I never said the scientific method is flawed. Your understanding of it, however, seems to be profoundly deficient, if you think the scientific method says "the only thing that constitutes evidence of any sort is something that has been specifically verified by experiment."

Testing and experimentation would be the high bar of evidence.

Then of course there are gradations below that. Observational studies, are just observations after all.

But because I can say "there is 'no evidence' that there are no aliens" is then the lowest bar, it doesn't mean there 'are' aliens.

But the point here is that 'no evidence' is being used as a rhetorical technique to promote actually false findings.

Kind of along the lines of simply injecting doubt into a debate in order to detract from real evidence. Like what has been done for cigarettes, sugar, etc...