> Isn't that the whole point of science? No, Carl Sagan's famous "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is certainly not the whole point of scie

> Isn't that the whole point of science? No, Carl Sagan's famous "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is certainly not the whole point of science. At best it's merely a useful heuristic for judging how much effort to put into researching a particular claim. Trying to use that argument as the basis for science is highly problematic because how do you know what constitutes an "extraordinary claim" ? Claims can only be evaluated against the current state of scientific knowledge, which is itself in a state of constant evolution and which has also undergone and will continue to undergo many revolutions. The core of science is the use of repeatable methods which can be verified by anyone (so very similar in spirit to open source software). The gold standards for such methods are random controlled experiments and rigorous mathematical proofs. However in many fields these methods aren't available and weaker ones must be used. Then you can certainly get into much discussion on the strength of the methods used as well as the interpretations of the results.