The following section describes the history behind the Sagan standard, and behind the idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. However, the concept of ECREE has also been mentioned by various other scientists, at earlier points within the same general time period. Similarly, a report credits Philip H.
He further went on to say that:. Furthermore, the underlying idea behind ECREE has been discussed by others in various formulations during earlier periods of history. For example, Thomas Jefferson, who was skeptical about a report of a meteor, stated in an letter that:.
A thousand phenomena present themselves daily which we cannot explain. But where facts are suggested, bearing no analogy with the laws of nature as yet known to us, their verity needs proofs proportioned to their difficulty.
Similarly, Scottish philosopher David Hume said the following, with regard to the idea of miracles:. Some events are found, in all countries and all ages, to have been constantly conjoined together: Others are found to have been more variable, and sometimes to disappoint our expectations; so that, in our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence.
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Manby and H. Newton, I. John, In Two Parts. Darby and T. Open Science Collaboration. Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, , —1,8. By application of Bayes' theorem, it's possible to show this in action mathematically. Assume, for instance, someone claims to be able to predict what way a coin [4] will land almost perfectly. We know this is an extraordinary claim, so we'll say that just by guessing if the person is telling the truth or not that it's a million-to-one chance.
In reality, the number would be even more improbable, but this can be used for illustration. So we ask them to demonstrate the skill. This gives us all the information we need to know to actually quantify how extraordinary the evidence must be. Consider if they guessed a single coin toss correctly.
A single coin toss doesn't improve our odds dramatically. It all rests on how improbable our evidence, P B , actually is and a chance isn't particularly improbable. For two coin tosses P B becomes 0. Plugging those numbers into Bayes' theorem gives us a probability of genuine skill given P A of a million-to-one of around 0.
Basically what this means is that if you make increasingly fantastic claims, the skeptic is not increasingly impressed, but rather wants more evidence. But sometimes, there is confusion about this saying. What constitutes an "extraordinary claim"? And is the saying always true, or a rule of thumb? There are several ways to define extraordinary claims. The most obvious definition would be those claims that require extraordinary evidence.
That makes our maxim into a nice tautology; it is guaranteed to be true. But the problem with tautologies is that they do not tell us much. How do we tell an extraordinary claim from an ordinary one? We look to see whether it requires extraordinary evidence. How do we know whether it requires extraordinary evidence?
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