Ivan Seeking
Registered Senior Member
While I was probably as much a fan of Carl Sagan as anyone, he was perhaps the first pop science icon. And he got sloppy when he needed to do so, to promote his own beliefs. This particular claim of his is easily refuted. The most obvious point being, "extraordinary" has no scientific meaning. It is an entirely subjective term. It has no place in science. What it really means is that if a person doesn't like a claim, they can set an arbitrarily high standard for acceptable evidence. In other words, if they don't like any particular scientific evidence, they will just reject it as not extraordinary enough. Now who else does that? We generally call them cranks or crackpots.
Or did he mean that extraordinary evidence means "proof"? Science doesn't prove claims. Science falsifies claims. No evidence, no matter how compelling, is proof of any claim. If scientific evidence later emerges that challengers what is accepted as fact, and that evidence is tested and the results peer reviewed over time, the evidence wins every time. And anyone who demands proof of something can always dismiss any result. There is no such a thing as proof beyond doubt for anything. The results of tests might have been faked. It might be a conspiracy. They might be flawed. The vaccines might really just be a delivery method to chip everyone. Even now we find that in spite of a vast consensus among climate experts, there are those who believe the vast majority of the world's climate experts are involved in an expansive global conspiracy. The denialists require extraordinary evidence of their own choosing. Nothing could ever be good enough.
Of course this is often applied to UFO claims where people want to set an arbitrarily, undefined high standard for evidence. I think this is what first motivated the claim from Sagan. It is notable that ball lightning and earthquake lights are accepted as real by the experts, despite the fact that far more evidence for UFOs can easily be found. One guy in Japan took some grainy photos of earthquake lights and suddenly they were real! Same for ball lightning. One forestry worker took a photo that was virtually impossible to make out, and suddenly scientists were saying it's real.
The most absurd extreme I have encountered for denial of evidence came from a discussion about UFOs, and whether some might be alien spacecrafts. I had no definite opinion either way but asked a friend what evidence he would require to accept they are real. He quickly responded, NOTHING! I asked what he meant. Surely there is some standard he would find acceptable. Eventually I realized no reasonable evidence would ever be enough for him. No evidence could be extraordinary enough. So I asked "What if a UFO landed in your back yard, and an alien emerged and offered to take you for a ride in his flying saucer? You then go in his craft and fly around for a bit," He replied, I would assume I was hallucinating.
What is an extraordinary claim? It is anything you don't expect. If aliens are galivanting around the cosmos as some claim, a visitation might be far less than extraordinary. It might be common. It might be inevitable. We just don't expect it because our world view doesn't include this possibility. This reminds me of that bastard Galileo who made claims of heliocentrism and sought to dethrone humanity as the ultimate reason for existence. That was so extraordinary that he was nearly executed for saying so. But today we accept it as an obvious fact. It was only extraordinary because it violated the world view most people held back then.
And note that while I have made this argument for probably two decades, or nearly so, I am now joined by Avi Loeb, from Harvard. He has made this same argument publicly. The fact is, when it is reasonably considered, the word "extraordinary" obviously has no place in science. We already have standards for evidence. We don't need subjective interpretations.
Or did he mean that extraordinary evidence means "proof"? Science doesn't prove claims. Science falsifies claims. No evidence, no matter how compelling, is proof of any claim. If scientific evidence later emerges that challengers what is accepted as fact, and that evidence is tested and the results peer reviewed over time, the evidence wins every time. And anyone who demands proof of something can always dismiss any result. There is no such a thing as proof beyond doubt for anything. The results of tests might have been faked. It might be a conspiracy. They might be flawed. The vaccines might really just be a delivery method to chip everyone. Even now we find that in spite of a vast consensus among climate experts, there are those who believe the vast majority of the world's climate experts are involved in an expansive global conspiracy. The denialists require extraordinary evidence of their own choosing. Nothing could ever be good enough.
Of course this is often applied to UFO claims where people want to set an arbitrarily, undefined high standard for evidence. I think this is what first motivated the claim from Sagan. It is notable that ball lightning and earthquake lights are accepted as real by the experts, despite the fact that far more evidence for UFOs can easily be found. One guy in Japan took some grainy photos of earthquake lights and suddenly they were real! Same for ball lightning. One forestry worker took a photo that was virtually impossible to make out, and suddenly scientists were saying it's real.
The most absurd extreme I have encountered for denial of evidence came from a discussion about UFOs, and whether some might be alien spacecrafts. I had no definite opinion either way but asked a friend what evidence he would require to accept they are real. He quickly responded, NOTHING! I asked what he meant. Surely there is some standard he would find acceptable. Eventually I realized no reasonable evidence would ever be enough for him. No evidence could be extraordinary enough. So I asked "What if a UFO landed in your back yard, and an alien emerged and offered to take you for a ride in his flying saucer? You then go in his craft and fly around for a bit," He replied, I would assume I was hallucinating.
What is an extraordinary claim? It is anything you don't expect. If aliens are galivanting around the cosmos as some claim, a visitation might be far less than extraordinary. It might be common. It might be inevitable. We just don't expect it because our world view doesn't include this possibility. This reminds me of that bastard Galileo who made claims of heliocentrism and sought to dethrone humanity as the ultimate reason for existence. That was so extraordinary that he was nearly executed for saying so. But today we accept it as an obvious fact. It was only extraordinary because it violated the world view most people held back then.
And note that while I have made this argument for probably two decades, or nearly so, I am now joined by Avi Loeb, from Harvard. He has made this same argument publicly. The fact is, when it is reasonably considered, the word "extraordinary" obviously has no place in science. We already have standards for evidence. We don't need subjective interpretations.
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