Russell's Teapot
![Russell's Teapot illustration: an unexceptional china teapot floats peacefully in space with part of a large burnt-red planet visible in the background. Bertrand Russell's quote fills the space: "If I were to claim "there's a teapot, too small to spot, orbiting between Earth and Mars", the burden of proof lies on me."](https://images.prismic.io/sketchplanations/cad9eef9-c37d-47c4-83c2-29a01e8318c5_SP+735+-+Russell%E2%80%99s+teapot.png?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=max&w=3840&q=50)
Russell's teapot is a memorable example illustrating how, if you are going to make claims that are difficult to verify, the burden of proof lies on the one making a claim — not on any skeptics to disprove it.
The example he gave was claiming there's a china teapot in elliptical orbit somewhere between Earth and Mars that's too small to spot with a telescope. He suggests it would be unreasonable to expect anyone to believe such a patently unfalsifiable claim.
Bertrand Russell original invoked the teapot in the context of religion and the existence of an unverifiable God, in a similar vein to the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Carl Sagan's invisible dragon. It can however be applied much wider than that.
I learned about it from a helpful commenter on the BS Asymmetry Principle, also known as Brandolini's Law.
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