In light of a few recent threads here on the board (which I am not going to link to) I thought it would be useful to discuss debating tools and specifically why some sources of information are considered more reliable than others.
Pretending for a moment that I don’t know anything, what makes an information source credible and conversely what makes another doubtful; please explain as clearly and fully as possible and feel free to link to examples.
<cringe> that seems to carry the rather pompous implication that I think I really know everything, sorry, that was not my intention. :o
It seems to me that if you wish to persuade others in a debate, you must ensure that your evidence meets some basic criteria:
Use primary sources as much as possible. If you wish to make a point concerning, say, the beliefs of the LDS, you ought to link to the LDS officlal home page, and not merely quote qhat a secondhand source says about LDS beliefs.
Don’t use an op-ed piece to back up a factual assertion. If a poster wishes to make a point about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, he should quote from an unbiased news source, and not quote a columnist’s opinion as fact.
Check for bias. If you only cite wildly biased sources that support onyl your side and do not address the objections posed by the opposition, your POV will get little respect. For example, if you wish to make a point about gay promiscuity, you should use facts from the American Psychologial Association or some neutral source–if you cites come from godhatesfags.com, you won’t get much of a hearing.
I’d agree with the use of primary sources and checking for bias, and add that providing direct links to sources whenever possible is also a good idea. When one quotes from something that no one else can get access to, it makes it pretty difficult to show that it isn’t taken out of context.
gobear, your first and third criteria are possibly contradictory in most cases.
Primary sources are good for demonstration of a problem with a group, though the problem would need to be spelled out in some fashion—perhaps in an op-ed article (not likely). Otherwise, most primary sources are definitely biased. I mean: that’s why they are who they are, because they think they are right.
Which isn’t to say they will present the matter unfairly, but rather that it is easier to be skeptical of a primary source talking about themselves.
Third parties make for objectivity, IMO.
As for your second point, op-ed pieces can have factual information in them, though I agree that a different source would be better if only because it should be easier to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were.
As for your third point, bias is a word people use to smear what they disagree with. Reference my previous comment on this. “If I am right, it is a fact; if they are wrong, and yet they hold their opinion, it is bias.”
Logical arguments, several sources from across the “bias spectrum” (whatever the issue is there are bound to be all sorts of ‘wingers’ for it), and a little wit make the argument. I have never, ever, made such an argument. I accept far less for a valid discussion. 
But, my room is also very messy, so this might not apply to everyone.
…
Anyway: valid sources are contextual. I would tend to accept with less skepticism anything done by a panel or other otherwise disparate group of [insert relevant field here] than I would a single article quoting people all over the place. In some cases this is not normal behavior. In these instances, cites become a wild goose chase where a poster attempts to synthesize (at best) the opinions of ‘wingers’ in order to offer an argument.
I don’t think a solid rule can be made about sources. For some things it is easier than others: a debate about legality could run the non-cite gambit with an argument about morality, or it could play out as a debate over inconsistent rulings, in which case cites would crop up from our own legal system. Here an opinion paper or even an article that didn’t specifically mention which case it was wouldn’t impress me at all.
IMO most of the arguments had in GD make “good” citations impossible. The debate is a synthesized opinion from several sources, and if it were so cut-and-dry that someone could just lay down a few links and some symbols from predicate logic then there wouldn’t be anything to debate.
A “good” cite proves your opponent wrong. I think that is what most people look for. When offered a cite in response to their own challenge, they then proceed to demonstrate why this cite is not good and so on.
A cite should, IMO, at most, be used for matters of definition or simple facts not open to severe interpretation (a cite about gun crime statistics, but not a cite about what gun crime statistics means: that’s the damn debate!). Otherwise, well, that’s why we’re here: to debate, not to practice vB coding of hyperlinks. So debate.
Again, MHO.
For sources that include citations, one should be leery if most of the citations are to works by the author. Also if other authors are cited, they should not be a just to a small group who only cite works among themselves.
The more scientific or technical a paper is, the more you might question a single author as opposed to multiple authors. Not a hard and fast rule by any means, but a bit of a clue in some cases.
Here are my thoughts on [b[gobear’s** suggestions.
Amen. I totally agree.
An opinion from an op-ed should not be used to support a fact, but a fact mentioned in an op-ed might be OK. There are responsible op-ed pages (like the WSJ) whose statement of facts are as reliable as a news report’s statement of fact. They’re both pretty reliable, but not 100%; both are subject to spin.
This is good advice, although it’s sometimes easier said than done. E.g, I happen to think that the BBC is biased against Israel; someone else may conisder them to be unbiased.
I certainly agree that one ought not use BigotsAreUs.com. However, I’m not so sure I’d fully trust the APA, either. This gets back to the point about how to tell if a source is biased.
I would add to goberar’s list:
– Reliable sources are better than unreliable ones. E.g., the New York Times is better than the National Enquirer.
– More or stronger cites are better than fewer or weaker cites, but some cites is better than no cites at all.
– If you quote a segment from a cite, don’t quote out of context.
– If you paraphrase a cite, represent its point accurately
If you need a cite to do anything more for you than supply a fact, then you shouldn’t be citing. There is nothing more annoying to me than to read a debate of cites. If you make claims that resemble statements of fact, you should be prepared to use a cite to demonstrate it, or reason it out according to other facts.
It is trivial to ask “cite” for everything, much like children may annoy their parents by asking “Why?” [answer] “Why?” [second answer] “Why?” [et cetera]. If it is a fact that is in dispute a cite should be able to settle the issue clearly. If it is a claim that is in dispute cites are always going to be questionable and debateable themselves (note counter-cites and subsequent cite wars). The blame lies as much with the person asking for the cite as the one who would offer it.
Of course, there’s always the ever-popular “dimsissive ‘cite’” call which is used in place of actually fighting ignorance. I will not comment whether these people need a break from fighting ignorance and so should be allowed leeway or not.
I reject december’s additional rules for the problems they present in interpretation.
How about:
Keep your anger out of the debate.
…by which I don’t mean you should be dispassionate about how you argue. And conceivably, under some circumstances, it’d be ok to get pissed off (though none come to mind). But if a debate is supposed to be a reasoned argument, then no cussin’, fightin’ words, insults, derogatory comments, etc.
Typically, as soon as you throw “a**hole” into your debate, you’ve lost the audience.
Yeah, but throw a half dozen into your vegetable stew, just for the flavor. Take 'em out before serving, of course.
I don’t know, a**holes just aren’t as filling, even with a good beef stock.
So, what’s the a**hole cut of meat called?
Does it have different names on a cow, pig, sheep, etc.?
If it doesn’t have a name yet, what should it be called?
I believe McDonald’s calls it, “All beef patty…”
In all honesty, december, I think it’s called a bung.
I’d do a bit of Googling to verify, but I’m at work and I’m not at all confident about what a search based on that word would produce.
OK, how about NOT BRINGING HIJACKS? Hmmm?
Not sure I’d agree with this. Many works with multiple authors are by a professor and his/her students, which is not much different from a single author.
Also, different field have different publish/perish pressures. We know that some papers got published without being read by some of the authors. You know that if a paper has ten authors, most of them did little or nothing, unless the paper is really epochal.
I’d count the quality of the publication and the level of peer review far more than the number of authors.
Right on, Voyager! There is something of a level of taste that goes on in the number of authors on a paper. Some scientists I know include everybody and their mother that has contributed one inkling of an idea in the authorship of papers. This especially seems to happen in collaboration papers. When you get 100 authors it may seem impressive, but may not be nearly as worthwhile a work as a sensible single-author paper that was written by some frustrated graduate student trying to get to the bottom of some issue. Another problem with these big collaboration papers is that some people try to get the “big names” to contribute a tid-bit here or there and then include them as authors. Sometimes this ploy is used (surreptitiously) to insinuate that the ideas in the paper or data presented is of more importance or of better quality than it actually is.
In general, sources in science are good when they are demonstrated to stand up to scrutiny. We can look for correlations between number of author names, reputation of the journal, etc., but ultimately it comes down to whether or not the ideas presented make any meaningful additions to the body of knowledge of the community at large. There have been more than a few “gems” that have gone unnoticed by scientific communities for years only to be dredged up later when someone else rediscovers the phenomena. Likewise, some heralded breakthroughs have turned out to be nothing more than dead-ends. It would be nice if competent works could be easily and objectively distinguished at first glance, but I’m afraid there are no 100% accurate shortcuts in evaluating citations.
In some debates, there really only is personal opinion. It is fine to use. You just need to recognize that it is opinion and only data will make a fact out of it.
In some debates, there is really only personal experience. Once again, it is fine to use, but a single ancedote is not data.
The Bible is authorative only on itself (and even then you run into version issues, translation issue, etc.). You won’t get very far using it as an authorative source for moral issues - because not everyone on this board is Christian, and not even the Christians all agree. You get less far using it as a scientific source.
“”""“OK, how about NOT BRINGING HIJACKS? Hmmm?”"""""
OP: “Who Will Be The First To Brave The Edge Of The Earth?”
Reply: (summary) The Earth is round, nobody will be doing that.
OP: Fu**king hijackers, you’re being reported to the mods! I hope you get banned. Get the hell out of my thread you troll!
-Justhink
For a turkey it’s called “the pope’s nose”. (sorry, I don’t have a cite)
Well, I’ve found it very helpful to try to avoid the obvious logical fallacies, although I recently got so annoyed at a poster’s repeated “arguments from authority” that I pulled some counter-arguments from that same questionable “authority”. I’m not proud, but at least it was in the pit, not GD.