I thought it began with apologists who wanted to use the 'Atheism is a religion too' argument.

That could go either way. The more highly regarded something is, the greater investment all the stodgy old professors have in its error never seeing the light of day.

Related to the recognition thing, the Freakonomics guy Steven Levitt based much of his career fame on a statistic he came up with that had to do with abortions and crime - crime goes down when there's more abortions because the aborted tend to grow up to be criminals. Great theory, yeah? Sounds like something an economist would come up with. Some researchers went through his methodology and found an excel error on one of the spreadsheets, so his findings were bullshit. I can't name the researchers, but everybody has probably heard of Freakonomics.

The example you are providing about Freakonomics/abortions +crime is not science.

That idea was not formally supported or created by the scientific method or published in a scientific journal.

In fact, that statistic has been refuted by the scientific community many times.

It's a good argument against bad statistics, not science, the scientific method, or the scientific community.

Doesn't sound like science to me...

I mean the variables in proving that causal link are mind boggling. Not to mention the logistics of tracking down a suitable sample size of parents who wanted abortions but couldn't because it was illegal.

Sounds like horseshit from the get go. But regardless it was a theory that was proven wrong by other researchers so if it is science it simply contradicts your opinion. It was corrected by the system that produced it. Self correcting.

Nice to see you so eager to fight against th we idea that one should thing for oneself.

Spiffing. Keep it up.

This post was edited by Scaly on Apr 19 2016 07:04pm

Wtf is Al Qaeda?

More of a refutation of the "gain big cred" claim.

If one things for oneself, one must realize the limits of thinging for oneself.