>> It's enough to show the errors of the current explanation > Not if you want to argue in favor of a specific alternative. Sure, but this is not what you act

>> It's enough to show the errors of the current explanation > Not if you want to argue in favor of a specific alternative. Sure, but this is not what you actually said in your original comment. You said "if you want to challenge the scientific status quo you need an actual argument, i.e. you need propose a better alternative to the current-best explanation" and that's different. You can challenge the status quo by proving it wrong and that doesn't mean that you have to propose a better alternative. Now what was happening with covid and the crakcpots you mentioned is where you would be right to say that they need to prove they have a better alternative. Because they did claim that but all they had was criticism for the existing solutions. E.g. "vaccines cause side effects, so let's use ivermectin". (Without proving that ivermectin works better than vaccines for preventing e.g. deaths.) But in theory someone could come around and prove that vaccines "don't work" (i.e. not worth using) without suggesting a better alternative. They would just need to show the data/supporting evidence. And actually that's exactly what real scientists did with Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine: they have proven that neither of them work for any sensible endpoint. > But again, you have to show some actual evidence that the current-best-explanation is wrong. You can't just proclaim it. Sure. That's what I said too. (I even included it in the example how you would do it ;) )