The premise of the entire article seems to rely on this one fallacy.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, especially in a case like this where the effects are extraordinarily difficult (if not impossible) to measure AND there were extraordinary efforts made to suppress all the evidence.
And I think one point the series makes that he tries to make the opposite, is that people at Chernobyl and adjacencies had "the friendly atom", they didn't had much fear of radiation. Even someone as Akimov, who had a lifetime exposure in another accident before Chernobyl, were "chasing the dragon tail" of radiation. Vodka clears it up, right?
The thing is, like quantum behavior in general, chance is pretty much high when we talk radiation. The chance of DNA or cellular damage being significant and leading to something, when you just perchance aspire a few particles of some isotope "grows" with time and how strong and the type of the source. Up to acute exposure it is just a very hard multi-causal probabilistic situation.
Normally we understand that a few times background radiation wouldn't harm you, when even the sun and background radiation are in fact always harming us, mostly, of course, in ways our body can USUALLY cope with. So, any increase in magnitude, is an increase in probable suffering, and we are talking millennia here, with some isotopes.
So, nuclear energy may have its uses, sure. Particularly, we have a lot of reactors working now, and perhaps we should let them take their course. But not to fear radiation with extreme prejudice is just to be careless about it. This is an industry tied with the defense department. The dejects are strategic and must be guarded and watched -- and don't come with thorium and new ways of recycling... it might be less so, but it is always a pretty dirty business, with the military and defense, and human errors, and "acts of god".
I believe when the Chernobyl series guy said "it couldn't have happened in the US", well... that exact way, not. But capitalism has, as we all so painfully know now, it's own incentives for disinformation and lies. Also, I live in Brazil, where they are always trying to revive some dated German project to build reactors. And if the Japanese had "issues", anyone can.
We in Brazil can't even contain common dirt, so it doesn't come upon us and kill hundreds... don't believe engineers will save us, believe human incompetence and greed may take longer, but always find a crack and blow the whole thing up -- no matter the economic system.
edit: tried to fix convoluted sentence in the third paragraph, and a few misspellings.
The risks of nuclear power are large on themselves, but they have to be compared with the risks of other types of energy.
A rooftop solar panel installer that falls and dies will make the local news if as much.
And don't even get me started on coal.
Brazilian companies can't be trusted to handle measly mining residue pools, what makes you even dream that the government and companies would be able to handle nuclear plants? Brazil is the absolute perfect example of a country where corruption is so high that it shouldn't be allowed to own nuclear plants.
Many Brazilians still use things like electric showers, at 5000w. So you are there, cleaning your body everyday, or more than once a day -- Brazilians are crazy about showers, for some reason --, even in hot dry climate, and you still have the water heated. Then you create nuclear residue for thousands of years just to keep the Brazilians taste for dry skin and the fervent attachment to the cleanliness of soap.
Any discussion on energy has to take into consideration Limits of Growth and similar studies. The idea is always to have a bigger economy e more energy, and more data centers to foster the next big addictive social network. The reflection should be in alternatives to very polluting energy, sure, but also to drop the focus on growth and economic indicators.
The fellow Brazilian there talks about deaths. Deaths, and horrible deaths, and deaths of pets, are to be considered. But also drops in quality of life, dead zones, geopolitical defense, economics (as well, because, everything added, nuclear is quite a bit more expensive than anything else), and long-term thinking (more than 100 or 200 years).
Mostly, countries like Brazil wish to have nuclear power for the technology, for when it is needed for geopolitical advance. Even if we have non-belic agreements, in the long run, sovereignty depends on such technology. But Angra is enough, plenty and too much already.
We also have to consider the risks of the various results, and weight them against our priors.
If we think something is fairly unlikely (1% chance of being true), and as yet has no evidence to support or refute it, but would cause the total destruction of the earth, reason would dictate that we assume that it is true until we have evidence that it is not.
This is obviously quite sensitive to what our individual priors are about something in a world where we don't yet have any evidence. This will naturally produce different conclusions for different people (you may assess the world-destroying event to only have a .000000001% chance of occurring, in which case it's pretty reasonable for you to assume it's false until we have evidence that it's true). But, for any individual, I don't believe the situation should not be as simple as your suggestion.
Edit: of course, this presumes self-preservation as a goal which is not something which can be determined by reason. Of course, it's a goal shared by a vast majority of humans, so I feel it's a reasonable assumption here. As reason/logic are used as a tool to support our goals, I feel it's fair to include such a goal as part of our reasoning consideration.
But if you choose the sensitive approach and expect evidence from the party who proposed the theory then starting from the article's premise that there's no reliable evidence (if true) is a perfectly valid argument to support the title.
Consider this: I am the Always-Right-All-Knower-and-All-Seer. Now what is more reasonable, to expect evidence from my side supporting my premise, or for you to provide evidence against it and assume the premise true until you do that?
> I am the All-Knower-and-All-Seer.
My prior that this is true is extraordinarily low. I put this at a 0.000000001% chance of likely to be true. Suppose you provide me a theory that Iraq possess Weapons of Mass Destruction, and must be invaded in order to prevent the destruction of a major city.
I would assign an extremely-high negative consequence to that outcome. I would assign a low-ish probability to the outcome based on my inherit disbelief that you are Always-Right-All-Knower-and-All-Seer, and that you have not furnished any evidence.
If your proposed solution is to invade the country, I would assign a very-high negative consequence to the outcome. As such, I would ask you to provide quite compelling evidence that your claim was true, before supporting such a rash action.
If, instead, your proposed solution was to propose international monitoring to the country of Iraq I would assign a quite-low negative consequence to the outcome (probably even a slightly positive consequence). As such, before backing your proposed solution I would require a much lower bar of evidence.
But I believe you about the WMDs in either scenario to the same degree. Your proposal changes how much I need to accept your premise about the WMDs to accept your solution.
So, I think accepting decision D based on belief X is a far far more complicated question that "do you believe X"?
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Let me also look at this from the other side. Let's say I, for some reason, conclusively believe you to be an All-Knower-and-All-Seer. My belief in this is 100%. Perhaps I am easily convinced, or perhaps you made 1,000,000,000,000 predictions of fully stochastic events, and I have assigned a 10-sigma confidence that you are some kind of All-Knower-and-All-Seer. Let's also assume that I have 100% confidence that you are honest, and that I have some way of gaining that confidence. However I got there, it's somewhat irrelevant at this point.
If I have 100% confidence that you are truly an All-Knower-and-All-Seer, and you suggested a particular course of action was strictly beneficial to me, I would almost certainly follow that course of action without requiring further evidence from you.
I would argue that, in such a scenario (and such a scenario is quite contrived, I believe, for anyone who is truly skeptical) it would be irrational for me to ask you for more evidence before acting. After all, at that point we've already moved by belief threshold high enough for me to take actions in the world to further my goals.
This all assumes that we are an actor in the world with goals (which, I again assert that goals cannot be defined rationally, but rather that rationality serves as a tool to achieve goals). If you have no goals, then I agree that pure reason would require you to ask for more evidence.
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My return hypothetical is to ask you this question:
You are a key decision maker for a scientific body. You are deciding whether you should run an experiment code-named Alpha. There is a low-likelihood but not preposterous theory (say, accepted by 10-15% of the scientific community), but lacks any solid experimental support. This theory says that running the Alpha will destroy the planet. The gain from running the experiment will be furthering scientific knowledge in quite useful, but not ground-breaking ways.
Again, this "Destruction Hypothesis" seems like it's not super likely to be correct, but it's not a crackpot-theory.
Do you run Alpha today without delay, or do you order more investigation of the Destruction Hypothesis to conclusively rule it out before running Alpha?
You're free to believe an unsubstantiated theory but you can't expect others to prove it wrong in order to make their point.
Now coming back to your hypothesis, it's too complex and contains way too little data to assist in a decision. A random answer would be just as good and proves nothing. I would probably consider performing the experiment on another planet. Or even on this one. Or wait a little longer (which is equivalent to not doing it). What I would definitely not do is say "The premise of your entire [theory] seems to rely on this one fallacy" [approximate quote from OP]. It's only a fallacy after you prove it.
P.S. Is experiment Alpha the detonation of a thermonuclear bomb that might set the atmosphere on fire? Because we know how that decision went :).
You have a decision to make, and Bob makes a claim which could influence that decision.
Does it matter where the burden lies? You have to make the decision, and Bob has presented new information but doesn't well substantiate it.
My point is this: From a pure reason standpoint, I think it's fair to always assume the negative when there is not evidence for a positive claim. But in the real world where you have to achieve real goals based on partial knowledge, reason would dictate that you sometimes evaluate and consider claims that are not yet well substantiated, and you might have to do the legwork to substantiate the claim yourself (if you decide there is enough merit and value in doing that substantiation).
My point is the burden of proof is, practically, often on the person who needs to make a decision based on information and not on the person who makes a claim with related information.
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For Alpha, I didn't have something specific in mind but some kind of combination of "light the atmosphere on fire" and more crackpot "your particle accelerator will create a black-hole" were definitely both in the back of my mind.
> the burden of proof is, practically, often on the person who needs to make a decision
You're contradicting a logical principle that is strong enough to be put in actual law.
It's the difference between being right and pretending or hoping you're right. Or hoping that the other guy is wrong.
> The premise of the entire article seems to rely on what might be a fallacy.
Just doesn't have the same righteous ring to it :).