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Originally Posted by UsernameTaken
If you intentionally misinterpret or outright make up the evidence, then yes So, what is your point again?
Among other things, it would cause one to question the concept of evidence and consider it more carefully. Or it may be worth noting that there's a psychological impact of evidence, which tends to be reinforcement of beliefs even if the evidence is *against* those beliefs.
Because that's what humans actually do.
Edit: At the bare minimum, you seem to be demonstrating a common aspect of some common conceptualizations of evidence, which is that evidence is often interpreted information. But you will not often find that in the "definition" of evidence (see below).
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And of course you omitted one of these examples, what a surprise.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27578843
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Mendel's data exhibit remarkable agreement to the ratios he predicted. In this article, alternative explanations for this close agreement (that inheritance in pea does not conform to the standard statistical model, that data were omitted, that ambiguous data were categorized to better match predicted ratios, and that some data were deliberately falsified) are tested using approaches that are designed to distinguish between these alternatives. The possibility that garden pea (Pisum sativum L.) naturally produces segregation ratios more closely matching Mendelian expectations than predicted by statistical models is rejected. Instead the opposite is found to be the case, making Mendel's results even more remarkable. Considerable evidence is introduced that Mendel omitted some of his experimental results, but this alternative cannot adequately explain the low average deviation from expectations that is characteristic of the segregation data he presented. An underlying bias in Mendel's data favoring the predicted ratio is present, but my analysis could not clearly determine whether the bias was caused by misclassifying ambiguous phenotypes or deliberate falsification of the results. A number of Mendel's statements are argued to be unrealistic in terms of practical pea genetics, suggesting that his text does not represent a strictly accurate description of his experimental methods. Mendel's article is probably best regarded as his attempt to present his model in a simple and convincing format with a minimum of additional details that might obscure his message.
I'm assuming that your ignorance of this commonly cited example is due to simply being ignorant in general? Do you really think that all good ideas are completely grounded in facts and rigorous logic?
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What a silly childish game you play...no one needs to define evidence for you. Just look it up.
You could. But you would be missing a larger context of RoundGuy's style of exposition. Words are more than a definition, but a conceptualization of ideas. It's not even clear that a category of "false" evidence exists outside of outright falsification of data. Most definitions of "evidence" would treat it in that way, though I suppose it's possible that he's using it in a different way. So I await his explanation of his use of the term to understand more.
Last edited by Aaron W.; 04-21-2020 at 02:24 AM.