Honesty, I don’t think a single other reader, well perhaps one because there is always the outlier*, reads your comment other than how Dissonance read it, in full context. Those other sentances you included do not change the meaning in any way.
SOP procedure is to not bother to quote another posters full post (or for that matter full article, like Cecil’s …) but to cite it.
*Of course 1 is a very very large number. All you have to do is take into account 20 doubling cycles and you have over a million!
I tell you what, Dissonance, why don’t you provide us with the .pdf link to the French report. Once you do that, I’ll 100% agree that the French report exists, just like I 100% agree the Russian report exists. In addition, if you can locate the appendices of the Russian report (the report points the reader to refer to it) and post the pdf, that would be great, too.
If you know the French report exists but can’t be released until the criminal investigation it’s part of is concluded, isn’t the responsible thing to withhold making firm conclusions on this matter until the report is available?
Certainly, if this were a criminal case and I was a juror, or if in some other way our conclusions mattered for something.
From my perspective, the burden of proof works something like this: ‘does this poisioning theory, based on what we know right now, have legs, such that we (who are simply observers) ought to be reasonably convinced of it?’
My current conclusions, subject of course to revision in light of new evidence, is that it does not. What I’ve read of the published reports, combined with the knowledge of what the French claimed, indicates that the evidence for poisioning is weak. A betting man, if forced to wager, would reasonably wager heavily against posioning being eventually proven, based on what is known to the general public right now.
Naturally, this could change in light of new revelations.
It is entirely reasonable and responsible to conclude that there is no good evidence to show that Arafat’s death was due to polonium poisoning, as the one study backing the idea is seriously flawed (even before taking into account that two other sets of scientists disagree).
The burden of proof is always on those floating a paradigm-altering proposition. You make the claim, you furnish the evidence.
Here’s the thing: the Swiss, Russians, and, according to the press, the French all found positive polonium values. What they differ on is the conclusion. This was surprising to me (what about you?) because I anticipated that the French and Russians would find nothing. If the common thread between all three studies is that there are elevated levels of polonium in his bones and personal effects (stained with blood, urine, perspiration), what does that tell you? I’d like to hear your opinion.
Fair points, which suggest that making the claim that Arafat was poisoned really ought to wait until the French report is available.
It tells me that there were elevated levels of polonium in his bones and personal effects. That’s necessary, but not sufficient, to support a claim of poisoning by polonium.
I merely suggest that since you (reasonably) want all the data, why not delay on making a conclusion until the French data is released after the case is settled?
This. There is no “my version” and “Honesty’s original version”. I did not misquote you. Nobody is buying what you’re trying to sell, and you’re just making it worse by continuing to claim I misquoted you when it is demonstrably untrue. I did not alter a single letter in quoting you. I suggest you consult a dictionary if you actually believe I misquoted you. The words you appear to be searching for are selectively quoting, and as noted, the sentences not included in my quoting of you do not change the meaning in any way, so you can’t even claim I was selectively quoting in order to quote you out of context or distort the meaning of the quoted passage.
Wait a second here, I thought you just said that you obviously knew the French report exists when you said it was non-existent. Now you’re back to denying, or at least doubting that it exists because it hasn’t been publically released. You can’t have it both ways.
And for the record, I don’t read anything you include in spoiler boxes, for the same reason I don’t read anything in mega-sized font or ALLCAPS or mega-font bright red.
The “clown car” metaphor has also proved to be counterproductive, in that when I see it, I envision a Volkswagen with a bunch of white-coated Swiss lab guys piling out, waving their notebooks and babbling incoherently about bone readings.
Honesty, I’m giving you a warning. Accusations of trolling are specifically forbidden in Great Debates. Please don’t do it again.
If you genuinely feel that someone is trolling you, a thread, or the board itself, please bring it to the attention of myself or any other moderator by using the ‘Report this Post’ button. I understand you may not wish to do so, but it’s really in everyone’s best interest.
It is clear to everyone reading the quote by Dissonance that he was addressing the specific point of your post with which he disagreed and that the extraneous sentences had little relevance to his point.
Your claim of “misquoting” is out of line. (And your juvenile (and misspelled) “strike three” jab does nothing to promote serious discussion.)
Do not accuse other posters of dishonesty. Particularly do not accuse other posters of dishonesty when your claim is false.
You will also refrain from accusing other posters of lying.
Glad you’ve had fun Honesty! In case you end up wondering why you got served so badly here, it was IMHO, because of the repeated manner that you essentially held up something blue and then said now that I have shown how this is red let’s talk about who painted it red … but your reality may vary.
Meanwhile I’m going to return to more about the Swiss study …
The scientific community, even before the Russian and French conclusions were made known and before their ethical lapses were made public, certainly did not see the Swiss work as anything to hang a hat on.
Esssentially this scattered result should lead any reasonable scientist to be concerned about the technique used and can only conclude that no high grade synthetic polonium (such as would be avaialble to someone with access to a nuclear reactor as a source) had been present. How did the Swiss team handle that?
They tested a commercial source polonium and found that it did have some lead in it. So *if *the finding represents that Arafat had been exposed to polonium before he died then the source was not of the sort that a state actor would have, but a commercial source of the sort that could be bought under a general license for making things like anti-static brushes. Huh.
Of course believing levels this low mean anything is a stretch to those who know.
Of note one of eight new sealed underwear samples had levels measured that were significantly higher than 5 of seven urine stained underwear samples that had been stored for years … where? Funny those data points don’t make it to their graphs but are buried in the text, not even a table, no error bars or confidence intervals. Only the controls that were low made it to the graph. Huh.
Inappropriate “controls” are not better than no control.
So the Swiss team violated ethical standards, explicitly stated in Lancet, by not revealing who their customer was. They clearly spun the data as hard as they could. They proposed scenarios to explain the lack of myelosuppression that are beyond contrived. (Using the fact that not everyone who gets therapeutic levels of internal radionucletides gets myelosupression as a side effect, just a large percent of them … so clearly it is possible that a humungous toxic dose might not cause it. And his documented rich highly cellular bone marrow might have been hypocellular and his bones that we say we see lots of polonium in might not have not had polonium go there for some reason … who knows? :rolleyes:) And then the most they could say was more support for the polonium added hypothesis than against it. That is 51% - not 85% as Al Jazeera made up. And that was spun by Al Jazeera and others as proof of some sort … by our (now departed?) Honesty as “flat out” proof and anyone who questions it is akin to a climate change denier.
Other analyses (that per Honesty quantum-like both do and do not exist) find and conclude otherwise. These groups were not paid by Ms Arafat or the PA.
Those who believe will continue to believe. Time will not tell. This will get dropped from here and the believers will declare a cover-up by Israel’s agents or bending to Israeli threats of some sorts.
And the real take-home message here is…holy crap! I’ve got a one in eight chance when I buy underwear of getting a a pair reeking with polonium??? Sheesh, no wonder fertility rates are dropping. :eek:
Did they by any chance reveal brand names?
Until I know more, I’m gonna buy lead-lined inserts on Ebay.
I didn’t get served badly, I basically had people like Dissonance (and yourself, included) misconstrue my viewpoint and misquote me then had a moderator tell me its OK and STFU. A paragraph is defined as a distinct piece of writing that has a common theme; therefore, in my mind, to omit the qualifers in that paragraph and to repackage it as my viewpoint is, at its very essence, mischaracterizing my position. Doesn’t matter if there are a hundred moderators that tell me otherwise, that’s the definition of trolling, no matter how you or the moderators want to coat it with saccharin. Its the very reason why I know I don’t belong here anymore.
While people here have trolled my thread, calling me anti-Israel, calling me a liar, all of that shit, the moderators do nothing. Every month on this message board there’s always a thread about how blacks are stupid or some such and the moderators stand there, as usual, doing nothing. So, forgive me, if I don’t give a shit about some moderator telling me back off or what’s against the rules. Scrub the hate against blacks in your message board and I’ll begin to give a shit about your rules. Instead of having a rule that says “You can’t accuse a person of trolling” why not, you dumb fucks, have a rule about using your message board as a springboard of hate. Think about that when Terr and CP open another thread extolling the virtues of SIRE groups, speaking of which… Terr, fuck you for trolling with your tobacco shit. I also think you’re a racist (along with Shodan, Saraya, Chief Pedant, et al. ) but that’s from other threads (not this one, of course). Don’t worry though, as long as you’re not “anti-Israel” it’s AOK on the SDMB. In fact, you and CP should open a “blks are less intelligent” thread to commemorate my banning or perhaps roast a negro over a spitfire.
DSeid, fuck you for trolling my thread with your bullshit and calling me a liar. thank for having intelligence and insight at the beginning, fuck you for your trolling toward the end and calling me a liar.
Jackmannii, fuck you for not knowing what an experimental control is, fuck you opposing me because you think I’m anti-Israel; in return, oddly, thank you having the balls to admit it so early in the thread.
Dissonance, fuck you for making me this angry and fuck you for misquoting me and fuck you implying I think Israel was responsible for Arafat’s death. That was never my position and you damn well know it. Next time, have the decency and honesty to quote someone in full rather than peeling off the first and last sentences of my paragraph and packing that as my viewpoint in full. Finally, fuck you for trolling my thread. From the beginning, you insufferable twit, you didn’t add one iota of analysis, no cites, no nothing - just unabashed and unmitigated trolling. On the bright side, your name is apt, so at least you have something going for you.
JC, fuck you for coming way too late and being complicit to the racist ass threads that are in the SDMB. You’re either not doing your goddamn job or you’re doing it too well. figure it out.
tomndebb, fuck you taking sides without reading the goddamned thread, making a cheapshot about my grammar, and not banning/deleting my account when I personally asked/emailed you to. I want out of this message board, delete/remove/ban my account now.
? I don’t remember ever writing anything about SIRE groups. In fact, I don’t know what SIRE groups are. I have seen them mentioned on this board, but didn’t bother looking it up. Your last post here is about as accurate as your other posts on this thread - not very.
In fact, you and CP should open a “blks are less intelligent” thread to commemorate my banning or perhaps roast a negro over a spitfire.