Thread: Drug use?

The person making the claim is the one that should be providing the evidence. Aka, if I say "there is a civilization of aliens living in the core of the earth and I can feel their presence" and someone says back "no... there is no reason to believe that" (not the best example but whatever) the person that says no is going to have alot of trouble disproving it since he can't go to the core of the earth and check (especially a person without access to extremely advanced scientific equipment ). Yet, the person who made the claim that they existed or are affecting the other is the one who should be providing the evidence since HE made the claim. If that was the case, people could make whatever claim they wanted and just "assume" they are right. Claims need to be backgrounded in evidence, show me some.

Sure, the evidence can always grow greater, but if someone wants to believe a theory like lunar effects on sleep which has FAR less (if any) evidence than supression of REM sleep by marijuana, they are just being hippocritical. It's easy to make anecdotal claims which many people do (ie. ESP claims, etc.) or speak from "personal experience"; yet often people are misled, don't tell the truth, or there are other factors affecting it they don't realize (ie. psychological which play a role in MANY cases like the one you described). Although studies are sometimes flawed as you said or limited, they control for confounding variables and things at a farrrrrrrrrrrrrr greater degree than claims (ie. people who swear on everyone they are telling the truth and end up having lied, periods of time when all or the majority of the Earth 100% believed things later proved incorrect (I won't diss any current religions but take a look at ones from the past)). I can't disprove it because I don't have access to a laboratory, sufficient tools, and yourself to test out your claim; that doesn't mean it's impossible. It just seems more plausible that thinking the moon is having some change on your body is actually causing the change (placebo effects can lead to 30+% of physical effects for example even though they are just psychological) than some magical effect of the moon grounded in nothing and failing testing (however limited).

That's why people are "swayed" by scientific studies, I even knew you were going to try to say people get indoctrinated into science since that's an argument that is used all the time. People use similar arguments against some of the most well-developed and tested theories that have survived skepticism and anti-thesis over hundreds of years and have thousands+ studies supporting them (saying they are just "theories"). Btw, I have no problem with you just a friendly debate.