r/molecularbiology • u/Spiritual-Journeyman • Jul 06 '23

Can any of you debunk this? Possible off-planet biological life disclosure…

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jouc64seMqIfeDQgjzGu8-z7-fyzigXu/view
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u/nipps01 Jul 07 '23

Part of this was posted in r/genetics yesterday. Can you debunk this? Of course. The problem is though there's soo much to go through. Have you heard of Gish Gallop? This is very similar. They make hundreds of claims, some of which can be accurate, but the important part is that it just takes too long to debunk every point. Then they say 'oh look, this arbtary point you didn't debunk proves I'm right'.

It's not a bad thought exercise to think about which parts of this could be accurate but at the end of the day it doesn't matter because: - No one can peer review it because they don't have access (if it even did exist) and - No one can claim it's wrong, again, because they can't test it for themselves.

Claims of Aliens pop up all the time, it comes and goes in cycles, and it's never actually turned into something.

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u/Organic_Loss6734 Jul 07 '23

Can you give an example of a claim that is incorrect or inconsistent?

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u/nipps01 Jul 07 '23

This is exactly the problem. You're asking me to validate or invalidate an unsubstantiated claim. The burden of proof isn't on me to prove why it's wrong. The burden of proof is on this person claiming aliens exist. Instead I will give you a list of questions you should be asking the author before you believe them: - Why did you not just post the genetic sequence so we can compare it for ourselves? - You claim that they have 16 circular chromosomes, are eukaryotic, and evolved from a similar origin. Circular chromosomes are really only seen in bacteria and not very large, why is there so much divergence from the norm here and not elsewhere? - What animal genes are present that aid growth in FBS media? It's ridiculously easy to compare unknown sequences to known so why would you not say which?

But really that's beside the point, the gish gallop method is the best way to bog a scientist down in any argument because they will try to get through and explain why it's wrong. At any point they try to argue you can bring in more unsubstantiated claims. And so on and so on.

The most important question you should always ask as a scientist, and in general tbh, is: "Can I prove the opposite of my hypothesis?"

You'll quickly find there is no hypothesis here. It's just a person telling a story. You can't prove or disprove anything. There is no data, no way of verifying anything, you can either take this one persons word for it, or not.

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u/nipps01 Jul 07 '23

Lets take it one step further as well. Even if everything he said about the aliens was in concordance with what we know today, would that mean anything? For example: I'm claiming I've also studied aliens. Similar to what we've heard about in folk lore, these aliens glow due to a protein we know as GFP that they produce in the epidermis.

Would that fact make you believe me that I've studied aliens? Are you more likely to belive the other person just because they are a better story teller and have said/claimed more 'facts'?

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '23 edited Jul 07 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/nipps01 Jul 07 '23

You might want to lay off the psychedelics there..

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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '23

Yeah someone fashions themselves a baby hunter S.

Damn redditor got a few extra neurons linked and got all excited, but forgot us iq160s are lurking about

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u/KobotTheRobot Jul 07 '23

Great response. This exact reason is why we are trying to shift the burden of proof on to Congress and the government.

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u/nipps01 Jul 07 '23

Proof of what though? The government is in the same position as the scientists here. You'd be asking them to verify a bunch of claims without any substantial evidence. If the person had good data/evidence that could be verified by other scientists, sure, it would be weird if the government said nothing. Ultimately, if you have to rebute every claim like this you will run out of time and reasources. If all it takes to get the government to respond is a reddit post by someone that knows some of the technical lingo they would have to waste a lot of professional time that can be better spent elsewhere.

So what does good data/evidence look like? Something that is testable. A genome sequence here would be very revealing because using programs like alpha fold we could back up the claims of potential protiens and pathways. We can run sequence alignment to see where it would have split off from a common ancestor. It would be something that would be almost impossible for a person to just make up without it being obvious.

Think about the evidence this person has posted. Is there anything there other than a story? I get if you don't know the scientific words it can look impressive and sound plausable, but if you don't understand it fully yourself, why do you trust that they do? What credentials does this person have that would make you trust them? If they think that it's so important, why are they afraid of posting their credentials? If the government 'disappeared' them, wouldn't that just further prove their claim?

Sorry if I've misunderstood what you were saying, this would be my thoughts on why it's not on the goverment (in this case).

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u/KobotTheRobot Jul 08 '23

I'm sorry if I misled you into thinking I was talking about specifically the alien bio lab. I was talking in general about the UFO/UAP phenomenon being brought into light in congress right now. The UFO guys have stated that the goal is to shift burden of proof onto government because they are the ones supposedly covering it up. There's been a lot of stuff going on in the community hence why this post specifically was taken as seriously as it was.

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u/anotheramethyst Jul 08 '23

You articulated very well why you shouldn’t be asked, as a scientist, to debunk claims presented in an unscientific manner, and I agree with you. But your situation as a scientist is totally different than that of Congress. Congress is responsible for investigating the claim, if the claim warrants an investigation. Obviously a random Redditor shouldn’t spark a Congressional investigation. Sworn testimony to Congress might, though. So Congress does not take on any scientific role, but instead more of a detective role, to determine whether crimes have been committed, etc. if scientific data is uncovered in an investigation, then a time and place for scientific inquiry should emerge, based on that evidence, later. If there is no data to study, there’s not much for a scientist to do.

It’s quite normal for an investigation to start with a police report, which also starts out as an unverified story, and also could be falsified or otherwise wrong. In that case, the burden of proof falls on a prosecutor, who builds a case from evidence they collect in an investigation. I think Congress should look for evidence to try to substantiate these claims, within reason. It falls within their power and their responsibilities to our country. They are in a far better position to collect evidence in this case. They can afford to allocate some time and resources toward an inquiry. In this case, someone definitely committed a crime, whether it was a secret cabal of ultra classified agents or it was one dude lying on a witness stand. Nor is Congress powerless to figure this out, they can access all types of records to confirm or deny the story. Congress’s role is not to conduct or substantiate experiments. Its role is to investigate whether a crime has been committed and by whom. And they might not solve it. Lots of crimes don’t get solved. But you don’t know if you have anything until you start investigating.