There are a lot of posts asking if some video or story has ever been debunked, pointing to a misunderstanding in how the scientific method – the one that gave us the wonders of the modern world – actually works, so allow me a short rant.
The absence of a “debunking” does not qualify as evidence because it overlooks the principles of the scientific method, which emphasizes evidence through rigorous testing and falsification. In science, claims must be supported by observable, measurable data, and the burden of proof lies with the claimant, not the skeptic. The fact that no one has refuted a particular claim does not make it valid; it only means it hasn’t been subjected to scrutiny yet. The scientific method thrives on challenge and peer review, and until a claim can survive repeated attempts to falsify it, its truth remains unproven. The absence of debunking is simply the absence of examination, not a confirmation of truth, and real evidence must be built on solid, verifiable (think independent, repeatable ) results, not the lack of opposition.
This is a form of the argument from ignorance fallacy: assuming something is true because it hasn’t been proven false. Real evidence, however, needs to stand on its own merits, independent of whether it’s been contested.
I am what would generally be called a "believer", but I am under no delusions as to whether or not we have been presented with evidence that meets the above description.
by johnjmcmillion
4 Comments
Belief implies a lack of evidence. There is a huge amount of actual evidence regarding uap. Do you think there is no evidence for any event involving the phenomenon?
You know, this is actually a good point. I never thought about it like that. Us UFO believers really want to see evidence of real UFOs, and I truely believe a hand full of videos we’ve all seen are genuinely real. But to avoid this community being seen as a conspiracy nut joke to everyone, WE need to be the ones who scrutinise the hardest. WE need to be the ones who shout the loudest for the evidence we believe are genuine, and WE need to be the ones who call BS against the ones that aren’t. That way, we know which topics to really pin our focus on. It’s like with science, when trying to prove a hypothesis is real, they have to work so damn hard to prove it’s not, test it to death to verify it, over and over, before we can come to a satisfactory conclusion either way.
To believe everything that comes our way is what outsiders clowns us for. We have to show that we ONLY focus on the genuine evidence and shun the ones that are fake.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. When it comes to the UFO topic.
Sorry, but none of the videos can be scientific because the government is deliberately withholding data. The scientific process isn’t looking at random videos and saying “There is no reason for this I can come up with.” I’m not sure anyone is even argument that it is. THey’re saying instead, “This needs further research and explanation because given the information, I cannot think of any other explanation except a non human origin. No one else has come up with any other explanation either. So this video needs more research.”
This is one of the main problems of withholding evidence. The government knows that. Without evidence, you can’t prove much. You can only underscore that something *needs* scientific research. That’s the entire point. This whole issue needs to be opened up to the international scientific community so that it can study the thing scientifically, with data and controls and rigor.