Ask for Evidence: demanding facts for sciencey claims

boing
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Well you know everyone working on that site is an actual scientist, because all the information available is extremely dense with no thought given to developing context or organizing it in an easy to digest progression.

“Link soup” comes to mind.

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to foo’s food: “what evidence do you have that this soda cures cancer?”
foo’s food: “i have it on good authority from bar’s bar and grill, he says he has it on good authority, but i don’t know what, you’ll have to ask him”
to bar’s bar: “what evidence do you have that this soda cures cancer?”
bar’s bar: “i have no idea what you are talking about”
back to foo’s food: “he has no idea what you are talking about”
foo’s food: “did you ask about fizzy brand soda specifically?”
me: “no”
foo’s food: “go back and ask about fizzy brand soda”
this goes on for about a million years til you get tired of the whole thing and give up.
then there is this fun little bit:

“what evidence do you have that global warming is a hoax?”

“oh there is this study from MIT and this one from the IPCC and these ones from such and such and this bit i made up”
and then you check them and it says nothing of the sort, or specifically says that it does not say what this person is claiming it says or the study itself doesn’t seem to exist and they continue to use it and claim they already debunked your claim in an email.

then there is the ever fun moving the goal post, weasel words, redefined words (i’m looking at you NSA), and ant mills that just leave you far to exhausted to keep fighting the fight…

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“As a result, claims are being withdrawn and bodies held to account.”

Citation needed.

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So now I can find out what a toxin is?

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That site touts the standard claim that recent warming is unprecedented. Well I indeed looked for evidence for that claim in the world’s oldest real thermometer records and came up empty:

http://tinyurl.com/OldestThermometers

Then I looked a bit closer at the global average too and found no enhanced warming after the huge CO2 burst after WWII:

Not even Al Gore mentions hockey sticks any more, and granted the site’s claims are from way back in 2009, before Climategate.

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So we should have more people doing it, to spread out the workload.

Also, you can’t kill an idea – not even a stupid idea – but you can embarrass an idea.

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Welcome our first time poster and anti-green advocate, Nik.

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As this is being fronted by Derren Brown, maybe they could help me ‘ask for evidence’ behind some sciencey claims he made during one of his Channel 4 shows. I have written about it here: http://www.hoofindan.co.uk/blog/derren-brown-science-trick-or-treat/

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