Tuesday 7 September 2010

Morning Scepticism: Negative

Being negative is easy, it's what sceptics do best. Take a claim and dissect it through critical analysis and empirical validity. Of course to do this one needs some positive understanding, and that is often forgotten. It's not just through examination ex nihilo that homoeopathy is found to be lacking, but it conflicts with what is known about physics and biology. To focus on the negative only makes sense in light of what positive knowledge we already have, so perhaps one needs to make a positive case for how we can know before stating why claim X doesn't work.

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