Quote:
Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer
Accept, in the case of piracy, you assumed a consensus where one didn't exist, an assumption that had more to do with your own personal beliefs than any intellectual honesty. You then rejected evidence that the consensus you assumed to exist didn't, just so your pro-enforcement meme could remain un-threatened. You might be right, but to suggest that you are unbiased and have greater academic leanings is patronizing and insulting.
And, unrelated, there is no factual dispute with respect to evolution; it is the most thoroughly tested theory in science and has proven its predictive power over and over again for more than a century.
|
I agree with you regarding evolution, but there are a LOT of people who still argue that evolution is an open question, that there is no consensus, that there is a "controversy" that needs to be taught, etc, etc.The point is that for some people, there is ALWAYS a factual dispute, no matter what the evidence.
By " scholarly consensus", I don't mean scientific certainty but that a substantial majority of scholars have reached a particular conclusion concerning a factual issue. Here, 14 studies have concluded that piracy causes significant harm against 5 that says it doesn't and 3 that can't say one way or another.
If this was a ball game, I'd call that an ass-whupping. Since we're talking academic studies, I call it scholarly consensus.
