[timr]

> Sometimes I feel like this is taken to the extreme for non-scientists that say that lack of evidence is in itself evidence.

But of course, the lack of evidence is itself evidence, if you have a sufficiently large data sample and haven't seen the thing you're looking for. Keep pursuing the increasingly unlikely outcome, and you're just engaged in science-flavored religious catechism.

I see the fallacy routinely misapplied by all sides of most hot-button science-meets-politics issues. A great many scientists will regularly substitute their own pet theories for conclusions, and strenuously ignore the lack of supporting evidence, citing the old "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" saw. Then they turn around and mock "non-scientists" for doing the same thing. Neither side is right, of course, but dressing in a lab coat doesn't make it better.

Just to circle it back to the topic of science education, I'd love to see a science curriculum at the middle- and high-school level that equipped people to reason through this kind of thing by focusing on tearing apart pop research. A "science fair" is actually hard to do well just because most science fails, but a "scientific bullshit fair" would have almost infinite fertile ground from nutrition studies alone.