False Negatives and False Positives?
When evaluating a claim that a particular feature was designed, a false negative — by concluding “no design” when there was design — occurs when we are unable to detect design-action. Sometimes this occurs when an agent wants design-action to be undetectable, as in the actions of an illusionist, criminal, plastic surgeon, or a movie-maker’s “special effects,” or a divine guiding of natural process. A false positive — by concluding “design” when there was no design — could be caused by a wrong conclusion about current science (saying “undirected natural process could not produce the feature” when in reality it could and did) or by wrong predictions about future science (saying “it will never find a naturalistic explanation” when in reality it can and will), or in other ways.
