To recap this needless, squalid bickering. This was my post:
Setanta wrote:So Wilso posts something from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and Ooragnak posts something from the Sidney Morning Herald . . . are we supposed to consider that to have trumped Wilso's source?
To which your reply was:
ooragnak wrote:Wilso's report is not from the Australian Bureau of Stastics, but in fact a report put together by four men from the School of Public Health and published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. The report acknowledges using 29 sources for the material, INCLUDING twice from the Sydney Morning Herald. I might be mistaken but it appears the authors didn't quote directly from the ABS but from a National Injury Surveillance Unit report.
The article I quoted in the SMH was attributed to the head of the Bureau of Crime, Statistics and Research in which he quotes figures direct from the ABS.
Now, you have a source, quoting from the ABS, which is, in other words, a secondary source. You assert that Wilso's conention is also a secondary source, in that he is not quoting directly from the ABS, and you go further to say that what he quotes is actually a report from the National Injury Surveillance Unit. If this were an historiographic dispute, neither one of you have provided more reliable evidence than the other, on the face of it, so there is little or nothing to choose between your contentions as regards authority.
Therefore, i responded to your post:
Setanta wrote:Translation: your source is not more reliable than his.
That's not saying that he's right and you're wrong, it's not saying that you're right and he's wrong--it is a simple statement to the effect that neither of you conclusively appeals to authority.
But this is your response:
ooragnak wrote:Setanta ... I admire your loyalty to Wilso regardless of the facts.
So, it appears that you are alleging that "the facts" support your point of view as more authoritative than Wilso's--and i had not disputed your parsing of sources, and had only observed that on that basis, there was nothing to choose between support for the two points of view. But that last response of yours seems to suggest that i am persisting in preferring Wilso's view to yours, despite the "facts."
My response was not that i considered Wilso's point of view to have trumped yours, nor yours to have trumped his. It was a remark which clearly shows that there is not a conclusive basis for preferring one point of view to the other. Therefore, you remark about my "loyalty" despite "the facts" is a snotty suggestion that i am refusing to see "the facts" because of a partisan preference for one point of view over the other. Nothing in your explanation of the sources gives any reason to accept such a construction.
Therefore, this was my response:
Setanta wrote:Wilso isn't my mate, while at the same time, i bear him no animus. The sources as you've explained them are no more impressive for one point of view than for the other. I don't need you to tell me about "facts."
Or, as they say in the Bronx, where i was born, don't piss down my leg and tell me it's raining.
Since then, you have either become confused, or you've retreated to the earlier posts because you can't defend the line you took after your post about the actual sources being quoted. So i've grown tired of your snotty tone and your condescending remarks. I didn't argue with your "facts," unless you are now attempting to suggest that you provided "facts" which show that you have provided more conclusive evidence than did Wilso. I see no reason to agree that this is so. My position since you described the relative authority of sources (which i took on good faith by the way, a point which seems to have escaped you), is that neither of you has provided conclusive authority.
Your attempt to suggest that i have failed to understand this progression of remarks and responses is at least as insulting as you being told to bite me. Get over it.
