Asking a person to disprove someone else's claim to the affirmative is not how the scientific method is supposed to work. The burden of proof should on the pers

Asking a person to disprove someone else's claim to the affirmative is not how the scientific method is supposed to work. The burden of proof should on the person that is claiming something is happening, rather than burdening everyone else with the disproof. This is a fundamental problem with conspiracy theorists' methods-- they often say, "You can't prove it's _not_ happening!". This is called shifting the burden, and it's a popular argument in theology. Bertrand Russell's Teapot is an example of what I mean: "If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense."[1] In that same vein, it would be a supreme waste of time to try and scientifically debunk the trolls that are promoting this nonsense; they have the burden of proof. Still I agree it would be fun to watch it be debunked. But how would you propose it be done? Gather a large number of healthy people around a 5G tower and do a cohort study of COVID-19-like symptoms among that group and compare to a control population? There's any number of possible methods, but it sounds pretty silly when you say it out loud. What's worse is even if you _did_ such a study, its results would fall on deaf ears as far as the conspiracy theory folks go. They are not interested in proof. References: [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot