Mostly good stuff, but, like Bernie says, he seems to assume that there is a set of people called “skeptics” out there with a lot more commonality than I’ve ever
      seen. The people who frequent this list are probably more typical of skeptics in that there is a very wide range of beliefs, education, knowledge, experience, and
      so forth.

      But I do disagree with one concept that I think I saw in the article. That is, I think it is possible to be certain that a particular thing is not true if there is sufficient
      negative evidence against it. That is to say, although no one can prove a negative, you can disprove a positive by undercutting its claims.

      Let’s use levitation for an example, since that’s been talked about a lot on the list lately. It’s not an ambiguous subject. Either a person can move an object using
      nothing but their mind or they can’t. Testing this is simple and easy. You don’t need statistics (and shouldn’t use it), elaborate equipment, or anything else
      (although some training in stage magic and scams should probably be a requirement for investigating any type of paranormal).

      People say that they can levitate objects. We test them. They can’t do it. At this point I think that Truzzi would say that we should be agnostic and say that we
      don’t know whether levitation exists or not. I say that there’s no need to wait. The only reason that we think that there might be such a thing in the first place is
      because people say that they can do it. If the best levitators in the world can’t really do what they say they can, I see no reason to expect that anyone can do it
      either. The negative evidence is compelling. If these people can’t levitate, then no one can.

      But wait. What if the psychics are test shy? What if they only have powers on Thursday and we tested on Friday? And so on? The real question is: do we have
      to completely resolve every possible option before making a decision? We cannot in reality test every human on earth under every possible condition on to
      infinity, therefore we test the most likely candidates under the best conditions that they agree to beforehand and make generalizations from that. As above, if the
      best levitators can’t levitate objects under conditions that they agree will allow them to be successful, then no one can.

      Agnosticism is only valid in theology and philosophy. In science, you don’t have to test every drop of water on earth to know what it’s made of. Truzzi’s main
      thrust reminds me of the creationist’s arguments that there is no such thing as an atheist. The argument goes that to be an atheist, you have to be certain that there
      are no gods anywhere in the universe. The only way to know that is to know everything there is to know about the universe. Since that is impossible, it’s
      impossible to be an atheist. BS of a low order.

      Truzzi seems to agree with the “there are no absolutes” part of science, but the part of science that he’s leaving out is that you don’t actually need absolutes to
      make good decisions. Based on the information I have right now, this is what I think about blah-blah. Because of the many years of testing by many different
      people, I can confidently say that levitation does not exist. I would only be uncertain (agnostic) about the subject if some of the tests validated levitation and some
      didn’t. Only then is a wait-and-see position valid. That isn’t the case, so the large amount of negative evidence (the multiple failures of the psychics) is enough to
      declare the subject is false. Let’s move on to the next question. If someone comes up with some new evidence to support levitation at some point in the future,
      we can open the file up again. Until that time, it’s a solved problem.

      An unbiased mind is what how we view a new subject, but there is no need to completely ignore history when dealing with the old subjects.

      Fred Askew