Seems to me that on a plain reading Smashy was, in point of fact, offering the cite for the proposition that there was “20 years worth of growing concern …”.
There is no “straw man” by Finn. Smashy may have wanted to cite the article for the proposition as you assert, but that’s not how it actually reads. The plain reading is that a 20 year old article is the beginning of 20 year’s worth of “growing concern”.
Thank you for the link; now I have a name for that sort of act. 
~S.P.I.~
Reading extremely carefully, I think DSYoung is right. However, the confusion is, I think, due to StS’s unclear writing. I almost wrote this post agreeing with you, but I reread the passage a couple of times, and I see that the main clause in StS’s first sentence you quoted is the one that relates the second sentence, even though the main point of the first sentence seems to be contained in the dependent clause. On my first (and second and third) reading of StS’s statement, I thought the citation was showing 20 years of growing concern.
Now, DSYoung, I don’t know what the relevant corollary to Gaudere’s Law is named. Maybe it could be named after you?
Did you miss Post 172 and Post 173, in which Finn offered five different citations to research and research summaries, complete with quotes?
When you’re offering someone a critique of their rhetorical style, get the beam out of your own eye first.
Daniel
waiting to see how DSYoung’s Law will bite him on the butt
Also, Miller, I may be judging mswas overharshly, based on some of my interactions with him and on how it raises my hackles when someone smugly calls out a messageboard in general. I’ll put my opinion back on hold and watch.
“When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” – Jonathan Swift
Most people have to take shrooms to be this delusional.
Is there any reason I should answer these? My experience has been that every word escaping my keyboard on SD gets mocked and ridiculed regardless of content. Indeed, the last time I tried to discuss the activities of the OPU, I ended up walking away in disgust, as it turned into the sort of poor-bashing free-for-all I have since come to expect around here. People can mock me to their’s heart’s content, but I won’t drag the OPU through the mud in a public forum.
This is a good example of how the toxic atmosphere of smug exclusiveness around here mutes any interesting discussion which falls outside the narrow interests of the ruling clique on SD.
"He who seldom speaks, and with one calm well-timed word can strike dumb the loquacious, is a genius or a hero.” – Johann Lavater
I thought of you while smugly dismissing hotflungwok here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11398195&postcount=107
I still can’t read it that way. Seems to me a bit of a tortured interpretation, though I’m willing to believe that Smashy wanted to use it in that manner.
Nevertheless, the “charge” as it were is that Finny was knocking down a straw-man; which seems to me unfounded. Knocking down a straw-man implies willful dishonesty, a charge hard to substantiate when the “real target” is so obscure.
It’s up to you. I am genuinely baffled by the idea of a union dedicated to a socially parasitic profession that produces nothing of value that is desired by anyone. I really don’t understand what leverage someone who has a job that is almost universally disapproved of has.
You needn’t explain it to me if you feel too piled upon, but I really don’t get what kind of leverage they can wield.
I also confess that I have some contempt for the idea of organizing panhandlers when if they have the ability to organize into a union, then they are capable of holding a profession that actually benefits someone through their artifice.
I believe that a person’s profession should be providing a valuable service. I don’t have much respect for panhandlers, but then again I don’t have much respect for hedge fund traders for many of the same reasons.
I read it the way DSYoungEsq read it.
To my mind it doesn’t really matter which way one reads it; to attack the other interpretation as a “straw man”, one must be of the view that one is purposefully misreading it that way, which I think cannot be sustained.
Fair enough.
So here’s my take on it.
They are both arguing their points of view honestly, but are both arrogant assholes.
Is there anything people find disagreeable about that point of view?
I suppose panhandlers could organize political pressure to get laws passed that improve their lot - after all, they may vote.
Additionally, while obviously withdrawal of their “services” cannot put pressure on anyone, they could organize demonstrations that cause annoyance to businesses in order to wring concessions.
Unions don’t just rely on strikes to air their concerns, and what you see as a parasitic profession might be the only way a person with mental or physical health issues can survive. My understanding of the OPU is that through actions, whether it be protest, direct action, or through the courts, the OPU defends the human rights of the Homeless when they get tread upon by the courts, police, and business associations.
It would be nice if StS could start an “Ask the organizer of the Ottawa Panhandler’s Union” and it could be a factual thread instead of an argument about the politics of poverty, or poor bashing…
I think they are both arguing their honestly held point of view, but I tend to think Smashy is nutty. Of course, I’d be the first against the wall when his panhandler-revolutionaries take over, so I’m a bit biased. 
He made it up in the first place. He got caught. And now, coincidentally, he just happens to be completely unable to find a cite for even his revised assertion?
Come on.
His original assertion was a lie. When someone who knew what they were talking about caught hm, he lied again. And now he expects folks to believe that the DMS’s Casebook really said that in Latin America everybody hallucinates ghosts when a family member dies.
Just like he’s continuing to lie about what “most” anthropologists believe or, for that matter, what a tiny minority would actually believe. Anthropological study is not in the habit of positing let alone agreeing on mental illness of tens of thousands of figures for whom records specific are thin to non-existent.
He’s just a liar.
It’s no strawman to figure that Smashy had offered a cite that he thought had something to do with the claim he made in the sentence immediately preceding the cite. That’s why I pointed out that the cite had nothing to do with the claim. Rather than taking me to task for a “strawman”, you might, instead, admit that Smahy actually never provided a cite to prove his contention and instead only offered a 25 year old position paper saying that we need to study Nutra Sweet’s effects.
Any way you slice it, I did. If the claim was that the 25 year old position paper somehow ushered in 20 years of growing controversy, then I addressed that. If the claim was that the metabolites of Nutra Sweet were dangerous in single doses or over time, I addressed that too.
Even though it was, at best, a non-sequitur…
Which was the point I made in the post you’re objecting to and the facts I provided in the three posts immediately following. Instead of trying to lecture me on my behavior, you might want to fix yours, instead. I pointed out, quite clearly, that he’d need an actual statistical study rather than a 25 year old position paper and that his 25 year old position paper addressed nothing, at all. In other words, I pointed out that he had yet to support his point (burden of proof and all that)
“Ask yourself what would be a more accurate cite to prove your claims, a 25 year old position paper or an actual, ya know, statistical study.
Then provide a cite for that, instead of a totally irrelevant cite that you’re too dumb to realize doesn’t even address your actual claim.”
I then went on to actually do the work to rebut his claims rather than simply pointing out that he hadn’t supported them. Although, no, it was’t necessary, and pointing out that debating woo-salesmen simply keeps them in the public eye and they’ll repeat their fictions later on anyways isn’t exactly all that contentious a position, I don’t believe.
It did not occur to me until the Swift quote just how much our own Smashy is like Ignatius J Reilly. I can just see him at Levy Pants now.
Arrogance is having a higher opinion of yourself than is warranted. Just like Smashy’s actual abilities come nowhere close to his claims, which is why he ends up sputtering about the dangers of Nutra Sweet when he has no clue what’s actually going on. Or why he thinks he’s a wonderful genius, or what have you.
As you yourself have admitted that I never am without cites for the factual claims I make, it’s pretty dense of you to allege that I’m “arrogant”. Hell, you just said you’ll start lurking in some threads if I’m pointing out facts. So Smashy is a pretentious fuck, and not only was I right in this most recent exchange, but I’m not a whiny bitch like him and I actually provide (and defend) cites when called on claims.
You’re being a jerk.