Chris Zell <[email protected]> wrote: ** > Given that the topic is phrases that should be abandoned, can we do away > with "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" ? >
Amen. Here is what Melich and I wrote about this: [DoE 2004 review] claim 1.5. “As many have said, extraordinary results require extraordinary proof. Such proof is lacking.” This is not a principle of science. It was coined by Carl Sagan for the 1980 “Cosmos” television series. Conventional scientific standards dictate that extraordinary claims are best supported with ordinary evidence from off-the-shelf instruments and standard techniques. All mainstream cold fusion papers present this kind of evidence. Conventional standards also dictate that all claims and arguments must be held to the same standards of rigor. This includes skeptical assertions that attempt to disprove cold fusion, which have been notably lacking in rigor. Laplace asserted that “The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness.” “Weight of evidence” is a measure of how much evidence you have, not how extraordinary it is. There is more evidence for cold fusion than for previously disputed effects. (For example, although there were a few hundred papers published about polywater, most were speculative, and only two labs reported success. [8]) Finally, the quality of being “extraordinary” is subjective. What seems extraordinary to one person seems ordinary to another. Many scientific phenomena that experts take for granted, such as quantum effects, seemed extraordinary when they were discovered, and still seem extraordinary to non-scientists. - Jed
