Once again: if the standard of evidence for phenomenon A (which cannot be experimentally verified) is no better than the standard of evidence for phenomenon B (which can be experimentally verified and has been shown not to be real) then the likeliest explanation for belief in phenomenon A is that it is due to the same errors which led to belief in phenomenon B.
You can wilfully misunderstand and misrepresent what I am saying as much as you like, the point remains perfectly clear and valid.
I'm not misrepresenting your position at all, and I very much appreciate that we are nailing this down with reasonable exchanges. In the quote above, we are moving to a more precise embodiment of the point you are trying to make ... and this is positive progress. A real improvement is your use of the word "likeliest". This is a much more reasonable approach than declaring them to be "the same". Now let's take a closer look:
If we use the point you are making above, and apply it to homeopathy ( your choice of example ), then if what you are saying is true, that the likeliest explanation for belief in phenomenon A is that it is due to the same errors which led to belief in phenomenon B, then we get the following (
Same errors applied to each as follows ):
- Homeopathy - Failure to properly account for the placebo effect. ( applies )
- Ufology - Failure to properly account for the placebo effect. ( does not apply )
- Homeopathy - Evidence based on precise measurement under controlled repeated conditions that physical amounts of the active ingredient in homeopathic solutions may be as low as zero. ( applies )
- Ufology - Evidence based on precise measurement under controlled repeated conditions that physical amounts of the active ingredient ( whatever that may be ) may be as low as zero. ( does not apply ).
As you can see there are significant differences when actually applying identical rules. Even if we bend the rules as in the second example above, we still can't compare because of the lack of repeatable controlled conditions. We could manage to perform similar comparisons for the other examples, but then we'd just run into interpretive issues and biases.
Even so, I'd contend that we'd still find that there is
reasonable information in favor of the UFO phenomenon in the form of highly reliable corroborating simultaneous witnesses, and supporting information such as radar reports and to a lesser degree, trace evidence.
At this point ... and we both know where it is going, I would have to conceed that the scientific, empirical evidence in the public domain is flimsy at best. But at the same time, I don't make any claim that UFOs are a scientifically proven fact or that ufology is in and of itself a science. You know this from following the discussion. I only believe it's not
reasonable to dismiss the information because it has yet to be proven scientifically, and that in the pusuit of the required evidence, it is only natural to follow the clues and try to judge those that are better than the others. Unlike some people here, I believe that can and has been done on many cases already by people more qualified than we are to judge what actually happened.
In the end, in my opinion, we need a skeptical approach on every individual case to help determine not whether it should or shouldn't be simply dismissed, but as the precept of critical thinking goes, determine whether the individual claims are true, false, or sometimes true and sometimes false, or partly true and partly false.
j.r.
