I disagree completely with that. If someone is going to state with certainty that something has been rubbished or proven not to work then supporting evidence should be provided to allow proper scrutiny of the sources and methods applied.
Chris
OK.....when the same studies have been quoted several times, and the same faces jump in on threads with their customary assertions, someone challenges them................and without the burden of doing the same they demand proper scientific studies to disprove things from their challenger. Its a superficially neat trick, firstly to ignore that the studies have been promulgated ad nauseum, (and ignored ad nauseum as they fail to dent the zealots belief), and then demand them to be trotted out again and again on every thread. Its a total PITA that the promulgator KNOWS will eventually lead to a response like that of PH, offering a strange and warped way for them to claim victory.
Now, IF IF IF the thread is on a fresh or relatively fresh subject matter rather than the nth version of the same stuff, then I do agree, the promulgator should offer their proof, and the rebutter should offer theirs.
The scientific issues involved in attempting to prove a negative do offer the entities making claims an advantage, as you only need a single case to prove a thing can happen, but no number of negatives can prove it never happens.
Fact is almost anything CAN happen, and some colonies somewhere will be better after regime X has been put in place. Why? Well it may or may not be down to the regime, but quite often its down to either nifty or naieve (sp?) use of the post hoc fallacy. The reverse is also true, there is very little that will never happen.
Its all down to likelihoods and percentages, whether this or that is a good thing to do.
Still comes down to the same thing. If a person is going to advance theory X as the way forward its up to *them* to justify it, and see if it survives the scrutiny of science and the heat of criticism. It is not the initial responsibility of all the rest of us to provide proof to knock down a new way if the originator is not going to accept a similar burden, and as they started it they show first. Simple.
Some bee stuff, like small cell, had the conclusion as the starting off point and the evidence then selected to support it. The heat of criticism and questioning had the originator jumping from list to list, sometimes generating 100 posts a day alone, till landing in a place seeking such a visionary, where sharp questions would not be asked.
Things often go unchallenged. Like Brosvilles tale about the opinions about his free range chickens. Why? Well its totally irrelevant to beekeeping, but it would have been quite in order to ask him to prove it. I suspect it to have been someone voicing an opinion about the risks of going free range and free of most inputs, and it is at best an anecdotal tale and probably heavily coloured. Why do I think this? Well free range has been around for a long time, and although my memory goes back only 50 years or so on the subject I KNOW that he quoted 30 years ago as when he was being treated dismissively. How do I know free range chickens and egg production was widespread 20 year earlier with no major issues? Well I was raised in such an environment. My parents kept several hundred free range laying hens as a sideline and as a kid I used to do the feeding watering and egg collecting. The local egg grading station sent vans round the producers every few days to collect the free range eggs. It was common. Nothing visionary about it. I loved working with the chickens and always went to ground very upset when it was time for the older ones to make their exit, as some of them were like pets. Always have had a soft heart, and my father used to get annoyed ( I suspect mock annoyed) as after the executioners had gone it was surprising how many of my favourites used to emerged unscathed from various sheds into which they had had the misfortune to find themselves locked that very night.............
The onus should be to prove that any change is better than the status quo. In the absence of this, the status quo wins unless you just want to play or tinker. Results from playing or tinkering are rarely of a scale or method that constitutes proof. 
