The Primacy of Testability over Parsimony as a Scientific Standard for UAP Hypotheses
Recently Kent Bye took issue with Mick's "Occamic" hierarchy (or "Occamaric" as mispronounced by Kent) of UAP hypotheses. He wasn't particularly successful in refuting the hierarchy. But it got me thinking that neither is Mick's hierarchy, in closer scrutiny, all that scientific.
Occam's Razor is invoked prematurely in both cases; at the outset of (1) advancing the alien hypothesis or (2) debunking outlandish-sounding claims, while both sides claiming to evade the parsimonious guillotine. Pop science and online squabbles amongst avid science-consumers invoke the Razor far more enthusiastically (read: flippantly) than actual science.
In the deep trenches of natural science, Occam's Razor is neither oft-mentioned nor commonly invoked. Its potential utility comes into play only when there are
two or more competing hypotheses that are equally consistent with all available evidence (including equality in their predictive power). With the Navy UAP videos, this condition is veritably unmet.
In fact, meeting this condition is a somewhat rare occurrence in science, and concerns broader and foundational theories more than specific hypotheses in any given branch. Also, it usually concerns basic research more than applied research.
A 'scientific' comparison of the
plausibility of rival hypotheses is a far more practical and uncontroversial exercise than the (essentially) fruitless philosophical head-butting on whether or not the Razor applies to 'my' favourite theory. Scientific examination is
initially disinterested in whether any propounded hypothesis advances too many, too broad or too fundamental new assumptions (i.e. Occam's Razor, or the parsimoniousness / adequacy of the theory) to explain the evidence at hand. It's far more interested in their immediate
testability (a.k.a. falsifiability). That is to say, their ability to yield relatively effortlessly observable theory-predictions, or to predict the exact behaviour of the phenomena featured in the evidence already at hand. Echoing the point made by
@Criticalthinker earlier, predicting testable observations is essentially an exercise in
deductive reasoning.
The testability of the alien hypothesis is scientifically perfectly satisfactory if, indeed,
it claims/predicts observable feats of flight that defy current human understanding of physics. Luckily for the debunkers, this is exactly the most commonplace claim. The available evidence, when carefully dissected, simply does
not demonstrate such feats of flight. Hence, in order to give any scientific weight to the alien hypothesis,
new, confirming, evidence must be provided. Thus far no such evidence exists. Nothing further is needed to scientifically dismiss the alien hypothesis with respect to the current UAP evidence (the Navy UAP videos) but a negative test outcome (falsification). The falsification of one hypothesis does not depend on the verification of the alternative hypotheses. Mick scores 1-0.
In other words, by invoking
testability rather than
the Razor, the comparison of the hypotheses would still result in roughly the same conclusion, namely the alien hypothesis being the least tenable alternative. Or to be precise, its prediction of
humanly presently unattainable feats of flight produces thus far squarely
negative test outcomes. These negative test outcomes (i.e. somewhat mundane flight characteristics), generated by evaluating the footage, can be produced in our current experiments even if the exact objects featured in the evidence remain forever unidentified (i.e. scientifically unverified).
Any further debate on anti-gravity, space-time manipulation and warp drives failing to satisfy the Razor, and upending physics as we know it, is simply unnecessary.
It may therefore be worthwhile for Mick, when discussing with whatever audience on merits of the competing hypotheses, to shift the focus from the Razor to testability/successful theory-predictions. Testability, when applicable, is also the more merciless arbiter.
(<that's a joke ...for those who don't know)
