photos that have been documented as fakes. Certainly, it is possible that aliens have visited us, but such an extraordinary claim requires higher levels of proof than ordinary science, and so far, the evidence provided is pretty flimsy.
As we shall see in this book, most of the weird ideas about the earth are really extreme. They are not obviously false in the way that they are constructed or presented, but in order for us to take them seriously, there must be an extraordinary amount of evidence to support them and to shoot down the evidence of the scientific view. For this reason, most of these ideas are quickly dismissed by real scientists, because there is no evidence for them and lots of evidence against them.
2. Burden of Proof
Related to this first principle is the idea of burden of proof. In a court of law, one side (usually the prosecution or plaintiff) is assigned the task of proving their case “beyond a reasonable doubt” in a criminal case and “based on a preponderance of the evidence” in a civil case. The defense often needs to do nothing if the other side has not met this burden of proof. Similarly, for extraordinary claims that appear to overthrow a large body of knowledge, the burden of proof is also correspondingly greater. In 1859, the idea of evolution was controversial, and the burden of proof was on Darwin to show that evolution had occurred. By now, the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, so the burden of proof on the antievolutionists is much larger; they must show that creationism is right by overwhelming evidence, not point out a few inconsistencies or problems with evolutionary theory. Likewise, the evidence that the Holocaust occurred is overwhelming (many eyewitnesses and victims are still alive, and many Nazi documents describe what they did), so the Holocaust denier has to provide overwhelming evidence to prove that it did not occur.
3. Anecdotes Do Not Make Science
As storytelling animals, humans are prone to believe accounts told by witnesses. Marketers know that if they get a handful of celebrities or sincere-sounding customers to praise their product, we will believe these people and go out and buy their merchandise—even if there have been no careful scientific studies or FDA approvals to back up their claims. One or two anecdotes may sound convincing, and the experience of your back-fence neighbor may be interesting, but to truly evaluate claims made in science (and elsewhere), you need a detailed study with dozens or hundreds of cases. In addition, there often must be a “control” group of individuals who receive a placebo rather than the treatment yet who think that they did get the real medicine, so that the power of suggestion cannot be seen as responsible for the alleged benefit.
Anything approved by the FDA has met this standard; most stuff sold in “New Age” or “health food” stores has not been so carefully studied. When such things have been analyzed, they have usually turned out to have either marginal benefits or none at all. (The stores will take your money all the same.) If you listen closely to the words promoting some of these “medicines,” they must carefully avoid the terminology of medicine and pharmacology and must instead use phrases like “supports thyroid health” or “promotes healthy bladder function.” These phrases are not true medicinal claims, and so they are not subject to FDA regulations. Nonetheless, the great majority of these products that have been scientifically analyzed turn out to be worthless and a waste of money, and every once in a while, they prove to be harmful or even deadly.
Similarly, the evidence for UFOs or alien abductions or Sasquatch sightings is largely anecdotal. One person, usually alone, is a witness to these extraordinary events and is convinced they are real. However, studies have shown again and again how easily people can hallucinate or be deceived by common natural phenomena into seeing something that really isn’t there. A handful of eyewitnesses means nothing in science when the claims are unusual; much more concrete evidence is needed.
4. Arguments from Authority and Credential Mongering
Many people try to win arguments by quoting some authority on the subject in an attempt to intimidate and silence their opponents. Sometimes they are accurately quoting people who really are expert in a subject, but more often than not, the quotation is out of context and does not support their point at all, or the authority is really not that authoritative. This is the usual problem with creationist quotes from authority: when you go back and look at the source, the quote is out of context and means the opposite of what they claim, or the source itself is outdated or not very credible. As Carl Sagan puts it, there are no true authorities; there are people with expertise in certain areas, but nobody is an authority in more than a narrow range of human knowledge.
One of the principal symbols of authority in scholarship and science is the PhD degree. But you don’t need a PhD to do good science, and not all people who have science PhDs are good scientists. As those of us who have gone through the ordeal know, a PhD only proves that you can survive a grueling test of endurance in doing research and writing a dissertation on a very narrow topic. It doesn’t prove that you are smarter than anyone else or more qualified to render an opinion than anyone else. Because earning a PhD requires enormous focus on one specific area, many people with that degree have actually lost a lot of their scholarly breadth and knowledge of other fields in the process of focusing on their thesis.
In particular, it is common for people making extraordinary claims (like creationism or alien abductions or psychic powers) to wear a PhD, if they have one, like a badge, advertise it prominently on their book covers, and feature it in their biographies. They know that it will impress and awe the listener or reader into thinking they are smarter than anyone else or more qualified to pronounce on a topic. Nonsense! Unless the claimant has earned a PhD and done research in the subject being discussed, the degree is entirely irrelevant to the controversy.
For example, many of the critics of the evidence for global climate change are physicists or other scientists with no actual research in climate science. Their degree may make them an expert in physics, but climate science is a completely different field with a different data set and different kind of training. They are presumptuous and arrogant to think that their physics degree makes them an expert in this very different field. Even worse are meteorologists who criticize climate science. Since I teach both subjects at the college level, I can tell you that their claims are ridiculous. Meteorology deals with the day-to-day weather, but climate science deals with climate, the long-term average of weather, based on ice cores, tree rings, deep-sea sediments, and other geological phenomena. A meteorologist has no qualification to critique climate data, so when you hear them spouting off about climate change in the news, they come off as rank amateurs. Unfortunately, the average person, who doesn’t know that climate is not the same as weather, is fooled nonetheless.
The “scientific” leaders of the creationist movement included a man with a doctorate in hydraulic engineering and another who was a biochemist but trained over seventy years ago. Neither had any training in fossils or in geology or any other field beyond their specializations, but they wrote endless false information about paleontology or geology or thermodynamics. Their doctoral degrees were completely irrelevant to those fields. Yet they always flaunted their PhDs to awe the masses and tried to intimidate their opponents. In all of these cases, a degree in an unrelated field does not make you an expert in any other field. My PhD and published research have made me expert in many areas of geology, paleontology, and climate science, but they don’t qualify me to write a symphony or fix a car.
Similarly, there are many fringe ideas in lots of fields, and the more “way out there” they are, the more likely the author has put “PhD” on the cover. By contrast, legitimate scientists do not put their degree on their book cover and seldom list their credentials on a scientific article either. If you doubt this, just look at the science shelves in your local bookstore. The quality of the research must stand by itself, not be propped up by an appeal to authority based on your level of education. To most scientists, credential mongering is a red-flag warning. If the author flaunts a PhD on the cover, beware of the stuff inside!
5. Bold Statements
