How to debunk just about anything!!!

No doubt there are people who have seen this before. But I thought it would be fun to post, because it describes a lot of members here.

Before commencing to debunk, prepare your equipment. Equipment needed: one armchair.

Put on the right face. Cultivate a condescending air that suggests that your personal opinions are backed by the full faith and credit of God. Employ vague, subjective, dismissive terms such as "ridiculous" or "trivial" in a manner that suggests they have the full force of scientific authority.


Keep your arguments as abstract and theoretical as possible. This will "send the message" that accepted theory overrides any actual evidence that might challenge it--and that therefore no such evidence is worth examining.

Always refer to unorthodox statements as "claims," which are "touted," and to your own assertions as "facts," which are "stated."

Avoid examining the actual evidence. This allows you to say with impunity, "I have seen absolutely no evidence to support such ridiculous claims!" (Note that this technique has withstood the test of time, and dates back at least to the age of Galileo. By simply refusing to look through his telescope, the ecclesiastical authorities bought the Church over three centuries' worth of denial free and clear!)

If examining the evidence becomes unavoidable, report back that "there is nothing new here!" If confronted by a watertight body of evidence that has survived the most rigorous tests, simply dismiss it as being "too pat."

Insist that the progress of science depends on explaining the unknown in terms of the known. In other words, science equals reductionism. You can apply the reductionist approach in any situation by discarding more and more and more evidence until what little is left can finally be explained entirely in terms of established knowledge.
At every opportunity reinforce the notion that what is familiar is necessarily rational. The unfamiliar is therefore irrational, and consequently inadmissible as evidence.

State categorically that the unconventional may be dismissed as, at best, an honest misinterpretation of the conventional.

In any case, imply that proof precedes evidence. This will eliminate the possibility of initiating any meaningful process of investigation--particularly if no criteria of proof have yet been established for the phenomenon in question.

If a significant number of people agree that they have observed something that violates the consensus reality, simply ascribe it to "mass hallucination." Avoid addressing the possibility that the consensus reality might itself constitute a mass hallucination.

Ridicule, ridicule, ridicule. It is far and away the single most chillingly effective weapon in the war against discovery and innovation. Ridicule has the unique power to make people of virtually any persuasion go completely unconscious in a twinkling. It fails to sway only those few who are of sufficiently independent mind not to buy into the kind of emotional consensus that ridicule provides.

By appropriate innuendo and example, imply that ridicule constitutes an essential feature of the scientific method that can raise the level of objectivity and dispassionateness with which any investigation is conducted.


Remember that most people do not have sufficient time or expertise for careful discrimination, and tend to accept or reject the whole of an unfamiliar situation. So discredit the whole story by attempting to discredit *part* of the story. Here's how: a) take one element of a case completely out of context; b) find something prosaic that hypothetically could explain it; c) declare that therefore that one element has been explained; d) call a press conference and announce to the world that the entire case has been explained!

And more fun ways to debunk here!!! It's from the article: "Zen . . . And the Art of Debunkery" by Daniel Drasin

And another one.

When someone presents you with photographic evidence. Lean back further in your armchair and cry "Photoshop!!!"

These three are also funny, but true!!!

Label any poorly-understood phenomenon "occult," "fringe," "paranormal," "metaphysical," "mystical," "supernatural," or "new-age." This will get most mainstream scientists off the case immediately on purely emotional grounds. If you're lucky, this may delay any responsible investigation of such phenomena by decades or even centuries!

Ask questions that appear to contain generally-assumed knowledge that supports your views; for example, "why do no police officers, military pilots, air traffic controllers or psychiatrists report UFOs?" (If someone points out that they do, insist that those who do must be mentally unstable.)

Ask unanswerable questions based on arbitrary criteria of proof. For example, "if this claim were true, why haven't we seen it on TV?" or "in this or that scientific journal?" Never forget the mother of all such questions: "If UFOs are extraterrestrial, why haven't they landed on the White House lawn?"

LMAO!!

Oh, that fits so many here....

~I am a "random thought generator" derived from the AI chip on my BIOS. I do not exist as a person and any claims to prove otherwise will only be a result of a 'mass hallucination'.~

Briliant find!

And so true!

A lot of debunking methods described there can be observed on ATS. Very interesting.

Yep,

Another reason why I posted this thread is so that a member can immediately post a link to this thread when another member deploys one of these "debunking" techniques.

Nice find and quite amusing.

On a more serious note, do you suggest people just soak up the BS that comes from a great many Trolls that post here?

Or maybe you could suggest a procedure for debunking, obviously you won't be able to use any of the above mentioned techniques.

Nope... I'm not even talking about the obvious frauds and hoaxes here. Because there are a lot of those too. I'm focusing on the unnecesary and unjust debunking of phenomena that may be in fact real.

It's almost impossible to dismiss something within 5 minutes of it being posted (that is not an obvious fraud or hoax of course). And with obvious frauds or hoaxes I mean frauds or hoaxes that the vast majority of people can see with one or two observations. For example, clearly photoshop pictures, not pictures where you comb through the whole picture to support your already beforehand made conclusion that it's a fake/hoax or a fraud.

And people love to dismiss something without even doing some research for themselves or not trying something out for themselves.

What I'm against here is statements based on a conclusion instead of on an inquiry.

[edit on 6-12-2004 by TheBandit795]

This is so true. I think it taps into each individuals Belief System and whether or not they are open minded enough to be willing to change their current beliefs.
We've started an interesting discussion on that in the ID forum in the Philosophy section. It's quiet right now, but soon, that same class of debunkers will move over there and start stomping on any one who thinks/acts/believes or is of a different opinion than them.

True 'debunking' should be in the form of serious research and the evidence you have discovered on the given subject.

Bandit, intuitively most people will pick up on whether an image appears "Photoshopped", more especially if they are used to using it.

The third post on this thread is a relative example.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Oh goodness me children, there is nothing new here. This trivial and ridiculous nonsense has been touted here many times before, there is no such thing as debunking, its been thourally debunked by the experts!
And I beleive that was photoshopped, you can see the pixelation at the edges!

Originally posted by Koka
Bandit, intuitively most people will pick up on whether an image appears "Photoshopped", more especially if they are used to using it.

The third post on this thread is a relative example.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I had known that picture before, and I was just repeating what someone else concluded about it. That's all...

Originally posted by TheBandit795

And people love to dismiss something without even doing some research for themselves or not trying something out for themselves.

What I'm against here is statements based on a conclusion instead of on an inquiry.

I'm right there with you bandit.

On the other hand . . . some of us have areas of specialized knowlege, or have a prior experience with a given theory or proposition. But there is a difference in "laying out the evidence against" something and the attempt to debunk.

For instance . . .

On this thread about similarities between Olmec (new world) and Nubian (old world) statues, I raised some points about the problems with any theory of cultural diffussion:

www.abovetopsecret.com... e=1#pid2141838

But I summarized by admitting that I wasn't saying it was impossible. Merely that a theory of transatlantic contact would have specific problems to overcome.

The problem I have with "anti-debunkers" is that the response (when there is one) is to say, "you're just a hack for the mainstream suppressors of truth!"

So, apparently, if I have advanced degrees in a particular field, or have spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars in student-loans studying some topic, and have even published on the topic, none of that is relevant, if it gets in the way of what someone else reads on the intarweb, right????

Who is being more open-minded?

The person who prefers the truth (even when it's boring), who is willing to consider the evidence one more time, and apply repeatable and verifiable processes to the problem,

or the person who believes that the establishment "must be hiding something" simply because their research is too complicated to learn in one internet session?

I agree, debunking (to end further debate) is unfair and usually ego-driven. So skeptics need to proceed with caution. Even so, "believers" are simply skeptics of the majority opinion, and need to proceed with caution as well.

Not everyone who disagrees is an enemy.
.

Here it is:

33 ways to win an argument from Schopenhauer's "Art of Controversy."


Everybody have fun tonight.

Exactly... It goes both ways.

Very amusing thread. I'd just like to add Occam's Razor to the list of fun ways to debunk. It seems to be a favourite among many here.