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Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
Apparently this play on words was borrowed from Carl Sagan and used by Kenneth Kitchen. Sagan was an astronomer; Kitchen an Egyptologist.
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Carl Sagan didn't support that proposition, he criticized it. Here's those words in context:
* appeal to ignorance -- the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa (e.g. There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore UFOs exist -- and there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Or: There may be seventy kazillion other worlds, but not one is known to have the moral advancement of the Earth, so we're still central to the Universe.) This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
--Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection" (collected in "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark")
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