Your academic/scientific bigotry aside for a moment, I made no "appeal to authority" argument - I merely responded to your implied assertion that I had "googled" up some random opinion piece that happened to defend Summers by pointing out that she is actually closely connected to this whole controversy because she is a faculty member at the university where Summers is president.
You see, part of what he's being charged with is bias against women in faculty hiring and tenure at Harvard. I'd say, "scientist" by your bigoted definition or not, she is imminently qualified to opine on that subject. For my reference to her Harvard faculty status to have been fallacious as an appeal to authority argument, you would need to show just the opposite - i.e. that she is NOT qualified to opine on the subject of the Summers controversy.
"or economics, which last I checked, isn't a science at all). Do the words "dismal science" have a familiar ring? They should."
Last time I checked, "science" meant "the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena." In other words, just what I described. Apparently your training in science, if any, was flawed.
You also don't seem to know what ad hominem means. You attempted to discredit Summers' words based not on their content or logic, but rather by attacking his qualifications for speaking on the subject at all.
Any time you attack the person rather than the argument he or she has made, that is, by definition, ad hominem.
For example, "this shows you have no training in science" is an ad hominem attack. You have not addressed at all, much less refuted, what I wrote, but rather attempt to dismiss my arguments by attacking me.
As for the rest - your nonsense about whose burden it is to "refute of positive statement" - you're almost as good as your bud Ion at playing silly, condescending games to avoid the subject at hand. But I can understand why you'd want to avoid having to defend your dismissal of Summers' - or any economist's - qualifications for speaking to issues of gender equity in labor markets. It was an ignorant position to take. |
