Afternoon Break, 6/17; Huizenga Part XI

In the previous post, I thought I saw bias, and had to climb down a little from that, but not all the way.  Here's a quote Huizenga made a little later that is interesting in that it was similar to what I had stated myself.

Why bother with theoretical speculations, if the postulates are so improbable, or if the phenomena in question are very unlikely to even exist? 

You could ask that about this book.  Why write this book discussing the speculations about a phenomena that you didn't think existed?  Why not just show that the anomalous heat didn't exist?  It existed or it didn't.  If it didn't, why write about this other stuff?

It is indeed rather pointless to speculate about something that doesn't exist, and you can prove that it doesn't exist. If he talks about other things, it raises the question, in my mind, that he thinks that the heat does exist, and wants to will it away by demanding an explanation for it.

Let's put it another way. Let's say somebody's house just burned down. An investigation revealed no plausible cause and it was a big mystery. The investigator doesn't report the house never existed because it couldn't be explained why it burned down. Nor could the fact that it burned down be explained away because the investigator could not determine why it burned down. You don't go to the home owner and say "Sorry, but your house didn't burn down, You made a mistake. It really didn't happen that way.". The homeowner replies: 'But it did burn down!" And the investigator says "Prove it!"

Either they got heat or they didn't.  This doesn't require a government panel to determine this fact.  I think he stumbles badly here in this chapter.  ( Ch. 11)