7 ms·

Yes, because scientists tend to be fond of evidence.

by drjesusphd 10y ago

voidz 10y ago
Yeah? http://retractionwatch.com http://retractionwatch.com
- drjesusphd 10y ago
  Not saying it's a universal trait.
- splawn 10y ago
  The fact that there are retractions shows that evidence matters... so "Yeah."
dleslie 10y ago
As it goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I have never in my life seen a mountain gorilla. I am aware of evidence that shows that they exist, but at my age my grand parents did not have access to that same evidence; does that mean that mountain gorillas came into existence when the evidence was found? Almost certainly not, heh, but they would have been valid in disbelieving in the existence of such beasts. There could be a person behind me with a knife, poised to slay me; but I am fairly confident that this is not the case due to a number of factors. On a population scale, such incidents are vanishingly few, and I took precautions earlier today to ensure that my home was locked and secured; but that does not guarantee certainty of my safety. It would be a fallacy, perhaps post hoc ergo propter hoc, for me to believe in the certainty that there is no such individual behind me. Until I turn around and observe the empty space, I cannot lay claim to the existence or non-existence of that individual. We cannot observe all of Earth all of the time, and we cannot do so for the Solar system, or lay claim to having done so throughout history. This does not mean that aliens have visited us, or that they even exist; it means that we cannot be certain that they don't exist and that they haven't visited.
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- mikeash 10y ago
  That saying is nonsense. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence, with a strength that's determined by how likely it is that you should find evidence given what you've looked for. Taking your mountain gorilla example, do you have any in your house? I'm guessing you'll say "no." Well, how do you know that? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, after all. Yet if you look all over your house and don't see any, I'd guess you would accept that as sufficient reason to say that there aren't any in your house. But how can you say that if it's not evidence of absence? Now, finding no mountain gorillas in your house is very poor evidence for the absence of mountain gorillas on Earth, because you'd expect the same results whether or not they existed on Earth in general. On the other hand, if you've performed a thorough survey of their actual supposed habitat and didn't find any (maybe because they were driven to extinction) then you'd have pretty good (but not perfect!) evidence that they aren't there anymore. There's essentially no evidence for the absence of aliens in the universe. You'll see this reflected in the opinion of the experts; many, perhaps most, say that it's likely aliens are out there somewhere. There's decent evidence for the absence of aliens around Earth, since we see nothing and we'd expect to see something, but it's possible they're undetectable. There's great evidence for the absence of classical UFOs, since they're clearly things we'd expect to see if they were real (people keep saying they saw them!) but out of all these sightings, none of them have turned out to be anything remarkable at all.
  - ewzimm 10y ago
    Most of what you're saying is right, but the saying isn't nonsense. It's just describing the problem that comes up when you can't find evidence of something. If its presence would necessarily present evidence, as with the gorilla (unless it's a mutant ninja gorilla), then it's evidence of absence. If its presence would not necessarily present any detectable evidence, then it's absence of evidence, meaning that you haven't really learned anything. With something like aliens, we don't actually know what evidence to look for, so as you're saying, there's no evidence of absence yet, only absence of evidence.
semi-extrinsic 10y ago
There are at least a few cases of hard evidence of UFOs, as in, "unidentified flying object" with no plausible physical explanation and observed by many trustworthy witnesses. They could of course be explained by many other causes than little green men, and I personally don't think there are little green men, but we don't know what these were. In particular, these ones I find very interesting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_flight_1628_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_flight_1628_... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_Airport_UFO_sighting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash-Landrum_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash-Landrum_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manises_UFO_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manises_UFO_incident So I don't think lack of evidence is the reason for no scientific effort, but rather, how would you conduct science based on that evidence? And actually, some "UFO-type" phenomena are under scientific investigation, such as the Hessdalen Lights: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessdalen_lights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessdalen_lights
- drjesusphd 10y ago
  Talking about UFOs strictly as such is besides the point and dodging the audacity of the claim. This conversation is about aliens. Until evidence arises of aliens, not "unidentified flying objects", it has no business making it through peer review as a resolution of the Fermi paradox.
- NetStrikeForce 10y ago
  What's the relation between UFOs and aliens? If you have evidence of one or more UFOs how are you relating them to aliens? Why not just magic or secret super heroes?
  - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
    GP post was talking about aliens and UFOs, and parent post claimed there is no evidence (thus no science). I was pointing out that we do have relatively credible evidence for UFOs (but not aliens), i.e. lack of evidence is not why there is no scientific papers on the topic of UFOs. I think the most likely explanation of most of these are classified aircraft of some sort.

Yes, because scientists tend to be fond of evidence.

voidz 10y ago

Yeah? http://retractionwatch.com http://retractionwatch.com

drjesusphd 10y ago
Not saying it's a universal trait.
splawn 10y ago
The fact that there are retractions shows that evidence matters... so "Yeah."

dleslie 10y ago

As it goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I have never in my life seen a mountain gorilla. I am aware of evidence that shows that they exist, but at my age my grand parents did not have access to that same evidence; does that mean that mountain gorillas came into existence when the evidence was found? Almost certainly not, heh, but they would have been valid in disbelieving in the existence of such beasts. There could be a person behind me with a knife, poised to slay me; but I am fairly confident that this is not the case due to a number of factors. On a population scale, such incidents are vanishingly few, and I took precautions earlier today to ensure that my home was locked and secured; but that does not guarantee certainty of my safety. It would be a fallacy, perhaps post hoc ergo propter hoc, for me to believe in the certainty that there is no such individual behind me. Until I turn around and observe the empty space, I cannot lay claim to the existence or non-existence of that individual. We cannot observe all of Earth all of the time, and we cannot do so for the Solar system, or lay claim to having done so throughout history. This does not mean that aliens have visited us, or that they even exist; it means that we cannot be certain that they don't exist and that they haven't visited.

deleted 10y ago
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deleted 10y ago
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mikeash 10y ago
That saying is nonsense. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence, with a strength that's determined by how likely it is that you should find evidence given what you've looked for. Taking your mountain gorilla example, do you have any in your house? I'm guessing you'll say "no." Well, how do you know that? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, after all. Yet if you look all over your house and don't see any, I'd guess you would accept that as sufficient reason to say that there aren't any in your house. But how can you say that if it's not evidence of absence? Now, finding no mountain gorillas in your house is very poor evidence for the absence of mountain gorillas on Earth, because you'd expect the same results whether or not they existed on Earth in general. On the other hand, if you've performed a thorough survey of their actual supposed habitat and didn't find any (maybe because they were driven to extinction) then you'd have pretty good (but not perfect!) evidence that they aren't there anymore. There's essentially no evidence for the absence of aliens in the universe. You'll see this reflected in the opinion of the experts; many, perhaps most, say that it's likely aliens are out there somewhere. There's decent evidence for the absence of aliens around Earth, since we see nothing and we'd expect to see something, but it's possible they're undetectable. There's great evidence for the absence of classical UFOs, since they're clearly things we'd expect to see if they were real (people keep saying they saw them!) but out of all these sightings, none of them have turned out to be anything remarkable at all.
- ewzimm 10y ago
  Most of what you're saying is right, but the saying isn't nonsense. It's just describing the problem that comes up when you can't find evidence of something. If its presence would necessarily present evidence, as with the gorilla (unless it's a mutant ninja gorilla), then it's evidence of absence. If its presence would not necessarily present any detectable evidence, then it's absence of evidence, meaning that you haven't really learned anything. With something like aliens, we don't actually know what evidence to look for, so as you're saying, there's no evidence of absence yet, only absence of evidence.

semi-extrinsic 10y ago

There are at least a few cases of hard evidence of UFOs, as in, "unidentified flying object" with no plausible physical explanation and observed by many trustworthy witnesses. They could of course be explained by many other causes than little green men, and I personally don't think there are little green men, but we don't know what these were. In particular, these ones I find very interesting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_flight_1628_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_flight_1628_... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_Airport_UFO_sighting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash-Landrum_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash-Landrum_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manises_UFO_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manises_UFO_incident So I don't think lack of evidence is the reason for no scientific effort, but rather, how would you conduct science based on that evidence? And actually, some "UFO-type" phenomena are under scientific investigation, such as the Hessdalen Lights: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessdalen_lights https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessdalen_lights

drjesusphd 10y ago
Talking about UFOs strictly as such is besides the point and dodging the audacity of the claim. This conversation is about aliens. Until evidence arises of aliens, not "unidentified flying objects", it has no business making it through peer review as a resolution of the Fermi paradox.
NetStrikeForce 10y ago
What's the relation between UFOs and aliens? If you have evidence of one or more UFOs how are you relating them to aliens? Why not just magic or secret super heroes?
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  GP post was talking about aliens and UFOs, and parent post claimed there is no evidence (thus no science). I was pointing out that we do have relatively credible evidence for UFOs (but not aliens), i.e. lack of evidence is not why there is no scientific papers on the topic of UFOs. I think the most likely explanation of most of these are classified aircraft of some sort.