some careers are built on tearing down the wok of others, just that it is somewhat easier for the community to roll the new knowledge into what we already know.

By contrast, something that upsets the apple cart of our view of any subject is going to be held to closer scrutiny, if for no other reason than it is something new.

There is actual evidence that everything we know about the formation of planets is wrong.

The Last Word On Nothing | Anti-Copernican Shock

You can subject it to all the closer scrutiny you want, the apple cart is not only overturned, it has been totaled as a result of this data. We need to start completely from scratch if this is going to make sense.

That said, the saying "Extraordinary claims demands extraordinary evidence," applies to claims that fall completely outside known reality. Examples of this would be this would be claiming to have proven the existence of God, saying that you are a time traveler from the future, or claiming that ghost are real.

Of course our ideas of solar system formation has been upturned. Until just a few years ago we only had a single data point to examine (to wit, our solar system). It wasn't like astrophysicists said the book was closed and we're not going to find anything new in that subject area. What we didn't expect was just how radically different from our own solar system some of these planetary models are.

There was an article recently about finding a planet only twice the mass of Earth orbiting a single star in a binary system. A terrestrial planet in a ~1-AU orbit around one member of a ?15-AU binary I don't think that was anything anyone expected to find.

By contrast, anyone saying such a system existed prior o it being found would have the onus put on them to demonstrate it. That's the extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence. I can say there's a planetary system made out of nougat and marshmallow fluff, but if I am t be taken seriously, it is up to me to provide the evidence of that tasty space object. Given what we do know, few scientists would be expecting me to provide said evidence.

 

[JimBowie1958]

To say ID is true some proof or evidence of the supernatural is required and that would be by definition, extraordinary.

No, it does not require extraordinary proof, but only nonscientific proof.

And what is supernatural today often becomes ho hum science fact tomorrow, like the beginning of the universe with a Big Bang or the existence of other universes besides this one.

So there is nothing 'extraordinary' about what people call the miraculous, not at all.

To call something supernatural or miraculous is to say it appears impossible, we don't understand it, and it is beyond our ordinary experience.

Sorry you don't like my ID example, do you have one you prefer?

Well, I was hoping to keep it more abstract, but the Big Bang theory or alternate universe theories would be analogous today, Continental Drift and theory on the formation of the moon would be past such controversies.

 

[JimBowie1958]

I'll use evolution vs. creationism/ID as an example of the requirement of extraordinary evidence.

Why cant we discuss the proposition without getting entwined in hot buzzword 'examples'?

You are not clarifying anything but only causing more obfuscation by bringing up an emotion laden topic.



I agree, but actual ID, not the thing fundamentalists use the term to mean, is a theological concept, not a scientific theory, so it's fairly irrelevant to what we are talking about.

To say ID is true some proof or evidence of the supernatural is required and that would be by definition, extraordinary.

No, it does not require extraordinary proof, but only nonscientific proof.

And what is supernatural today often becomes ho hum science fact tomorrow, like the beginning of the universe with a Big Bang or the existence of other universes besides this one.

So there is nothing 'extraordinary' about what people call the miraculous, not at all.

If someone proved that the paranormal world actually existed, science would be right there studying it. I realty do not understand why people think the paranormal, or even miracles, if proved true, would be outside the realm of science.

Because God does not do repeatability. He does His miracles for specific purposes, not situations combined with factors. Thus His behavior is outside the realm of science to test it by definition.

When His acts are 'proven' by science, it means that they were not originally miracles at all in the proper meaning of something that violates natural laws. If some 'miraculous' event occurs within the confines of natural law, it is 'providential' and not miraculous.

Sometimes I suspect that everything God has done has been providential instead of miraculous, but I know that is not true as I have personally witnessed miracles of all sorts, one of which was definitely a violation of natural law.

Also, the terminology used has a big impact. Imagine had Newton described the laws of gravity as the behaviors of angels who work consistently within a system of rules instead of an impersonal gravitational force, his theories might have been rejected out of hand, even if exactly the same in every other respect. The scientific community in the West has a built in bias against religious concepts.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Why cant we discuss the proposition without getting entwined in hot buzzword 'examples'?

You are not clarifying anything but only causing more obfuscation by bringing up an emotion laden topic.



I agree, but actual ID, not the thing fundamentalists use the term to mean, is a theological concept, not a scientific theory, so it's fairly irrelevant to what we are talking about.



No, it does not require extraordinary proof, but only nonscientific proof.

And what is supernatural today often becomes ho hum science fact tomorrow, like the beginning of the universe with a Big Bang or the existence of other universes besides this one.

So there is nothing 'extraordinary' about what people call the miraculous, not at all.

If someone proved that the paranormal world actually existed, science would be right there studying it. I realty do not understand why people think the paranormal, or even miracles, if proved true, would be outside the realm of science.

Because God does not do repeatability. He does His miracles for specific purposes, not situations combined with factors. Thus His behavior is outside the realm of science to test it by definition.

When His acts are 'proven' by science, it means that they were not originally miracles at all in the proper meaning of something that violates natural laws. If some 'miraculous' event occurs within the confines of natural law, it is 'providential' and not miraculous.

Sometimes I suspect that everything God has done has been providential instead of miraculous, but I know that is not true as I have personally witnessed miracles of all sorts, one of which was definitely a violation of natural law.

Also, the terminology used has a big impact. Imagine had Newton described the laws of gravity as the behaviors of angels who work consistently within a system of rules instead of an impersonal gravitational force, his theories might have been rejected out of hand, even if exactly the same in every other respect. The scientific community in the West has a built in bias against religious concepts.

Except there have been documented examples of God performing miracles. Medical science prefers to label these things as spontaneous remission, but when cancer disappears overnight something beyond nature is at work.

Not to mention that it is always possible that God will someday chose to reveal Himself in a more concrete way that will make it possible for science to actually study the work He does.

Anyway, my post was intended to be more abstract than just God. Science has studied multiple claims about paranormal activities, from ghosts to ESP. It has managed to prove that all of them are explainable by natural causes and chance. If someone ever actually develops ESP abilities, of any kind, science is perfectly capable of studying the phenomenon and rendering a judgement. I would love to see a brain tumor that works the way it did in the movie, I am pretty sure scientist would to. I just hope the courts aren't as stupid as they were and leaves the choice up to the person who has the tumor.

 

[itfitzme]

I'm not sure the two statements are in conflict. If a new discovery fits in with what we already know or what we have predicted, then there is less of a hurdle to being accepted by the scientific community. That doesn't necessarily mean scientists will cut corners or just blindly accept that new discovery, after all some careers are built on tearing down the wok of others, just that it is somewhat easier for the community to roll the new knowledge into what we already know.

By contrast, something that upsets the apple cart of our view of any subject is going to be held to closer scrutiny, if for no other reason than it is something new.

Hmmm, I disagree.

Say we have two sets of circumstances.

In set 1, we have new phenomena that have no established theory to explain them.

In set 2 we have a new phenomena but we also have some established theories that are impacted, say Theory A is contradicted and Theory B is caused to be seen in a different perspective.

In set 2, we would look at testing any theory to explain the new phenomena taking into consideration Theory A to see if we can contrast which theory is true, and with Theory B we might also design tests to clarify how the two impact each other.

But theories to explain set 2 phenomena would be no more 'extraordinary' than set 1.
Y
In fact anomalies are quite ORDINARY in science, and contradictory evidence and theories should never be considered 'extraordinary', as I understand it.

For example the split light experiment contradicted existing theories at the time it was discovered to be an anomaly, and the proposed theories to explain it were not extraordinary at all, except to an instinctive notion of how the universe may work.

We also have the so-called 'Black Swan' phenomena which essentially states that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And yet the suggestion that black swans existed prior to their discovery would certainly have been considered 'extraordinary' in 1500. Does that mean 'extraordinary' evidence would have been required by the natural science establishment?

And what is 'extraordinary evidence' anyway? You have to prove it ten times over? The evidence has to be double plus good? What does the phrase 'extraordinary evidence' mean?

Too philosophical to be meaningful. Ph.D. a Doctorate of Philosophy comes after achieving a bachelors and masters. If you haven't achieved that, philosophical queries are meaningless for lack of foundation in established fact and theory.