I found "Please Cut The Crap" in a roundabout way. On a political BBS, one of the writers (nicknamed Claimsman) started a thread with a bunch of facts that had no attribution. I was curious as to where he was getting his facts, so I Googled the information contained in the post.
It turned out that the guy had copied and pasted from someone's blog.
That's how I found this post entitled "Why Should We Even Listen To Right Wing Pols?"
If you go there, you'll find that the poster lists off a bunch of 'facts' to explain how 'red' states are fucked up. An example:
Here's a list of the top ten states by median income: 1. Maryland, 2. New Jersey, 3. Connecticut, 4. Alaska, 5. Hawaii, 6. New Hampshire, 7. Massachusetts, 8. California, 9. Virginia, 10. Minnesota.But more interesting are the BOTTOM ten states; 50. Mississippi, 49. West Virginia, 48. Arkansas, 47. Kentucky, 46. Alabama, 45. Louisiana, 44. New Mexico, 43. Oklahoma, 42. Tennessee, 41. South Carolina.
You'll note that the poster never gives an attribution... the source for all of his facts.
Whenever I see that, my 'german shepard ears' perk up. It means that someone is trying to hide the whole truth. Or in this case, he could just be making some crap up.
So I challenged him. I commented on his post. I told him about how stats, when unattributed, can lie.
To explain this, I wrote about divorces and marriage.
You may have read an e-mail that was being passed around a while back about how 'red states' have a higher incident of divorce then 'blue states'.
That e-mail was partially right.
There are a number of red states that have unusually high divorce rates when compared to blue states. But that's because those blue states have much lower marriage rates.
You can't get divorced if you don't get married in the first place.
I wrote all of this in a reply to that blog. It seemed like the post was deleted, so I posted again... and "Milt Shook", the owner of the blog, replied with this:
As for sources, there are multiple sources in many cases, and they're easy enough to find. I didn't see the need to cite them. I'm not sure what the point would be, actually. I stand behind them.
Milt also gave an answer suggesting that he didn't know what a divorce rate was. So again, I suggested that it would add more weight to his posts if he gave sources for them. We wrote back and forth 2 or 3 times. -And then Milt shut down the comments.
I need to note that all of my blog is moderated. I don't expect anything less from anyone who owns a blog. You don't want someone posting something bizarre or inflamatory in response to something you said. But what Milt Shook is doing is dishonest. He's pretending like its an open debate... with no attributions. When you challenge him on it? He shuts you out.
All while complaining that conservatives are shrill and dishonest.
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