@Vorpal I don't, personally, see the harm in "this conclusion is interesting to me, I'm going to try to find out if it is true or not". I don't see that (beyond lip service) on television shows about the subject, which tend to be sensationalist if not thoroughly staged for profit, but I've known individuals who take that approach. They don't know, they want to find out one way or the other.
Typically, "Well, we just don't really know, but we now know it isn't <thing brought on by black mold infestation>, <thing occurring because of faulty wiring>, <thing that happened because somebody took LSD>, or <thing brought on by floors that aren't level>, etc." (unless it is one of those things, in which case they drop it, because it has been identified) is as far as anyone gets with that. Really? I don't see an issue with that. They're not championing the reality or falsehood of <thing>, they find <thing> interesting, and want to further explore the possibility of that explanation being real or not.
It's intellectually honest, even if it isn't terribly effective.
The only difference here is that they haven't decided one way or the other 'ghosts are real' or 'ghosts are not real' before deciding, 'this explanation is interesting, let's find out if there's anything to it'. They leave the explanation on the possible list of explanations, but they're doing the same examination and investigation as someone who dismisses it from the outset.
Sure, maybe it's a waste of their time as far as most folks are concerned, but I'm pretty sure most folks would say the same of the M* hobby.
Sure, hoaxers will make people look ridiculous; that's often enough their intent. Hoaxing is more or less one of the oldest forms of trolling, after all. Serious people tend to be pretty good at spotting them, though, and investigate before rushing off and claiming, "See! PROOF!" -- and that's where folks like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fell short.
The television shows that approach this tend to pay lip service to this, particularly in cryptozoology, but there are folks who accept the possibility that there's stuff out there that are properly trained in real science who happily point out the frauds, and simply separate things into, "This is fake because X, this is a misidentified Y, but this? I don't actually know what this Q over here is, and that's interesting! Let's see if we can find out what it is."
The difference here is that they're not saying, "It can't be a C because C isn't real," as their step #1. Bear in mind, these are also people who have enough understanding of animal anatomy that they're going to know what can't exist anatomically speaking, and what people may be misidentifying. If they know C cannot anatomically be real, they have an intervening step here in which the physical possibility of C existing is in fact examined. OMG GIANT SIX FOOT SPIDERS! ...well, no, we know spiders can't grow beyond a certain size because of the limitations of their anatomy, for instance. (Thank goodness, can't we limit them further?! ...please? <whimper>) OMG wolf man! ...well, no, we know there are no bipedal canines -- and so on.
In a sense, it's not functionally terribly different. If C isn't possible, they're approaching in an intellectually honest and realistic fashion and dismissing the possibility of C existing. They're just taking the step to do that, rather that starting from there. It sounds super nit-picky and subtle, and on some level it is -- but it is a difference in that there are no foregone conclusions going in in either direction and there's direct examination of the possibility of C before C is eliminated as a possible explanation. Basically, IMHO, starting from 'giant spiders are real, let's prove it' or 'giant spiders aren't real, let's see what else it is' both skip this step, and both end up being flawed methodologies on account of it.
It's worth noting -- tangent alert -- this is much easier when it comes to animals that may or may not exist. This is because we know how to deal with/examine/identify animals. Things purported to exist that are incorporeal? Giant question mark there. I don't fault the 'you have to prove there's a there there to begin with' perspective on this front, principally because we don't have the same kind of direct evidence that things of that kind exist as we do in the case of animals. If someone was to say animals (broadly) don't exist, we'd laugh at them; plenty of us probably have a pet in the room with us right now.
With animals, we have means of eliminating the actually impossible; we don't really have that for things purported to be incorporeal. It's a complication, and it's a complication piled on top of well is there anything incorporeal there really or not in the first place? -- so I don't find it exactly unreasonable for people to say, "You have to prove there's something there before we can determine if we can even determine if that's the answer or not." Basically, even if there's a there there, we don't have hundreds of years of direct study of it to be able to make the same kinds of determinations.
Historically speaking, every new science or new medicine looked bonkers to the masses at some point, too. The earth moves around the sun? CRAZY TALK! What we know evolves this way. It changes. So the whole 'Joe's gonna look like an idiot' issue... well, yeah, Joe might actually be an idiot, but he might be a genius, too. Usually? Joe is an idiot. This is known, to quote GoT. He isn't always, though, and sometimes Joe is going to have to bear the burden of looking like an idiot when he posits the earth moves around the sun, or we're not going to learn anything.
