Unsubstantiated Claims and the Burden of Proof

When you make an unsubstantiated claim, things can get hairy. Asking a person to simply take you for your word is a lofty request when the claim is something outrageous. We, of this blog, are as skeptical about the world as anyone else, in fact, we're skepticalier... skepitakler... skepticler. Anyway, we have no trouble understanding people's reactions to a "We have the cure for cancer" claim. We hate to admit it, but if someone came up to us today claiming that he has found the cure for cancer, we probably wouldn't say, "Awesome, dude!" and high-five him. Unless we were being sarcastic. In which case, we most certainly would.

So the burden of proof is on whoever makes the claim. He could write a hundred blogs, print them out and glue them to people's faces, but only proof will, well, prove it.

But imagine he has actually proven it hundreds, maybe even thousands of times in individual cases. He now has to figure out how to show it to the public (you know, Joe Six-pack) in a way that is indisputable. In our experiment of telling friends that we have "the cure for cancer," we have been met mostly with rather harsh rebuff - which, again, we understand, but the reality is that when you ask your connected Manhattan friend if she knows of anyone who would even be interested in discussing it, her pitying "No, sweetie" is in itself indisputable, and when this attitude is repeated, indicative of some sort of public barometer.

So you start with something observable.

You've taken photographs of the cancer sites from the time they were diagnosed by a doctor, to when they were cured by your product. You have all the necessary statistical data, dates, etc. So you have someone build you a website and you want to put photos up. The before-during-after images will inevitably be accused of being edited in some way, which is, again, a show of understandable skepticism. The images are rather miraculous-looking: healthy, beautifully smooth skin in place of a previously rather repulsive cancer site. Even if most people were to accept the images as real, perhaps the result would be attributed to an undisclosed procedure: chemotherapy, radiation... luck?

What else do you do?

Besides enduring the necessary toxicology tests and the like, what would you do if you had the cure for cancer and wanted to prove it to the world on your own?