Читать книгу Reason: Book I - Bo Bennett - Страница 13

The claim that “there are no long-term negative effects” is not falsifiable (i.e., it cannot be proven false). Long-term negative effects (or risk factors) are a possibility with the introduction of every new medicine, technology, and ideology. Science does not work with certainties nor does it make any guarantees. What it can do, is use induction to make predictions of possible risk factors, and predict the probability associated with them. When a new medicine is released, extensive testing has already been done determining the risk factors linked to the medicine since testing began. The future potential risk factors are hypothesized based on theory. We don’t know that aspirin won’t make all heads explode on January 1, 2050. But to consider that as a risk factor, we need to have a reason (or a theoretical framework) for why that might be. In the absence of such a reason, we don’t need to consider an exploding head in the year 2050 a risk factor of aspirin. How about more reasonable long-term side effects such as cancer or heart attack? The same criteria are applied—what reason do we have to think this would be a risk factor? Without a reason, we have no risk factor.