[bdk3clash]

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They also commit another cardinal sin in my opinion: They attempt to reproduce an event through ordinary means, and if the replication works, they conclude that these are the only means by which the event could have occurred.

The logical fallacy in that is big enough to drive a Mack truck through.

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Kinli:

Again, I've read "Skeptical Inquirer" for years, and I haven't found any article that shows how an event can be replicated, and then concludes that the event could only have happened that way.

As a framework, I'm going to include a passage from James Randi's entry on parsimony in "An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural."

Parsimony, also known as Occam's Razor, states that:

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...if there exists two answers to a problem or a question, and if, for one answer to be true, well-established laws of logic and science must be re-written, ignored, or suspended in order to allow it to be true, and for the other answer to be true no such accomodation need be made, then the simpler--the second--of the two answers is much more likely to be correct.

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An example:

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The claim: That a person can cause an ordinary spoon to bend merely by looking at it, using psychic powers that have not been established and which would violate many known rules (conservation and transfer of energy, etc.) and cause those basic laws of science to be rewritten.

There are two explanations available: one says that these basic physical laws have been suspended in this case--a unique event never before known in history--and the other says that the performer has employed sleight of hand and/or deceptive optical principles and/or psychological misdirection to provide the illusion of the spoon bending without the use of ordinary physical force.

The seconed of the two explanations is much more likely to be true.


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Note that the skeptical position would generally be that there is a much simpler explanation to someone claiming to have ESP-like powers than ESP actually existing.