#burden of proof

[detective-jane-rizzoli]

[calvinists-and-hobbesians]

Christians really use Pascal's Wager as if I couldn't just make up my own God and use the same arguments

They'll claim that a lack of evidence against something means that it exists RIGHT until I start preaching about the glory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster who dwells in Pastafarian Heaven

[bigfootbeat]

[sophieinwonderland]

Pro-endos: Name a single doctor that has said you need a disorder or trauma to be plural. Anti-endos: *Lists off some random names* Pro-endos: Cool. Can you cite where they actually said that? Anti-endos: Now you want PROOF instead of just taking our word for it? How dare you move the goalposts by asking us to prove our claims? We gave you random names and now it's your responsibility to educate yourself by combing through literally everything these doctors have said through their whole lives until you either find something that proves us right or your mortal coil expires and rots away.

I get being annoyed by legitimate moving of goalposts. I often am myself because sysmeds love this as their go-to tactic. I'd be able to buy Twitter if I had a penny for every time a sysmed asked for evidence of a doctor being pro-endo, and then when given proof, makes up some stupid reason it doesn't count.

I've seen "Dr. Eric Yabrough doesn't count because he's an LGBT psychiatrist and doesn't specialize in dissociative disorders," "Dr. Colin Ross doesn't count because he's studied some weird things in addition to having 40 years of experience studying dissociative disorders," "these psychologists who conducted an fMRI study on tulpamancy don't count because the psychologists were talking about it on Reddit," "research on tulpamancy is irrelevant because people on the internet told me tulpamancy is an offensive word," "only .edu/.gov are valid sources," "sources older than ten/five/two/whatever-number-I-make-up years are expired and no longer count," and so many other ridiculous excuses to dismiss professional opinions on endogenic systems. Sysmeds love moving goalposts.

But... I feel that, when asked to name anti-endo doctors... being able to cite the specific quote should be the bare minimum. Providing evidence should be inherently implied as part of the assignment.

And if you're unable to do that and resort to an ad hominem, accusing the person asking of being ableist in order to shut them up, I'm going to assume that it's because you're lying.

Because in theory, if you knew where these doctors had said the things you're claiming they said, you would be able to cite it.

In the end, moving goalposts is typically about demanding new evidence when the initial standards of evidence set by the discussion are met. If an anti-endo asks for a doctor that has said you can be plural without trauma, and you provide one with a citation, you've satisfied those goalposts with evidence.

If a pro-endo asks for you to name a doctor who has said you can't be plural without trauma, and you drop names with no citations, you still have no evidence. You're making an Argument By Assertion. Commonly known on the internet as a "trust me bro."

And expecting the person asking the questions to comb through the massive bibliographies of the doctors you named just to find where they said what you claim they said is shifting the burden of proof.

I can't see these sorts of tactics by anti-endos as anything more than bad faith attempts at shutting down discussions.

[1canadanus1]

cicero are you doing with the burden of proof? youre throwing it into the wrong net. thats your side of the court cicero. wait. youre doing so much better. youre at the correct side of the court now. youve missed the net. the burden of proof has gone out the door. its rolling down the street cicero.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Absence of Evidence Is Not Evidence of Absence

How the burden of proof was flipped — and why children are paying the price.

By: Leanne Owen

Published: Aug 19, 2025

Yesterday, I was watching one of Exulansic’s videos when she said a phrase I hadn’t heard in years: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” It took me straight back to my college logic class — and to the long list of logical fallacies we learned to spot.

Once you start looking for them, you see them everywhere. And nowhere are they more blatant, more dangerous, or more willfully ignored than in the medicalization of gender-distressed children.

In medicine, the burden of proof is supposed to rest on those promoting an intervention. You have to prove it’s safe before you roll it out — especially if it’s irreversible. But in the gender medicine debate, that burden has been turned upside down. Activists and clinicians demand that skeptics prove these interventions are harmful before they’ll consider stopping. In other words: “If you can’t show us definitive proof of harm, we’ll keep doing it.” That is the exact inversion of medical ethics — and it rests squarely on the fallacy Exulansic named.

We’ve been here before. History is littered with tragedies that began the same way. In the 1950s, thalidomide was given to pregnant women because there was “no evidence” it caused birth defects — until thousands of babies were born without limbs. For decades, asbestos lined homes and schools because there was “no evidence” it caused cancer — until mesothelioma patients filled hospital wards. Lobotomies were hailed as cutting-edge psychiatric care because there was “no evidence” they destroyed lives — until tens of thousands were left permanently disabled. In each case, the absence of evidence wasn’t proof of safety. It was proof no one had looked hard enough, long enough, or honestly enough.

Today, we are told that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for minors are “safe and effective.” We are told there’s “no evidence” these treatments cause harm. What we aren’t told is that there’s also no high-quality evidence proving they are safe — and no long-term research on what happens to the children who receive them. There is no national system in the United States to track regret or detransition rates. There have been no randomized controlled trials on minors. There is no comprehensive follow-up into adulthood to monitor physical or mental health outcomes. There is no systematic data on fertility loss, bone damage, or cardiovascular risk.

Meanwhile, the limited evidence we do have points toward extreme caution. Eleven long-term studies show that most gender non-conforming children, if left alone, will grow up to be gay or lesbian, not trans. Independent reviews in Sweden, Finland, and the UK’s Cass Review have all concluded that the research is too weak to justify routine use of these interventions on minors. Even WPATH’s own leaked files reveal internal admissions that they simply don’t know the long-term risks — and are proceeding anyway.

And this isn’t just about what’s missing. It’s also about what’s hidden. Hospitals lose follow-up data. Clinics refuse to publish internal audits. Detransitioners are ignored or erased from studies. When you suppress inconvenient facts, the absence of evidence stops being an accident — it becomes a deliberate choice. Yet activists cling to slogans like “detransition is rare” and “there’s no proof of harm” as if they are shields. But that’s not science. It’s salesmanship. It’s the exact logical trap my old professor warned us about — dressing up ignorance as certainty.

History will not be kind to this moment. In twenty years, when the lawsuits mount and the damage is undeniable, it will not absolve anyone to say, “We didn’t know.” Because the truth is, we do know: we haven’t looked, we haven’t measured, and we haven’t told the whole story.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It never has been. And when the stakes are as high as a child’s healthy body, the absence of evidence should stop us cold — not speed us forward.

We cannot wait for the damage to be done before demanding answers. If you believe children deserve better than untested, irreversible medical experiments, join us. Speak up at your school board. Contact your legislators. Share the stories the media buries. Support whistleblowers and detransitioners. The only thing more dangerous than acting without evidence is staying silent while it happens.

It’s time to stop experimenting on children and demand real evidence before another generation pays the price. The Courage Coalition is fighting for that future. Stand with us.

[a-typical]

And is not the truth of the Sun's nature as revealed by modern science far more wonderful: no mere angels or gold coin, but an enormous sphere into which a million Earths could be packed, in the core of which the hidden nuclei of atoms are being jammed together, hydrogen transfigured into helium, the energy latent in hydrogen for billions of years released, the Earth and other planets warmed and lit thereby, and the same process repeated four hundred billion times elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy?

The blueprints, detailed instructions, and job orders for building you from scratch would fill about 1,000 encyclopedia volumes if written out in English. Yet every cell in your body has a set of these encyclopedias. A quasar is so far away that the light we see from it began its intergalactic voyage before the Earth was formed. Every person on Earth is descended from the same not-quite-human ancestors in East Africa a few million years ago, making us all cousins.

Whenever I think about any of these discoveries, I feel a tingle of exhilaration. My heart races. I can't help it. Science is an astonishment and a delight. Every time a spacecraft flies by a new world, I find myself amazed. Planetary scientists ask themselves: "Oh, is that the way it is? Why didn't we think of that?" But nature is always more subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to imagine.

— The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan (1996)

[acurtist]

Why's no one talking about the deep state conspiracy to turn Gen-alpha into subversive hippies 😠