Quiet, piggies; here's your slop of news

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

By Jon Bauer / Herald Opinion Editor

It’s been like waiting for a new season of “Real Housewives” to drop. After months of bickering and balking, Congress has passed — by nearly unanimous consent — and President Trump has signed — as if he wasn’t dragged into it kicking and kvetching — legislation requiring the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to release their files into the dealings of convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, his crimes and his clients.

Trump is missing an opportunity here: He could have released leather-bound copies of the files — complete with gold lettering and gilt edges — that the MAGA faithful would have paid dearly for.

In other likely anticlimactic news this week:

The broke-mind virus: Reflecting Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s conspiracy theory linking childhood vaccines to autism, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its webpage on vaccines and autism to endorse that false link, wiping an earlier version of the page that said studies had shown no link between the two. The page now reads: “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”

Of course, we also now have to rule out as “not evidence-based” — because no studies have ruled out the possibility — that RFK Jr.’s brain worm did not fail its host’s logic classes at Harvard.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/the-buzz-quiet-piggies-heres-your-slop-of-news/

[RockRaven]

1. Note the non-scientific sleight of hand.

First, frame the matter as a claim in the form of a negative declaration, rather than what it actually is: a rejection of the inverse, unproven positive claim.

This enables an attempted shifting of the burden of proof. So secondly, the expectation of proving a negative is raised.

Third, declare by fiat and without reference to evidence that a possibility has not been ruled out. And, as bonus, make this possibility a specific narrow subset/slice of the phenomenon in question rather than the whole.

Having raised an expectation of a broad proven negative, declare the burden has not been met.

Declare therefore that the positive claim is valid.