There are two approaches here, the totally safe - take no chances at all approach, and the progress approach. You are in my opinion in favor of the totally safe - take no chances approach. It involves making 100% certain regarding anything you are going to say before it is said.

When human lives are involved, that approach is not appropriate because it makes it virtually impossible for any timely progress to be made.

Where human lives are at stake you need to try different things to save them even when you are not 100% sure that something will work. And if it doesn't you try something else.

You are stating that logic must be used 100% of the time. But as the following shows, that argument itself is not logical.

A number of years back, two of us who felt that earthquakes can be predicted created the old QuakeNet E-mail and Internet circulation service for reports about earthquake forecasting. The other person actually did most of the work. QuakeNet eventually evolved into this bulletin board and the Yahoo EarthWaves board.

It we had waited until we were 100% certain that earthquakes could be predicted before creating the QuakeNet resources then there would probably be no EarthWaves board here for you yourself to post notes to.

So, the very resource that you yourself are using to argue about whether or not earthquakes can be predicted probably exists because in the past, people did exactly the opposite of what you are insisting should be done, that is wait for 100% certainty.

However, earthquake forecasters need to develop a sense of direction that enables them to circulate forecast information without causing people to evacuate some city unnecessarily. And none of my forecasts has ever caused that type of problem. That is one of the reasons that I am still doing this work after all these years when many other forecasters have just disappeared, even from this bulletin board.

Once again, when human lives are at stake, researchers cannot sit around and wait for 100% certainty. They need to try to make progress even if it results in some criticism. And progress almost always results in at least some criticism. That is the way our universe works.

These are personal opinions.