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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (4517)	2/14/2008 4:26:20 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

If I presented you with a fuzzy picture of a UFO and said I was abducted by aliens you would have good reason to want more evidence. But here I am not initiating such a bizarre claim, or any claim at all. I'm pointing out errors in someone else's claim. If I said "I can prove that their conclusion is wrong", than you would be right to demand evidence. I would need my own argument with my own premises (the data), and solid logic that leeds to a conclusion. You would want to check both the data and the logic, and if either was faulty, than you would have no reason to be convinced that I am right. But I'm not making such an assertion. I'm not saying "their conclusion is proven wrong". I'm saying it hasn't been proven to be correct (at least not by them, at least not in what they present in that article). In order to make this claim I would be expected to either show holes in their data, or holes in their logic. To show holes in their data, I could come up with better data, showing theirs is wrong. Or I could point out flaws in their methodology (which wouldn't prove their data wrong, but would mean it isn't established as being correct). Those would both have been valid methods to counter their argument, but I used a third method. I showed how their data doesn't lead to their conclusion. Oddly enough I did just what you did in your hypothetical about UFOs. Well not exactly the same, you question the hypothetical data of the picture, not my logic, but you did show how the data I presented you (again only in the hypothetical, I'm not really passing around pictures of UFOs or claiming to have been abducted) isn't enough to support the conclusion that I was abducted by, or even just saw an alien spaceship. In that hypothetical you don't provide any additional data to counter mine. You don't show pictures of the sky at the same place and time, showing no UFOs, you don't have records of someone following me around and reporting what he sees. But it isn't necessary for you to do so. Similarly its not necessary for me to show other data, in order to claim that the conclusions of that article where not supported by its data.