Yes, that’s what happens online, although it happens a lot less here than most places you’ll find on the Internet.
Here at the SDMB, and especially in the Great Debates section, yes, you’re expected to back up your statements with references.
Great! Welcome to the SDMB.
Let me give you a couple of examples of how damaging this particular variant of woo* is.
I’ve told the first of these anecdotes here before, so bear with me if this is a repeat. When my son was just three years old, he had an onset of Type 1 diabetes. A family friend who was also a nurse visited us in his hospital room. Keep in mind that this was essentially day one of us coping with diabetes, a disease of which we had no particular knowledge, and had not yet any idea what the impact would be on our family’s daily coping.
This particular family friend was especially woo-addled. She told us on that day that because of his diabetes and dietary issues, we would have to start making all of our food from scratch, giving us examples of bread and pasta. She told us that he could have all the fruits and veggies and natural juices he wanted, though. Now, we learned in a day or two upon meeting with the hospital educators that this was pure bullshit. There’s no particular need to create our own foods, and a steady diet of fruits and juice would carry a risk for harm if not accounted for properly.
But until being provided with the accurate information, we were devastated at the prospect of the dramatic burden on our family and the stark limitations we imagined for our son. Completely unnecessary, and our nurse educator probably had to wonder about our tears of joy during her work with us.
Flash forward 3 or 4 years later. We’ve become experts in dealing with the dietary needs of a child with diabetes. Non-sugar containing products are a godsend, because they often contain no - or very few - carbs, and can be consumed without a marked impact on the dietary regimen of a child with diabetes. So, diet pop is a mainstay.
Our woo-addled family friend goes into a rant about aspartame, warning us of the dire consequences we are setting up for our son by allowing him to consume so many products which contain it. Having gained much more familiarity both with this particular person and with people who spew woo, I was not particularly concerned. Of course, it’s still hard not to have some concern when a nurse tells you something like this.
So, I asked her for cites, and did not get particularly anxious. Of course, she came back with printouts from crazy web sites, while I did some searching from legitimate sources. Still, if I hadn’t known better, I would have been especially stressed out, thinking both of the consequences for my child’s health and the difficulties we would have had to deal with in making fairly substantial changes to our typical dietary routines.
So, if you don’t yet understand the harm you are doing by breathlessly shouting your ill-informed beliefs about poison, step back and think about it for a moment. It is because people have bothered to inform themselves that you may be experiencing a particularly negative backlash. In my opinion, it is well-deserved, and your claims of ignorance don’t balance out the harm that your behavior may cause others.
You also made your claims about aspartame after those very assertions you’d made had already been thoroughly debunked earlier in this very same thread that you were posting to.
That sets our teeth on edge around here, and also discourages those posters who try again and again to debunk the nonsense being spouted from continuing to make the effort.
If I can expand on this: being fat is killing people. Honestly. So many people desperately need to find a new way of eating that won’t result in being overweight. It’s is a matter of life or death. It’s obviously a very difficult thing to do: look how many people are failing. It’s hard enough to grapple with all the legitimate health concerns out there when construction a lifestyle that works. People don’t need to be layering in lots of other restrictions “just in case”.
I had stevia for the first time the other day. That is some nasty-tasting shit. Sweet at first, but geeeshh - that aftertaste would gag a maggot.