BillD, that's the problem. Of course, there's _always_ some footprints somewhere in a field, but showing that they were made by the blokes drawing the crop circle and not, say, by a couple of teenagers having it off the night before is difficult. I'm not defending UFOlogists - a lot are either cons or whackos - but I still believe it needs to be approached scientifically.

The further problem is that rejecting all this arbitrarily has several disadvantages. Firstly, we may actually be missing a trick - think of aspirin, derived from the willow-bark recommended as an old wives' tale, as a medical example of this. Do magnets affect health? Does acupuncture work? Scientific trials are the only way to test this out and give some kind of proof, or at least put some numbers to it. Note that explaining how it does it is not required - we still don't know exactly how aspirin does all that it does, but trials show that it does have these effects, so we can rely it to do that.

Secondly, and possibly more seriously, it perpetuates these spaced-out theories. How many "alternative" practicioners use phrases such as "science cannot explain it", "the establishment isn't prepared to listen to this startling new theory" or "hundreds of people have already benefited from this"? In most cases (the most notable being homeopathy which is a complete con), a properly conducted experiment will show that the treatment has no effect, and that the people who've claimed benefits from it may have other, more normal, explanations. In this case, the con artist can safely be told to shut up, go away and stop peddling his snake oil (under penalty of prosecution under the Trades Descriptions Act - UK anyway). If the test does NOT show this, then it's time to start looking more seriously at the theory and doing other tests to see whether (a) the first experiment was flawed, or (b) something's really going on.

Of course, no con merchant in their right mind would submit their "product" for impartial testing, and therein lies the problem. Personally, I'd ban anyone from making claims based on testimonials or lines like "it works for some people". If you really think it works, get it tested. If the tests show you may have something then fine, otherwise you should be shut down for the public good so you don't con anyone else.

Note that I'm not saying all alternative theories are bad. There's some strong circumstantial evidence for therapies such as acupuncture or Chinese herbal medicine. Some people have passed lie-detector tests when asked about UFOs, ESP, etc (although remember that a polygraph can be fooled). There's very little rigorous investigation been done and too many von Daeniken types involved, though, so scepticism is the ONLY rational approach.

Prove your case, and you've won. Fail to prove your case, and at least we know now. Don't have the nerve to prove your case, you're a con-artist.

Grab.

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