[ApK]

Thank you. JB. Nice to know at least one other person both has a grasp of the obvious truth equal to my own, and also recognizes my brilliance.

Btw, it was a John Lescroart novel that brought up both of the peeves in my post, and this one just came up again today in the next novel in the series, and this time, they kind of lampshaded the issue.
The ME ruled a death "homicide/suicide equivocal." Could be either, no medical way to say for certain.
The cops asked wasn't there someway he could rule out suicide? He said "I can't prove it wasn't suicide. As you like to say, Abe, 'you can't prove a negative.' You'd be better off proving it was a homicide."

Arg! They are mutually exclusive alternatives, so if you prove one happened, then you have proved the other didn't.
I'm just not seeing why the characters, and presumably the author, and also Hitch, don't see it this way.
And again, this is the more or less practical real world stuff where it comes up and bugs me, but it would seem to be also false in pure math and logic, as JB mentioned. Prove 6 is not prime. 2x3=6. QED.
I am missing the source of disagreement. Is this a problem with semantics or definitions, or what?