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michigan.rob's avatar

I do not need "studies" to tell me exercise is good for me or smoking bad. I understand the tenor of this piece, of course, and appreciate the sarcasm, but after spending the last three years trying to convince people of the most obvious flipping thing -- that something can only be said to "exist" if it's proven to exist --, I'm wondering what happened to the basic intuitive faculty of people that they require "studies" (and the prognostications of "experts") to predict the future (?) and tell them what's "real" or not. Not that people actually review all these false papers (they'll note the title or, at most, review the abstract), but they do certainly treat them as authoritative, thus regularly committing the logical fallacy of appealing to authority. If you have to resort to an "expert" or "study" to determine whether you can breathe freely when you go outside, then there's something seriously wrong with you. You are indeed "sick."

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Cat Thompson's avatar

I thoroughly enjoyed the snarky flavor of this article today, it actually made things feel much better overall. Thank you for pointing out that there are a few quite important things that could be done to level the playing field rather than spend all our energy focusing on/fighting about the details of this & that. I'm ready to seize the day now!!

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