@enackers
Sidelining this to prevent further hijacking.
I haven’t and that’s the point. That’s the general conclusion that has been drawn, which may or may not be correct. That’s the entire point of my argument. These are ALL conclusions based in fact, but not necessarily true. That’s the problem with most of what people now call “scientific fact”. It’s all speculative, or at least most of it is.
Example…
There is a suspicion that exposure to condition x will cause disease y.
Case study… A randomized group of 20 people ranging in age from 21-47 having passed a physical exam have been chosen to gauge the effects of exposure to condition x.
Findings…Out of the 20 randomized subjects, 2 of them contracted disease y.
Conclusions…2 out of 20 people (10%) exposed to condition x will contract disease y.
You see the problem here? The conclusion SHOULD be that in this specific group of people, 10% of them exposed to condition x contracted disease y. Therefore, it is safe to generally say that 10% of people exposed to condition x ARE AT RISK of contracting disease y. Not that they WILL. There are no FACTS to be had here. Only a general consensus that there could be some correlation between the two variables, and that people should be aware of the possibility.
Furthermore, it was not even proven in the case study that condition x caused disease y! There could have been other variables in the 2 subjects that contracted disease y. If It were scientific fact that the condition caused the disease, then 100% of the participants should have contracted the disease when exposed to the condition.
In a world of 7.7 BILLION people, each one of them being unique, a conclusion was drawn to apply to the whole based on 20 people!!! This is the case with a lot of modern studies unfortunately. To make it worse, most of the studies don’t even take into account the variables present in in the study itself, much less the plethora of variables that could be present in the population as a whole.
Conclusions can’t be absolutely drawn, or at least they shouldn’t be, until something can be proven as fact. And by proven, I mean that it is true 100% of the time. Condition A causes reaction B. Every time, all the time. If it doesn’t, then the only conclusion that can be made is that condition A does not cause reaction B, but it may in contribute to reaction B under certain circumstances.
Anything less than that makes for great discussion, and much learning can come from general discussion, but we can’t hard line argue the point as fact.
Now I’ll ask you a question…
Where have you seen that it has NOT?
