> No more so than "vaccinations cause autism" or "homeopathic medicine works" or "the stars direct your fate".
For extra fun/rage/narrative-catalyzing: negate your claims and re-ask the questions.
> It's an unsubstantiated, novel claim about causation that has no peer reviewed research to support it.
Do claims of nonexistence have a burden of proof, and if not:
a) why not?
b) can you cite any authority that explicitly asserts that they do not (as opposed to only pointing out the epistemic difficulty (teapots, etc))?
And even setting aside those rarely considered details:
> "It's an unsubstantiated, novel claim about causation that has no peer reviewed research to support it."
...even if we assume this to be true, do any specific necessarily correct conclusions derive from that observation? (And if not...actually, I think we have enough to chew on for now).
> But to present it as fact requires[!] extraordinary evidence.
It's an unsubstantiated, novel claim about causation that has no peer reviewed research to support it.
It's fine to postulate such things, or even to explore its potential implications. But to present it as fact requires extraordinary evidence.