Reply #60: I am not missing your point, TfC,

[anaxarchos]

I am explicitly rejecting it...

And, you are ignoring mine so I am going to politely bow out of this discussion. I have no particular need to escalate this.

For the record:

1) I'm kinder to your guy than you are. I think he goes from thread to thread looking for "bad apples" in order to discredit the barrel (I wasn't kidding about Mistwell). I believe he does this because he genuinely doesn't believe in the barrel ("fraud"). You believe he merely wants to substitute for the slogan "Fraud!", the far more "accurate", "I think there might have been fraud but everything that indicates such is either wrong or could be explained by other factors so you are free to believe fraud existed, despite the fact that I personally don't...". If I was convinced of that, I would really be pissed off.

2) Your guy is not right. He gets chewed up in debate because he starts the fight and then has no case... not because he is the unsuspecting victim of "group think". You are free to believe otherwise.

3) None of this has ANYTHING to do with "science". You should accept your guy's testimony to that effect. I once counted 126 references to "false memory" or its variants on this board without a single basic citation. Science without references? Science without citation? Science without empirical evidence? Science through "expert assertion" alone? I am tempted to ask WTF you social sciences types have done with "science" (no, I don't mean it). This ain't "science" (on this point alone let me give "expert testimony"). If it ain't "politics" either as I claimed, we've all got a problem.

4) I don't need to give your guy a hard time... He gives me more than enough chances on his own. This is about your "ringing defense" which, I believe, "frames" the debate very badly. This is not the first time we have disagreed on this very issue.

I respect your efforts, nevertheless. Good luck with them and it goes without saying that I will help out if you have a need.