Cool, cool… Has there been a drop in catches of those fish?

Here’s an analogy. I think Santa Claus is not real (sorry). (A) says “If Santa came down your chimney and slapped you in the face, that would be evidence that Santa exists.” Which like, yeah it would! But until Santa actually comes down that chimney, my position hasn’t been weakened at all.

(B) describes a world in which getting covered in gross oily discharge isn’t related to being close to the oil rig. In this world, looking at sea-bottom communities right at the base of an oil rig is a bad way to measure the oil rig’s potential effects.

There’s no indication that the researchers were ignoring diversity and density when they conducted the study and found “no significant differences.”

(C) would be relevant if the researchers’ logic were “the sea-bottom animals near rigs were not completely destroyed, so oil rigs have no adverse effects on sea-bottom animals.”

(D) would be relevant to a conclusion that “oil rigs had no adverse effect on animals anywhere in the oceans or the great skies above.”

But our conclusion is only about adverse effects on sea-bottom communities.

(E) could be relevant if we had some information about how softness vs. hardness relates to distance from the rig.

Like IF (big if) rigs are always built where the floor is super rocky, and IF (big if) the far-away communities were all in places with super-soft floors, then maybe the nearby communities are getting hit by tons of oil that dissipates quickly, the faraway communities are getting hit by less oil that dissipates more slowly, and they look the same even though they’re all being adversely affected. BOOM!

Except we have no idea what’s rocky and what’s soft.