You've Been Punked! Burden of Proof

One of the most obvious-seeming scientific requirements for taking anything seriously is the so called "burden of proof". The simple explanation of what it means is that only the claims based on evidence are acceptable to the scientific community. All that isn't proven, or worse still, what isn't even provable, simply isn't scientific. In reality, however, it isn't quite so straightforward, so please let me shed some light on the matter by un-simplifying it.

When one claims, without any proof whatsoever, that Santa is real, scientists find it ridiculous, despite the pathetic and contrarian argument that "you can't prove that he doesn't exist". However, when one claims, without any proof whatsoever, that the universe will one day collapse into a big crunch, or expand till it pops and rips apart, or completely freezes with all matter dissolving into light, suddenly it should be taken into consideration and treated seriously. In case you're wondering, yes, it is an arbitrary double standard. Let's explore how it works.

If burden of proof is such a big deal, you couldn't really call much of theoretical physics (mainly string theory), arguably the most advanced and interesting field today, a science. Oh they would tell you that they are working with *mathematical* proofs, or *logical* proofs, or what have you. Just not empirical proofs or experimental proofs or observational proofs, at least not conclusive ones. You know, the actual scientific proofs.

Mathematics are cool, and, as many great thinkers agree, unreasonably good at describing the natural laws of our universe, but they are not observed, they are made up. Logic is also fine, but also made up. Either is essentially a matter philosophy. It may lead to a key observation, an experiment and a proof one day, sure, though it hasn't for many years, but that precisely makes it a textbook case of a matter of faith. And you couldn't even really say that it is an obviously reasonable faith, since theoretical physics threw common sense out the window a long time ago.

The question is then, what differentiates a scientifically viable hypothesis from a ludicrous notion unworthy of pursuit. Frankly, it's personal biases, academic tradition and peer pressure, the same forces that establish and enforce limits of acceptable behavior in any community. To be fair, academia is not entirely homogeneous, there are differing opinions not only among individual scientists, but also fields of inquiry and schools of thought or methodology within those fields. On the basis of which scientists often tend to look down upon other fields or especially rival schools, though usually in good humor, with a hint of sarcasm.

Many prefer focus on utility, quantification of everything and proof strictly by controlled experiment. Others may find any or all of that dumb, silly or futile. And that is all fine of course, since if everybody tested exactly the same hypotheses using exactly the same methods, less progress would have been accomplished. But that only makes the actual double standard all the more egregious, since science as a whole does not shy away from weird, currently untestable and currently useless stuff - on the off chance it still might be ultimately true and useful one day.

You might think that all it takes is to explain the outlandish theory in scientific, objectively explicit and logically consistent terms, ideally using math, but you would be wrong. For instance, any test of astrology that shows any positive results regarding astrology is simply rejected - like the Gauquelin Mars Effect study was. Any test that shows it to be false is immediately accepted, even if it's methodology is shoddy and theory logically inconsistent - like Carlson's test of astrology from 1985 was. Just like it happens again and again with the research of Rupert Sheldrake - a pretty straightforward search for applications of quantum principles to biology, a field today still largely stuck in the age of Newtonian physics.

That is where that which I called earlier in this article "academic tradition" comes into play. Since the enlightenment, science as an enterprise has invested too much effort into showing that there is nothing "magical" in this world. Quite early on, a list of "superstitions" was put together, and the items on that list, mainly of the spiritual, occult or paranormal nature, simply cannot be accepted. As far as science's historical reputation is concerned, there cannot be any naturally occurring ghosts, afterlife, ESP, telepathy, telekinesis, god-like entities, and the like. Oh and astrology or numerology cannot work, of course.

All of that has been decided long time ago, way before science could even begin to test whether any of that could be real or not. If science was a person, this would be its belief - that, simply put, there is no magic in reality. It is not simply a lack of belief, though, as atheists tend to defend themselves from accusations of them having a religion, too. It is a positive belief in what the world is, which excludes magic as a logical conclusion of what is assumed about what makes the world work - mechanistic, deterministic, paradox-free laws, shaping human will, and never the other way around.

Which is a belief that is probably quite unprovable, and therefore, ironically, unscientific. Despite this, however, it is true that science is a self-correcting mechanism. The incredibly counterintuitive quantum physics, very solidly proven, now allow for various things previously thought to be magic, if not all of them. That is not yet a proof of any of those "superstitious" beliefs, but it begins to make them testable, and therefore weird, but potentially scientifically viable. There could be telepathy now, and minds affecting natural events, and consciousness surviving death, and intelligent entities beyond human scales of space and time, or even existing in different dimensions altogether.

Considering all of this, what burden of proof actually means has to be reconsidered. Any theory enters science, the realm of serious consideration, when it starts to become testable, whether anyone likes it or not. It doesn't have to be formulated as testable or require proof on its own, it doesn't need to have immediate utility, it doesn't have to satisfy common sense, it simply moves from under the table onto the table. Before you start saying anything about it at that point, you better have logically consistent arguments, because at that point, proof can one day show up and make you look like a fool.

Even now, to say for example that will can or cannot affect objective reality is no longer a matter of opinion. Of course, the current physics do not exactly allow throwing fireballs or changing an elephant into a mouse, but they do allow for consciousness to influence "random" probability or long distance instant exchange of information. The effect is small, or more precisely starts small, but can cause a big effect over long period of time, or even quickly, by tipping the balance and causing a runaway chain reaction. This is precisely how magic becomes science, when we actually begin to be able to discern scientifically, how "magic" could or could not really work - because of the burden of potentially available proof.