Scientific American In Blog Removal Controversy 254
Lasrick writes "Danielle N. Lee, Ph.D, the Urban Scientist blogger at Scientific American, has been mistreated twice: once by the blog editor at biology-online.org and now by SciAm itself. The blog editor asked Dr. Lee to contribute a blog post at Biology-Online, and when she declined (presumably for lack of monetary compensation), the blog editor asked her whether she was 'an urban scientist or an urban whore.' Then, SciAm deleted her blog post, in which she wrote about the incident."
New Season of Big Bang Theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Much like Wired.
Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory (Score:5, Funny)
so Biology-online is mostly what we'd call an urban click-whore?
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In any case, it's kind of hard to get worked up about someone insulting someone else on the internet.
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Well, it oughta be easy! Just because it's rampant doesn't mean it's acceptable! It's time we put a stop to this crap.
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It's time we put a stop to this crap.
Oh, applause for you AC. It's up to you to stop this [penny-arcade.com].
Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory (Score:4, Insightful)
There was no anonymity or general audience in the original - and supposedly professional - channel of communication between the scientist and the latter's website representative. Just because something happens over the internet as opposed to IRL doesn't magically make it alright or unimportant.
What I have to wonder is where the Scientific American flack was during the implicit "If your job involves some sort of communication Do Not make your employer look like an idiot on the internet" training that's sort of common knowledge at this point.
Horrible people are a dime a dozen; but the ones that know how to dress themselves sometimes also learn to keep their mouths shut in situations where it would be trivial for what they said to come back and bite them somewhere painful.
Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory (Score:4)
Yep. It's how you act when no one is watching that determines your true character.
Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory (Score:5, Insightful)
In any case, it's kind of hard to get worked up about someone insulting someone else on the internet.
Agreed.
But it wasn't even an internet insult. The insult happened in Email, presumably as private as the NSA will allow it to be.
No one knew about it besides the recipient and someone claiming to represent the blog site.
Reprehensible as it was, It would have ended there, and probably should have.
Her reputation was not enhanced by dragging it into the public.
She had her own blog, The Urban Scientist, on which she could have answered this if she really
felt the need to take a private matter public, but to drag that into someone else's forum was
inexcusable.
Sci-Am is not the platform to settle scores for private insults. Taking it there merely damages Sci-AM,
an innocent bystander.
Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Reprehensible as it was, It would have ended there, and probably should have. Her reputation was not enhanced by dragging it into the public.
Maybe not, but airing things out in public can have other benefits. I've on many occasions responded to such harassment by mentioning it to others working for the same organization, and invariably I get replies describing similar treatment that others have received from the same perp(s). I've even seen a few cases where, after a bit of open discussion of the topic, the aggressor was the one fired. This hasn't happened with me, but I'm pretty sure I've triggered at least a few "reorgs" by talking openly about how the org was being run. This can be to most of the workers' (and the org's) benefit in the long run.
Mistreating someone and then trying to intimidate them into silence is rarely in the organization's best interests. It usually means that the upper management is being kept ignorant of their organization's internal problems, and it doesn't take a managerial genius to understand the problems that this can lead to.
In any case, I seriously doubt that it would have ended there. In my experience, people who get away with such things generally conclude that their behavior is accepted, and they continue to treat others the same way.
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But there was no management involved. No one to complain to.
Am-Si had no way to police the issue. No control at all.
She got a nastygram from a website.
She had her own platform to pontificate on the matter.
Why take it to some third party site and cause an flame war to ensue there?
Its like taking your family squabbles into Starbucks or starting a shouting match in a Restaurant.
When they throw you out, how is any part of that THEIR fault?
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Because others reading the 3rd party site might find it of interrest that biology-online wants free work and when they do not get it they act like a little kid.
Why did you post your thoughts here on slashdot instead of on your 'own platform'?
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Perhaps you can post a link to something in the SA TOS that suggests its a place to redress petty personal grievances, of which SA had no part?
Can't find it? Thought not.
In fact I suspect you will find just the opposite.
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Not innocent-- but they did apologize (Score:4, Informative)
Sci-Am is not the platform to settle scores for private insults. Taking it there merely damages Sci-AM,
an innocent bystander.
The site in question was a Scientific American partner. They were not an "innocent bystander."
For what it's worth, Scientific American has apologized.
http://jezebel.com/sciam-apologizes-for-deleting-bloggers-post-on-being-c-1444576536 [jezebel.com]
And, looking at the link in the original article, biology online is no longer listed as a partner site.
It's not here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/partners/ [scientificamerican.com]
although it was there as of October 4: http://www.scientificamerican.com/partners/ [scientificamerican.com]
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I repeat, sciam was not the place for this given the alternative blog, which was in fact "in public". Readers who choose to follow the person can get the scoop, while those who prefer impersonal, objective science can read science.
Did you mention this in a news post or interview mentioning your organization? Guessing no, because you would have been fired. That's the difference between the two blogs.
Discussing openly and discussing on your employers news feed are wildly different.
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"Private matter"? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no reason to cover for an abusive person.
It's not a good bet that it was private in any sense. If that's what they said to her directly, what were they saying behind her back?
Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory (Score:5, Informative)
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Your own links prove exactly the opposite of what you claim.
Sci-Am is not being inconsistent. Its perfectly consistent.
They've removed the petulant blog post, and they have ceased their partnership with Biology Online.
You seem to suggest they have some sort of editorial control of the emails sent out by their partners, and therefore they are culpable for the email BO sent.
Are you delusional, or did you just post that screed without thinking?
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Neither of those statements need be wrong. They are not mutually exclusive.
Further they dropped Biology Online as a partner.
So both children wewe sent to their rooms. Perfect . I don't see any remaining problem here except your stubborn insistence that SA should let a scorned women use their platform as a forum for a mud slinging brawl.
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So what if it's a partner.
Do you think Sci-Am had approval authority over Biology Online's emails?
They are no longer a partner, and her petulant complaint is gone too. Sounds like good parenting to me.
What would your mother do if you and your sibling brought some petty bickering to her dinner table?
Send you both to your rooms?
Done and done.
Dirty Laundry. (Score:2, Troll)
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"But it wasn't even an internet insult. The insult happened in Email"
Psst. Do you want to know a secret? (Furtively glances around). Email uses the internet...
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Context is everything. What might be almost friendly on Reddit is a lot more problematic when coming from an editor of, yes, a blog, but a blog that at least pretends to be professional. And it becomes newsworthy when SciAm gets all "Ooo, can't talk about that!" Which really, is pretty lame and inconsistent with previous policy.
Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory (Score:4, Insightful)
In a professional context?
That guys' lucky he's not being sued. Referring to a colleague as a prostitute is sexual harassment.
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click-whoring is promising some useful content but not delievering, only attracting clicks and views but giving very little or nothing in return.
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"Although Biology-online is a nice sounding name, it doesn't look like much but another attempt to make money off clicks, not being a particularly great source of information or biology, but having stuff people want to click on anyway."
The problem is that Scientific American itself has become little more than an opinion whore.
Scientific American has chased me away with its unscientific political and social stance and rants. I can read that sh*t anywhere... I don't want or need to read it in a magazine that's supposed to be about science.
Their editorials have increasingly become politically motivated (and unrelated to actual science), as have their articles and their blog.
I haven't bought a copy in years because of this, and it's
Re:New Season of Big Bang Theory (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought it was just me. I enjoyed a subscription for quite a while, and was content to ignore the political and social commentary for quite a while. Eventually, however, I found it just more effort to focus on the actual science than it was worth. With plenty of other sources to turn to for actual science, finally I just decided not to renew.
I miss the old days when I could hold the printed pages in my hand and learn something. I still get the data from other sources of course but it isn't quite the same. From time to time I have considered resubscribing in the hope of finding that missed feeling, but it sounds like I wouldn't be pleasantly surprised.
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As if sending an email to the authour saying "I did this, let's discuss next week" is difficult. And, who gets Columbus Day off, except the post office and banks?
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I muut work for the wrong university. I sure didn't get Columbus Day off.
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Worse than just the viewpoint changes, is the extent to which the articles are dumbed down.
In the 70s, the articles tended to start off pretty general, but would go deeper into the subject as you read. It was some high quality writing and information.
Now, it's gee whiz, multiverse, and other buzzwords. And that's the deepest you get.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's extend the analogy Wired. (Score:2, Insightful)
Headline should have been:
Biology-Online.org representative admits it is always looking to screw it's contributors!
Surprised? Not Entirely (Score:5, Interesting)
As reported at The Guardian [theguardian.com]and elsewhere:
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The main problem with that little investigation is that it failed to submit the paper to any non open access publications for comparison. Failing to do that means it doesn't really indicate anything specifically about open access journals since we do not know that non open access journals would have done any better.
It also points out that in science, publication in a peer reviewed journal of any sort is really just the first step. Once published it gets reviewed by the world at large and people can reproduc
I agree with SciAm, sort of. (Score:3, Insightful)
She was right to want to say something and discuss the issue, but stuff like that belongs somewhere that clearly labels it an op-ed piece. It was not an article about science.
SciAm was wrong for removing it without notifying her of why. Perhaps they should have just moved it to an op-ed section for her. Or maybe it's against their policy to comment about competing websites, though that'd be weird. They tweeted this:
Re blog inquiry: @sciam is a publication for discovering science. The post was not appropriate for this area & was therefore removed.
Everyone has moments, hopefully not many, where they are slighted professionally. Having an audience placed in front of you does not mean you get to neglect them and use it as a soapbox for your issues.
Re:I agree with SciAm, sort of. (Score:5, Informative)
Except the whole point is that many science bloggers at SciAm have posted "non-scientific" posts as well, so the "this is not about discovering science" excuse is BS.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/context-and-variation/2013/10/12/this-is-not-a-post-about-discovering-science/ [scientificamerican.com]
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A quick look at Dr. Lee's other blog posts show a range of topics, some of which are directly science-related and others which talk more about the profession of science. So I call bullshit on the "not appropriate" comment. While it may be true that "every one has moments ... where they are slighted professionally", that does not make it acceptable, and one very effective way to combat such comments is to discuss the comments in a public way so others can see and learn what is and is not allowed. I would
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She was right to want to say something and discuss the issue, but stuff like that belongs somewhere that clearly labels it an op-ed piece.
I'm not sure what would be a more appropriate than a "blog" to post an opinion. The whole point of a blog section is to separate the articles from more rigorous topics.
It was not an article about science.
It was an article about the "industry" of science, a topic that is often covered by in that forum.
Re:I agree with SciAm, sort of. (Score:4, Insightful)
Since the topic of her blog is women in science, this actually seems to be right on topic. Do you think the editor would have used a comparable term for a male blogger?
Of course! Everyone knows there's no such thing as sexism any more (except for sexism directed against men, of course, thanks to the feminazis). This is just yet another example of a woman whining because she's being treated like one of the guys, and if she can't take the heat she should stay out of the kitchen! Or, er, get back into the kitchen. Whatever.
So I've learned by reading the Slashdot comments every time a "women in ___" story comes up, anyway.
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I'm hoping this is sarcasm.
Also, as I read it the original insult wasn't about her sex, it was about her decision to go for cheap low hanging fruit, and "whore" as an epithet has been applied to loads of people - it can almost be considered gender neutral.
If it was about her sex, then smack them down. If it wasn't, smack them down.
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I'm hoping this is sarcasm.
Yes, it is. I suppose I was getting dangerously close to Poe's Law territory, wasn't I?
Also, as I read it the original insult wasn't about her sex, it was about her decision to go for cheap low hanging fruit, and "whore" as an epithet has been applied to loads of people - it can almost be considered gender neutral.
Maaaaybe. I'm inclined to go with AC: the editor might still have been insulting in dealing with a man, but probably would have used a different insult. And there are gender-neutral uses of "whore," but I don't think this is one of them.
If it was about her sex, then smack them down. If it wasn't, smack them down.
Indeed. It's startlingly unprofessional either way.
WTF... (Score:5, Insightful)
is an urban scientist?
Talk about sexism... (Score:3, Insightful)
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If he had tried to be rude to a guy, he would have used a term like "limp-dicked pussy" or something like that.
The fact that people use gender-appropriate insults doesn't automatically make them sexist.
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As I was saying: using the term "whore" doesn't mean that someone is a sexist; it's just a gender-appropriate insult.
And my point is that this is even more batshit crazy than donglegate. Donglegate at least involved a public space. This involves a private message between two individuals. Publishing such a message and making a big deal out of it is not only completely unprofessional on her part, it may actually be illegal in some jurisdictions.
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Explanation from Sci Am's Editor in Chief (Score:4, Informative)
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They acknowledge that they should have done better and claim that they will develop procedures for the future.
Sometimes these excuses are acceptable, and other times heads need to roll. As an avid Sci Am reader for 20+ years I am appalled. The content is becoming a bit less serious and has been heading a little too much toward something more like Popular Science, and now with this crap I am seriously considering cancelling my subscription. I have always liked Sci Am because it was a layman's science magazine with a sense of humor but without as much unnecessary fluff as Discover, Pop Sci, etc. Hmm...
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I find the SciAm editor's explanation lame and unsatisfactory.
Her tweet expressed this: "At Scientific American, we don't allow our bloggers to air personal grievances."
Her subsequent explanation expressed this: "As a women scientist, I am personally concerned with the type of issues that Dr. Lee raised; however, we simply did not have time to investigate them when she posted her allegations."
Note that the two are completely different (and I will give her credit for this point, that she was aware there was
The avalanche of outrage has already begun... (Score:2)
Two stories? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is SciAm claiming the post was off-topic (clearly a bullshit excuse given other bloggers posts) then claiming it was due to legal reasons?
Oh and blaming not telling the author on poor cell phone reception... Right. Someone can click the delete button but can't be bothered to send an email?
It's just lies and more lies, a non-apology, and bullshit. I don't buy it for a second.
My bet: someone at biology online emailed SciAm to complain and SciAm was more than happy to censor Dr Lee. Now that they've been caught, they are furiously trying to backpedal and pretend it's all just a big misunderstanding.
I'm canceling my subscription, I don't want any part of such a two-faced crappy organization.
Scientific American? (Score:2)
I probably would have taken down the response too (Score:3, Insightful)
If I were Scientific American, the last thing in the world I'd want to be associated with is this "ofek@biology-online.org" loser. Seriously, unless you're in law enforcement or the sex trade, you probably shouldn't be calling anyone a whore in your professional capacity.
But her response was combative, contained profanity, and implied (if unlikely) threats of violence. If I were a stodgy magazine like SciAm, I wouldn't want to be associated with that either.
professionalism (Score:2)
Well, the Biology Online editor seems to have had a problem with politeness and professionalism. But it's also not particularly professional to post E-mails publicly and use them for a rallying cry for feminism in the sciences. The "science blogosphere" is not science, and who knows why the editor wrote what he wrote; maybe he (?) was just having a bad day. Professionalism and tolerance also means developing a thick skin and ignoring the occasional unprofessional behavior of others. I think everybody comes
blog recruiter fired. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"according to emails which Dr Lee screengrabbed (Score:5, Insightful)
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You're equivocating. It may or may not be admissible as evidence in a hearing, but it doesn't tend to prove or disprove anything, and it certainly makes nothing manifest.
Finally, no evidence is "incontrovertible proof". The best we can get is "beyond reasonable doubt".
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No. I'm reading, understanding, and using the English language properly. You should try it some time!
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Ah, why did you have to bite at his bait? You were doing fine until this post
(And you are completely right, BTW -- a screenshot *is* evidence. Different pieces of evidence have different weights)
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From your original post:
... and you have the combination of balls and shear stupidity to suggest that English might not be my first language? You are one funny SOB! Thanks for the laugh.
I don't know if he/she should be trusted to behave intelligently with large scissors or not, but suspect you meant sheer stupidity.
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Zero for two, little guy. English is just not your strong suit no matter how desperately you want it to be. I recommend you refrain from weighing in on someone else's word usage in the future because this thread turned out really embarrassingly for you.
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Non-bracketed usage is most common in British English. As for modern usage, compare e.g. instances of "this passes for" vs. "this passes as" on Google.
Time to crack open a beer and chill out, bud. You slipped up. And I don't care to compare our IQs, penis sizes, or whatever substitutes you make for decent measures of a human.
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1. I used a common English phrase;
2. I stated that I understood that my audience might not be native English, to show that I was willing to provide assistance;
3. I explained how to best approach a difficulty with reading comprehension: if you are not sure how to interpret something, don't choose an interpretation which makes no sense;
4. When my audience still failed to understand, I responded by providing a dictionary definition with several usage examples;
5. Finally, I provided a clarification on how to re
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If you are the native english speaker then it is certainly your job to write as clearly as possible and if being misunderstood to try to clarify. Possibly without insulting people for not knowing _your_ native language - that makes you look like an idiot. being non-native in english does not in any way invalidate ZK's points.
I am not a native english speaker. so therefore anything i say must be wrong (especially since my grammar and spelling sucks), right mr. bigot?
Except for failure to capitalize the first letter of stuff when you should have, you seem to be handling the English language fairly well, better, in fact, than a number of my fellow persons here in the U.S. for whom it is their first and only language.
Re:"according to emails which Dr Lee screengrabbed (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it this way? Two reasons, one it's impossible to be absolutely sure of anything (as zero kelvin pointed out) and two, because scientists are generally not in it to lie to other people.
So unless there's a good motive for the person to lie, like an undisclosed financial incentive, why don't we assume scientists are being honest? Especially given that no one is disputing it and SciAm gave a politician's apology (or apologized without apologizing). [scientificamerican.com]
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Scientific publishing operates more on trust than most people realize, and more than the legal system does. If I say I got this band on a western blot, and submit it to Science (the journal), they run routine checks to make sure I haven't done any very dumb editing like in MS paint. They send it to reviewers who will flag it if there's anything glaringly obvious technically. If the claims are extraordinary, they'll require more proof. But at the end of the day, I'm sending them things which could fairly easily be faked.
Yes, and from time to time, data is actually faked.
Which is one of the reasons reproducibility is so crucial for science.
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There has to be trust somewhere, and someone betraying it causes issues.
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because scientists are generally not in it to lie to other people
Throwing out an accusation that someone is using abusive language is nothing to do with science.
And you simply cannot imply - as you have done by saying "why don't we assume scientists are being honest" - that someone is less likely to lie in general just because they are a scientist. That is terrible prejudice.
Re: "according to emails which Dr Lee screengrabbe (Score:5, Insightful)
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Nearly everything presented as "evidence" in court is easily faked.
Not really - everything presented by one party is examined by the other party, so a pile of easily fabricated evidence implies reasonable doubt implies no conviction. When it comes to material evidence, a lot more time is spent explaining the relevance or irrelevance of evidence than on trying to show that e.g. the prosecution has fabricated evidence (which would be a pretty fucking serious accusation).
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Also it's a matter of the claims being presented.
Weak evidence is still evidence; a claim has been made and evidence put forward to support it.
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Evidence tends to be collected and stored according to specific procedures involving multiple people, and is independently examined by the other party, with methods existing to detect tampering where there is any contention. The penalties for failing internal audits, or for being found to have fabricated evidence, tend to be fairly high. Nothing's foolproof.
All very different from a random person posting an alleged screenshot.
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The context is reliability of evidence in court. Posters appear to be making an equivalence between the reliability of data posted randomly on the Internet and the reliability of data presented in a court of law 0 or, perhaps, presented in a scientific paper.
I was suggesting that evidence is handled and scrutinised BEFORE reaching hearing in court of law in such a way as hasn't happened here before reaching the court of public opinion (IOW published on a public blog). Fabrication of legal evidence is not as
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Also, questioning the quality of evidence isn't "flamebait", mods. I would like to believe that this scientist is acting in good faith, but I refuse to come into this with any prejudice.
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Of course it's admissible as legal evidence, but that's not the sense in which I was using the word "evidence".
This is the kind of argument I only seem to have on geek forums. Everywhere else I have discussions, there is an understanding that you can't equivocate, i.e. you cannot choose your favoured definition for some term and then counterargue on the basis of your chosen definition rather than the other person's valid usage.
To be clear, the first definition in the OED is:
The quality or condition of being evident; clearness, evidentness.
This is the sense in which I was
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Everywhere else I have discussions, there is an understanding that you can't equivocate, i.e. you cannot choose your favoured definition for some term and then counterargue on the basis of your chosen definition rather than the other person's valid usage.
Being a geek forum, if there exists a technical definition that differs from the common use, you'll see it more likely used, even when less popular.
That said: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/evidence [thefreedictionary.com] shows the first definition as "1. A thing or things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment:"
Given the first definition in the first result on a search agrees with those you disagree with, I don't think it's nearly as clear cut as you imply. Why are you using the OED? As this is an American site, wit
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It's only "clear cut" in the sense that the definition you and one or two other people have taken would make my post a nonsense. A fundamental principle of reading comprehension is to discard the nonsense interpretations when you have trouble understanding something.
Since I would prefer to be as clear as possible to the greatest number of people, and since I could probably have chosen even clearer terminology, I should have done so. However, looking through Zero Kelvin's posting history, I think he likes to
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It's only "clear cut" in the sense that the definition you and one or two other people have taken would make my post a nonsense.
And there we have it. "Evidence" has a pretty obvious meaning, well used in our language, that makes your post a nonsense. That is what you have said.
Making something clear is exactly what evidence is, by your own definition. No one is talking absolutes here.
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As I see it:
1) As far as reading comprehension, it is evident/clear that one should not take the interpretation which leads to a nonsense - the nonsense makes it clear that one interpretation in wrong;
2) As far as handling accusations by one human against another, the truth of an accusation is not evident/clear from an alleged e-mail screenshot provided by the accuser - the file does not make it clear that the accusation is true.
Are we agreed?
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I've already agreed that I should have chosen the best possible language, but did not [slashdot.org]. The fact that this discussion is happening shows this to me - and while it is apparent to me that Zero Kelvin is a troll, everyone else here seems to be speaking in good faith.
I am not denying the alternative definition of "evidence" - I am merely confused that a few people are insisting upon this alternative definition then equivocating. When I read something and it makes no sense to me, I don't say, "This person is usin
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No, but I noticed the changes... And just like Sci-Fi channel changed their image/logo, then dumbed down the content to reach a wider demographic (which it failed to do, because it landed in the uncanny valley of science fiction), Slashdot's going the same way with their new site redesign and more non-tech news.
If everywhere reports everything, then I can't filter my inputs as easily. Maybe it's just me, but I would prefer more specialized and deeper news about tech, since I have other sites I go to for h