What do you mean by “clear answer”? How would you definitively prove this is fake or real?
Some photo might be proven to be eg distant lights or inconstant lighting… but a bespoke prop and old / bad cameras? we can only say “it looks super fake”
I don't think a scientist assumes a theory is false until it is proven true. I think a scientist thinks about how to capture data, and enough of it, to position evidence to a theory. By necessity that means the scientist must be open to the theory being either true or false before testing. But they must be willing to pre-register what the experiment would say. And, of course, healthy skepticism is required.
The scientific method requires replication, and there are events in the universe that are inherently long-tailed and leave little trace evidence. That doesn't make their observers crazy or pseudo-scientists. There are some weird things out in this wide universe of ours that happen on the tails of observability.
> There are some weird things out in this wide universe of ours that happen on the tails of observability.
Yes, that is true. And in science, we assume such things are not real until positive evidence leads us to a different conclusion. Consider the ether theory, the idea that an evanescent substance filled all of space and was responsible for the propagation of light. But because it had not been directly observed, scientists invoked the null hypothesis to assume it wasn't real. Tests then confirmed that it wasn't real, and this led to relativity theory.
> It's called the "null hypothesis." It's the gold standard of scientific experimental design.
I think this definition is tying too much epistemic certainty on the part of the scientist towards the null hypothesis versus the alternative hypothesis being tested, hence my disagreement to what I consider a view lacking nuance. In short, if the scientist has no reason to doubt the null hypothesis then there is no reason to test. So the scientist must first be willing to allow the null to be proven unlikely / rejected.
I don't think we're going to see any further agreement this deep in the semantics, so let's move forward understanding each other to be in general agreement on the metaphysical construction of the scientific method.
> And in science, we assume such things are not real until positive evidence leads us to a different conclusion
We assume them to be untestable, not necessarily false. Just unable to be tested. The scientific method only has three states: untested, agrees with available evidence, or rejected by available evidence. If no evidence, then untested.
String theory is a great example of this. Wonderfully mathematical and logical, but we haven't figured out how to test major components of it specifically yet that would distinguish it from alternative theories.
> In short, if the scientist has no reason to doubt the null hypothesis then there is no reason to test.
On the contrary, that's the point at which positive evidence may contradict the null hypothesis, assuming it exists. But the null hypothesis must be the default initial assumption.
My point is that if the scientist assumes anything but the null hypothesis a priori, it's not science, it's marketing. This is why the null hypothesis is the default initial position in any legitimate scientific investigation.
The alternative is to assume the truth of a theory and seek falsifying evidence. But this may require proof of a negative, which is frequently impossible. I can't prove Bigfoot's nonexistence, but this failure doesn't support Bigfoot's existence.
Some photo might be proven to be eg distant lights or inconstant lighting… but a bespoke prop and old / bad cameras? we can only say “it looks super fake”