# When did you stop beating your wife? Challenging loaded questions in FQ

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife-challenging-loaded-questions-in-fq/977291>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [December 29, 2022, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife-challenging-loaded-questions-in-fq/977291 "2022-12-29T17:22:35Z")\
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**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\
**Post date:** [December 29, 2022, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife-challenging-loaded-questions-in-fq/977291/16 "2022-12-29T20:56:10Z")

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> [@Ruken](#):
>
> No, it’s not. There are many reasons for adopting a parenting strategy. The OP asking about one of them says nothing of the validity of others.

I’m starting to wonder if people are reading the same thread as me. To quote OP again:

> [@Any evidence that teaching kids about healthy boundaries and consent to physical contact reduces abuse?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-evidence-that-teaching-kids-about-healthy-boundaries-and-consent-to-physical-contact-reduces-abuse/977225/1):
>
> “Experts” get quoted about the strategy and imply they believe it leads to better outcomes but psychology and sociology research is a real mixed bag with lots of unreliable studies treated as definitive. Worse yet, in the absence of data, it seems some people pretend their ideas or personal experience are data.

> [@Any evidence that teaching kids about healthy boundaries and consent to physical contact reduces abuse?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-evidence-that-teaching-kids-about-healthy-boundaries-and-consent-to-physical-contact-reduces-abuse/977225/25):
>
> There are lots of examples of people adopting well-meaning child rearing strategies that don’t work, often bolstered by “experts” with no evidence. Parents delayed giving their kids peanuts, taught them that abstinence was the best protection, and that kids should just say no to drugs. None of these strategies work.

Are you really claiming that OP is not implying any opinion here as to what conclusions we should draw about the validity of this approach to parenting if empirical data from rigorous scientific studies does not exist?

> [@Ruken](#):
>
> For too long FQ threads have been overrun by the IMHO crowd.

If an OP in FQ wants to avoid this kind of problem, it should ask neutrally, it should not itself not advance a questionable line of reasoning that amounts to an opinion.

And one of the things that was moderated out of bounds was even to question what kind of hypothesis might sensibly be tested in a scientific study, and the potential _difficulty_ and likely long delay in obtaining reliable empirical data. Without that kind of context, we cannot possibly interpret any cited study sensibly, or infer anything reliable from the absence of data. Is _that_ discussion an “opinion” that should be out of bounds in FQ?

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