Dogface, if you make the effort to read my posts, try to read the entirely.
I said: excluded some official websites.
Salaam. A
Cite? 
Yes, and that is why common websites are no sources to me.
And even the hournals you mentioned or the excerpts published out of them can contain differences with the original printed version, even if it is only an error in the page numbering, which I encounter frequently.
If you don’t verify that and out of lazyness list such a publication on the internet in your bibliography or even worse: in a footnote as if you took it out of the original, you make a very great fool of yourself in an unforgivable way.
Salaam. A
Every first year of an academic study shall teach you that wisdom.
Salaam. A
So nothing can be trusted except for the original raw data? And I personally have to see the data myself to use it as a cite, I can’t take the word of the scientist or researcher?
Aldebaran is confusing “legitimate” with “official”. They’re not really equivalent.
Confusing “legitimate” with “official” is quite common among statists and other fascists.
That is a solid argument, yet my objection is that a poster gets identified with the contenance of the site/article he provides, as if it is reflecting his/her own opinion. I don’t want to be identified with what is written by someone else, let be when it is published on a website.
See where the misunderstanding already pops up.
You take my remark as if I want to say that I take everything published by the UN as absolute truth. While my intention is only to say that such an official UN website gives you some solid guarantee that what is published, is what reflects the UN standpoints, their reports, the reports of the meetings, whatever.
Nothing more.
Yet you already made of it that I say that the UN reflects an absolute truth in its standpoints and that they are mine.
Well I don’t live in the USA and I’m not going to change my perception and knowledge on sources because I post on a US based website where some of the US members are addicted to websites as if that is all that is to be found on the globe in order to gain knowledge.
I don’t give websites to underscore my arguments for the reasons I described above. I can’t change what became that much part of my personality that I would betray myself if I start considering any website as “source”. Look for this also at my comments on the post made by member Dogface.
So you potray here that it is a necessity for my to betray myself, to betray my standards by lowering them to a level that is unthinkable for me, in order to “come to the party”?
Sorry, but the answer has to remain NO.
If other members choose for not believing a word I write here because I don’t come up with some websites who aren’t reliable to me and with writers I don’t want to be identified/mixed up with, then that is their right. They don’t even have to read what I write.
If I understand it correctly, it is in your opinion an absolute necessity for me to become a faking liar in order to establish here “a personal credibility”?
Well, something about the US mentality and mindset must escape me here. So can you explain this strange contradiction to me please? Thank you.
Salaam. A
Can you explain to a non English speaker whatyou mean exactly with “raw data” in this context? Thank you.
As for taking the word of a scientist for fact: science - all science in every field- is all about continued research and questioning former discoveries. Hence every word of every scientist can be debatable or become debatable in the future.
Salaam. A
Aldabaran, you have no standards. If you had standards, you would post the sources for your claims. Instead, you lie, you make it all up, and then when pressed to the wall make up another lie, that you have standards that are “too high” to require you to document your claims.
Citations do NOT have to be links to web sites. If your source is a book, cite that book. If your source is a journal, cite that journal. You refuse to give any but the barest of cites, and most of your claims have no citations at all to back them up.
Logical conclusion: You are a liar and your refusal to back your claims only proves it.
Sigh.
Aldebaran, how can it possibly decimate your personal standards to simply find 3rd party sources to provide backing your facts?
My opinion has always been that if a discussion could be settled by a judicious application of citations, then it wasn’t much of a discussion at all. I dislike any debates where people start making factual claims, or requests of them, for that reason. This is GD, not GQ. Sometimes, of course, it may be necessary to state some background factual information for a topic, but most of the time it seems worthless in this forum. Facts should not be used to advance a debate, but rather to form a context in which a debate can come about. If we bicker over facts, or perhaps better phrased as what we’re asserting are facts through citations, we aren’t debating. MHO.
Debating without facts is like fencing without swords. It just becomes footwork.
Tensile strength, various spider silks.
http://tc.engr.wisc.edu/steuber/papers/2002/spider_p_1st.doc
With, you note, originating citations.
What? No error bars? 
I’d also like to point out that the ABC and Forbes sites reference “toughness” and the howstuffworks site references “strength”. Strength and toughness are two different engineering terms; there’s no reason to expect the same factor between Kevlar and spider silk for the two. So…there’s really no discrepancy at all.
However, I don’t think that invalidates the point of the OP. I doubt that a popular press reporter knows the technical difference between the terms, so is the “toughness” cited really a comparison of toughness? Or is it really strength? And, as Grey points out, what is the error in the measurement? What type of Kevlar? What type of spider silk? How accurate is the measurement? What is “twice” (surely, not 2.000 exactly)? Unfortunately this is kind of glossed over when you’re given a single sentence in a short article.
So yes, you need to exercise some judgement in accepting cites. Not just due to bias and political agenda, but due to simplification and potential sloppiness, too.
Grey,
Are you saying that you believe something because it is published on the internet ?
Sorry, but I don’t.
When I post something about an issue, I write with the backing of my own information, research, studies, interests and give my conclusion. That means that this is the result of my experience, my background, the studies I did, the information I gather and can verify myself on its value for the issue at hand etc… All these factors are intertwined and don’t come from some alien “3the party”.
How come you can’t understand that I don’t need an unknown “3the party” to instruct me what to write about what and that I don’t need to rely on what some websites spread around to know what I talk about when it comes to issues related to my studyfields, my personal background and whatever that makes part of my daily life?
I don’t post links to websites as if that is now what I talk about, since it is never what i talk about. I say that websites aren’t even coming close to provide some reliability for me to make me able to talk about them as “source”.
This has a reason and I explained it already several times on this message board. Even in this very topic already more then once.
You know, you people are amazing. I never encountered such website-quoting addicts in my whole cyberspace life.
Salaam. A
Are you saying that you don’t believe anything that is posted on the internet?
So in other words, you don’t speak on any topic unless you have personal first-hand knowledge of the facts? What do you do when you need information outside of your field of “expertise”?
Alde,
Your personal experience doesn’t count, unless you can back it up being an expert in the fields you talk about! Can you give us cites as to your publication in a peer reviewed journal of an article discussing something that you are talking about? If not, what you think isn’t all that valid.
“Well I don’t live in the USA and I’m not going to change my perception and knowledge on sources because I post on a US based website where some of the US members are addicted to websites as if that is all that is to be found on the globe in order to gain knowledge.”
Then, with respect, you have nothing independently verifable to back up your claims. And that’s the point really. You are on a BBS which is specifically oriented around the idea of verification of claims, and yet you decline to do so in your arguments. Since there are few psychics here, and many skeptics, that leaves them in the position of simply accepting your word for it, or not.
That might work on a faith oriented board or in a discussion where you are personally known to the audience. On the SDMB neither of these conditions is met. people here don’t take things on faith and you aren’t known to them personally.
Neither are they likely to simply start accepting anything you (or I, or anyone) says at face value. That is more or less one of the unwritten rules of debate. If you make a claim, then you must be open to the idea of providing proof of that claim. Otherwise the claim is dismissed on it’s face not because of it’s validity or lack thereof, but because you are refusing to “play by the rules”.
It is up to you of course, but if you do not provide proof, then you offer your opponents in the debate an easy out to dismiss your claims (and you as well). “Show your cite” is the rule of the debate here. If you refuse to debate by the rules, then you’re more or less automatically disqualified from the debate, and your contributions ignored. Again, it’s your choice, but if you persue that policy then the other debaters will simply ignore or “cat-call” you for doing so.
If you do not wish to accept those consequences, then you must debate by the rules (written and unwritten). It’s really one or the other. I wish you luck trying to go your own way, but I doubt you will bring the vast majority of the board around to your point of view.
Regards,
-Bouncer-