False Conclusions

Have you ever dropped a stone? Do you want to bet that it would fall down? Have you ever asked a scientist if he is 100% sure that the stone always falls down? – No? Then give it a try.

Chances are that the scientist would say that probably no one has ever observed that a stone does not fall down when you let go of it, but that you can’t prove that it always does either. Because one does not know what one does not know. There could be perhaps a still unknown property of the universe which holds the stone.

The situation is similar to the harm mobile communications could cause to your health, particularly relevant in the debate about the new 5G standard. After three decades of research, no researcher has yet been able to prove any damage to health. But because no one knows what is not known, no researcher will claim that such damage can be ruled out with certainty. At the most, they will say that they are unlikely.

Opponents of mobile communication like to use this fact by drawing an inadmissible conclusion: if science says that a risk cannot be excluded, then the matter is dangerous. This is wrong, however, and represents nothing more than a technique to manipulate public opinion.

The theory of man-made climate change is similar. That man is to blame for the current climate change can never be proven with one hundred percent certainty for reasons of principle – because one does not know what one does not know!

To conclude from this that the theory is useless is simply wrong. Otherwise, one would have to reject all scientific theories and abandon the cell phone with which such false information is spread.

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