Fallacy: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
This often surfaces when you venture on debating about some actual matter of the state of the world, in this case: vaccination.
The extreme opinions on the issue (both are commonly held, though some hold an intermediate opinion as well) are:
1. Vaccinations are developed to help humanity, are effective with their stated purpose in preventing/curing diseases, and either 100% safe, or at least the pros greatly outweigh the cons.
2. Vaccinations are a systematic and deliberate scam, they hardly if ever have a net positive effect on anything, rather spread the diseases they are suppose to prevent and weaken the human natural immune defence in the same way as AIDS does, so that the delibitating effects are hard to detect. The real reason to push mandatory vaccination is not the desire that people would stay alive and have long, healthy, happy, lives, but that they would develop hard-to-tackle diseases, develop sterility and die, and during their miserable life make as much money to the drug-food-death-industry complex as possible.
Now the ones holding the latter opinion (2.) are typically required to present insurmountable evidence that their viewpoint is true (which of course they typically have plenty of, otherwise they would not have converted to such opinion, yet all is brushed away as "unreliable" and "unscientific" meaning that it does not agree with the dominant view).
Yet, the people in the first group (1.) seldom if ever, hold, or can present any evidence on their claim, and if asked, try to label you the troublemaker. Since they are the majority, and Government agrees with their opinion, no proof is needed.
The rule in the subject line is fallacy for the reason that it is utterly unscientific and hostile to progress, while placating group onania concerning whatever opinions the system is propagating, because they are proclaimed as "normal" opinions, and everything contradictory as "extraordinary" opinion.
What if we made it totally the opposite? The dominant view, which has earned domination because it is true, would have to be more rigorously proven than the challenging view? In the vaccination case, for example, every report and study that finds that the control group of unvaccinated children is more healthy than the vaccinated ones, should be thoroughly analysed and not brushed off as having a lacking methodology. The universities have experts in methodology, let them conduct research on the vaccines! (Currently the system is such that because they are safe, they are safe, and because they are effective, they are effective, and no studies are made, and people see with their own eyes that they are neither safe nor effective but because ...)
Current system seems to be able to bear an unlimited amount of contradictory evidence, because people have been conditioned to accept that if it's been in force for 150 years, it is so ingrained to modern society that even if the Angel of God told otherwise, he would not be accepted.
Whereas it should be exactly the opposite. After doing something for 150 years, you should be so totally familiar with its usefulness and truth that any evidence to the contrary would be most serious. Serious not because you are threatened that you might change your thinking, but serious in a way that you are on the cusp of wonderful new discoveries after seeing that one flaw in your thinking.
It's like a sudoku, you can keep on adding numbers on a wrong assumption, but once the wrong assumption is exposed, no matter how many years you had been filling that sudoku, you better erase as many numbers as necessary to get you back on the truthful basis. If you continue to fill the numbers on a faulty basis, you are never going to solve it. Why do people then continue in the real world topics, if they don't try to fool themselves with sudokus? Because:
Concerning this vaccination, which I just took as one example, albeit serious, of the state of the world - most of humankind is totally drugged (partly by vaccines themselves, irony as it is) to ever grasp the situation. For us who possess the necessary faculty of logic, and are willing to reject Big Brother (unfortunately, it's hard to continue embracing the system which propagates such lies, making the simple action in your thinking a great and practical divorce from the hand that feeds you and empties your pockets).
Embracing the truth is a one way street and you do not have that much liberty concerning what to believe. Truth is truth. What is labelled "free thinking" is typically self-puffed pseudo-intellectuals attacking the vestiges of truth that are still even parts of the public discourse, while being sheepishly ignorant of their thinking being safely confined inside the fold of propaganda. I am not a free thinker. My thinking is very much constrained by what is true, and it is leading me to narrower and narrower paths.
Oh, and the "extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence" part? Which actually is a more extraordinary claim:
- You should keep your immune system in a good condition by healthy food, exercise, hygiene and moderate habits
- People of all ages need to be injected up to 200 times with germs, heavy metals, formaldehyde, alum, proteins, bovine calf serum, phenol, acetone and aborted babies, to protect them from diseases and uphold their immune system.
Even though I think that naturally the latter one is a joke and something that - if told - we would not believe people believed in the Middle Ages, I am willing to give both the equal terms in proving their claims.
It should not be so that everything the government is supporting is regarded true by virtue, this is illogical (the government has lied in the past, so it cannot be universally true anyway). Research groups that are not supported by any party who has a skin in the game financially (the drug companies) or in population control (government) should evaluate the claims and policy should be made base on the scientific and tested facts.
Needless to say, there is no impartial, scientific study ever (150 years) conducted that has pronounced vaccines safe.
Finding articles that seem to find them unsafe, are not hard to find.