Nick, Nick, Nick.
You lost your "helmet war" argument, and now this. When boy when...
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 9:00 AM, John Lozier jl@harpingforharmony.org wrote:
The Forester article, although pretending to be science, is actually policy argument, sophistry (in the proper sense, political persuasion), not science. He makes this abundantly clear in his first few lines, as pasted below.
This is rather old, and I am not that impressed with the way the evidence is presented.
Real science presents operational definitions and empirical data addressing a hypothesis. Forester adduces data to support a conclusion.
The conflation of data and reasoning under the term EVIDENCE is a lawyer's trick, not a scientist's. I'm reminded of the old lawyer's rule:
If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law and the facts are against you, POUND THE TABLE.
And if that doesn't work you can "Go Pound Salt"! And perhaps a poignant/relevant statement is in here- http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=go+pound+salt
Forester writes:
This is an account of how superstitious fear interferes with scientific judgement and corrupts the scientific process. The particular scientific discipline is cycling transportation engineering, which studies the facts of bicycle operation to make recommendations about how individual cyclists should act and what policy society should follow regarding cyclists. The data and reasoning support the vehicular-cycling policy: cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles. (Rather than repeating the words "data and reasoning" throughout, I use the term "evidence" to include both data and reasoning.)
On Feb 27, 2008, at 8:45 AM, director wrote:
Good morning, I stumbled across this article during my daily news-read and thought it might be of interst to others. It describes the evolution of the "stay out of my way" mentality of motorists toward cyclists (vs. the "share the right of way safely" motive of effective cycling.)
http://www.johnforester.com/Articles/Social/aaas94.htm
Nick Hein
-- Nick Hein Director, Positive Spin Morgantown, WV ph 304-276-0213 --
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