Don’t Inhale The Thinner

*sniffs paint thinner*
⊙_ʘ

Through a Canvas Darkly…

Off topic but you’ll think they’re on drugs.
They’re all so keen to signal their disapproval, and thereby their conformism. Bless ‘em.
Though not the smug chappie in the communism shirt. He can go fuck himself.

Thoughts, anyone?
Apparently, I’ve used up my free articles for the month. You can imagine the suspense.

Thoughts
Yes, it’s all made up crap. So many of these stories that get into academia and the news and such are made up. These fantastic stories that are too good to check. Anyone here who read The New Republic back when Stephen Glass wrote there? It was plainly obvious to me he was lying. I was stunned at how his stories were so readily accepted.

” watched young men running and hiding from the police on 111 occasions,” while also seeing officers “break down doors, search houses and question, arrest or chase people through houses fifty-two times.”

You buying that crap? 52 times. Or is it 111? She kept up with those chases? That’s just a start. But OK, over six years. But then six years? And then the 11 year old arrested. I suppose. I will say it’s more believable than Stephen Glass, but only in the way Bernie Madoff differs from a multilevel marketer.
I’ve seen way too many of these stories persist for years before, if ever, getting found out. People have gotten Pulitzers for such BS. I may be wrong but my spidey senses are flashing red.

… it soon attracted critics, including the estimable Steven Lubet, who thinks that Goffman embellished her experiences, repeated as fact things she had heard from her subjects though they were unlikely to have been true, and, most sensationally, became so caught up in the lives of the people she was writing about that she could have been charged with conspiracy to commit murder under Pennsylvania law.

Anyone who has watched the A&E series The First 48 can attest, some of these “stories” they tell are true whoppers that anyone with an ounce of common sense can see right through, and yet they act offended when seasoned homicide detectives don’t buy them.

You buying that crap? 52 times. Or is it 111?
Extremely specific numbers are usually a good sign of fabrication. It’s the detail == verisimilitude fallacy, whereas real research often has ambiguities and margins of error.