🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <34iunu$94s@news.cs.tulane.edu>, taylor@rs6.tcs.tulane.edu (Leon Taylor) writes:

|>  If you look up the study, you still must decide
|> whether you accept the way in which Whiplash arrived at his
|> estimate.  I would prefer that a writer -- journalist or 
|> scientist -- simply tell me how the estimate was derived and
|> relegate those disruptive citations to the bibliography.  Give me something
|> that I can read; tell me what you think and why.
|> I will decide what to believe.

Well, yes, bibliographies would be nice, too.

Journalists at best just say "some scientists say X while others say Y".
This at least is usually accompanied by a pithy out-of-context quote from
one each of the X-sayers and the Y-sayers, which, with application of
patience and the citation index could possibly yield some actual evidence.

More typically, the journalist simply says "X!!!" and you have to either
take it or leave it. 

I haven't seen the book in immediate question, but I agree with the
complaint in general.

Popularizations rarely allow the reader the dignity of evaluating the
evidence. That's why on any given issue we typically have at least two
groups operating on the basis of widely divergent "facts", and why the
closest that the political process can come to consensus any more is a sort
of mindless and tepid splitting of differences, regardless of what the
actual best available information might indicate.

mt