Quote:
Originally Posted by Venom  It's because "Extraordinary claim needs extraordinary evidence" |
This skeptic catchphrase is accredited to Marcello Truzzi (co-founder of CSICOP) who later questioned the wisdom of his own phrase and the misuse of it by debunkers.
'.....I turned it into the now popular phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" (which Carl Sagan popularized into what is almost the war cry of some scoffers). As anomalistic psychologists Leonard Zusne and Warren H. Jones observed, this demand "may be not only used but misused to the point where no amount of evidence of a paranormal claim will avail against a skeptic who has already prejudged the issue." The central problem however lies in the fact that "extraordinary" must be relative to some things "ordinary." and as our theories change, what was once extraordinary may become ordinary (best seen in now accepted quantum effects that earlier were viewed as "impossible"). Many now extraordinary claims may become more acceptable not when they are replicated but when theoretical contexts change to make them more welcome. ......' '........When criticizing the paranormal, scientists who are scoffers usually fail to bring the same professional standards expected of them in their own fields. This is particularly evident when one looks at their praise for articles reporting experiments on the paranormal that obtained negative results. Some of these articles contain questionable methods and conclusions and probably would never have passed peer review had they shown positive results. .....'