Excellent. You can't just make things up for the sake of "starting a conversation". Either you report the truth or you're just a propaganda piece. I'm sure there is hundreds of real rape on campus stories out there (unfortunately). The Rolling Stone was fed with the lies they wanted to ear. They knew it was bullshit, they went ahead and publish that crap just "to start a conversation" ... hurting real rape victims at the same time.
Real world examples tend not to fit narratives perfectly.
Perhaps in many cases they involve non-students, or are off-campus, or don't sound as horrific (even if they are), or they are investigated seriously already (without help from a journalist), or the perpetrator or victim might reinforce a stereotype that the journalist doesn't want to contribute to.
It doesn't mean the stories are less bad, or that there isn't a problem, just that the journalist has nothing to gain by writing about them. And some might actually contradict the politically-correct solutions being proposed.
I recall seeing somewhere that Erdely received credible reports of sexual harrassment at schools like Yale, and rejected the stories as not being juicy enough.
Calling her a journalist disgraces the entire profession (which hasn't exactly been covering itself in glory lately).
I've not seen any convincing evidence that there is more rape on U.S. campuses than in surrounding society. I suspect this is why Sabrina had a hard time finding a juicy rape to capitalize on.
She began with the conclusion, and fabricated observations to fit it. This means the "conversation" is exactly as ridiculous as the false pretenses guiding it.
The whole idea of "campus rape" seems to be based on (small) surveys conducted with broad definitions of "rape" which most people would not accept. Definitions often include consensual sex which the respondent regretted after the fact, and drunk sex with forgotten/unknown consent.
We don't actually know if they were lies. Certainly they weren't vetted as facts sufficiently for basic journalistic standards. And they probably wouldn't hold up in court. But that doesn't mean they are lies. Lots of truths wouldn't hold up in court, or be printable in a publication of repute.
The female student who was the focus of the article ("Jackie") spun a very specific story that involved specific acts, places, people, and times. We now know that, to a first approximation, everything she said was an outright lie. There were other stories she could have told about different people, places, times, and events that would have been true, and it's possible one of the versions of the story she told other people was true or mostly true. It's entirely possible that Jackie was, in fact, raped. But the specific story Jackie told Erdely was not true, and the specific rape Erdely wrote about did not occur.
We know this due to the excellent investigative reporting of the Washington Post and others, to the damning report made by the CJR, and now to to this jury verdict which determined that the story was untrue, that Rolling Stone knew (or should have known) that it was untrue, and that Rolling Stone acted with reckless disregard for the truth in publishing the story.
> Lots of truths wouldn't hold up in court, or be printable in a publication of repute.
That's true, but not relevant. Merely publishing something you think is true but couldn't prove in a court of law doesn't put you at risk of losing a libel suit.
No, they were lies to the point where named people supposedly involved ("Haven Monahan") don't exist. It was a hoax.
Sabrina Erdeley has herself written that she went out looking for a particular story. This is among the reasons why she is liable. In the US the standard for that is much, much higher than just failing to hold up in court. It takes actual malice.
This has been an interesting for professional journalists (I mean, aside from all the reasons that it is interesting to anyone) for testing the "actual malice" requirement needed for a (limited-) public figure like this Dean to prove defamation, which is that Rolling Stone acted with "actual malice", i.e. a reckless disregard for the truth:
Despite the main part of the story being based on someone's lie, RS could theoretically prove that they weren't being "reckless", given all the resources they poured into this story, including 80 hours of fact-checking work [1] -- being reckless is different than being incompetent/stupid. But reading the Columbia Journalism Review's investigation [2]:
> The checker did try to improve the story’s reporting and attribution of quotations concerning the three friends. She marked on a draft that Ryan - “Randall” under pseudonym - had not been interviewed, and that his “shit show” quote had originated with Jackie. “Put this on Jackie?” the checker wrote. “Any way we can confirm with him?” She said she talked about this problem of clarity with Woods and Erdely. “I pushed. … They came to the conclusion that they were comfortable” with not making it clear to readers that they had never contacted Ryan.
-- then what is? The RS reporter claims to have "exhausted all the avenues for finding the friends" and yet soon after the story was published, the Washington Post managed to find all 3 friends, who weren't at all unwilling to talk to the paper. Had RS talked to the friends, RS would have almost immediately realized that they would have to do additional reporting. The U.S. law protecting media from libel suits against public figures is very strong, but I can definitely see how a jury would decide against RS.
Apparently people are looking into Sabrina Ruben-Erdely's history and it resembles Stephen Glass[0] with a sex-crime angle. Poorly researched articles and lazy fact checking built her a career where RS was paying her $43,000 a story for 3-4 pieces a year that she made up herself and fed to her 'sources' to repeat back to her.
All the people involved with this story (reporter, editors and the lying "victim") should face criminal charges. The damage that making and promulgating false stories like this does to real victims of rape is immense, let alone to the people falsely accused.
Jackie is more guilty that Rolling Stone. She created a false story, made false allegations, and threw an administrator under the bus. The allegations she made would have been very serious had they been true. As it stands, the fact that she made FALSE allegations is the serious matter. Yet she will be walking away with no consequences.
I'm not from the US and don't know how the law there works exactly, but over here, if a person fabricates a libelous story and feeds it to a journalist - however much encouraged by that journalist - and this is published, then the person, the journalist and the publisher are all guilty of libel.
For other parties, at least the mob that trashed fraternity building should be prosecuted.
Of course one very real victim here is people who actually have been raped or assaulted at campuses. Their stories will now be harder to believe.
It's profoundly easy to be fooled by someone who's bent on fooling you. We know that "Jackie" from the story was misleading both Rolling Stone and its reporter Sabrina Ruben-Erdely.
I can see a strong case for negligence claims against RS and Ruben-Erdly. Both should have pursued fact-checking and cross-referencing single-source claims, especially when made against other people and institutions. And that's pretty much what the court here has found.
I would strongly support criminal claims against "Jackie".
-Erdely. Both sh
I agree the hardest people to prosecute here are the editors, but they should have insisted that the story was fact checked to a much great extent. This is not a story where you can be flippant about minor details like facts.
Beyond feelings about the verdict itself, it is interesting that a single lapse in journalistic integrity has the potential to put a major news organization like Rolling Stone out of business. There are massive incentives to publish sensational articles, but as this case and the Gawker case have shown, there are also massive incentives to not publish specific details. The BuzzFeed model (which is perhaps shared by social media at large) is to simply provide a platform, and let other people stir the pot. I hope that doesn't become the only way to circulate ideas.
FWIW I come to HN for the comments, not really for the articles. I think maybe half of us use HN this way.
This is to say that the platform approach has the advantage of allowing actually informed/skeptical/intelligent people to do the talking. They can discuss subjects they know, at their own pace. Contrast with traditional journalism, where even when things go right you're still dealing with someone who's reporting on things outside their profession, probably on a deadline, and beset by an industry (public relations) basically devoted to deceiving them.
This is to say I'm actually fairly sure the platform approach, at least from first principals, beats the traditional approach in terms of quality.
(On a side note, I just had an awful thought: are there PR people reaching out to the top HN authors?)
> This is to say that the platform approach has the advantage of allowing actually informed/skeptical/intelligent people to do the talking. They can discuss subjects they know, at their own pace. Contrast with traditional journalism, where even when things go right you're still dealing with someone who's reporting on things outside their profession, probably on a deadline, and beset by an industry (public relations) basically devoted to deceiving them.
I agree with this. At least with site comments you get to read a variety of viewpoints and viewpoints are actively criticised so if some facts or perspectives are dubious it's usually really obvious. This isn't true when you stick to one news article which is sometimes nothing better than a long-form comment if it's poor journalism anyway. There is the hive mind aspect with commenting communities which is bad but you get similar group think on news sites and you have to engage your critical thinking skills at some point.
It's not clear to Rolling Stone is in such jeopardy, they didn't, for example, exhibit contempt for the judicial process from beginning to end, they, I assume, have real libel insurance and are cooperating with their insurance company (although I wonder how policies are written to deal with actual malice findings). They're going to take a big hit here, and the fraternity lawsuit is likely to be much uglier, but as of yet it doesn't seem to be an existential threat.
Gawker and it's empire, though, were an outlier, for example making a business model such as it was out of "actual malice", it was only a matter of time until they were brought down.
And taking a step back, I think it's vital that our system has effective feedback like court cases such as this, especially in the post-New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan) era where the bar has been set so high for "public figures" that, all things considered, libel and slander law is non-operative for pretty much everyone but scientists (who are't public figures and who's reputation is vital for their careers, such suits don't make sense and therefore are seldom pursued without serious damages being on the line).
This probably isn't nearly enough to put Rolling Stone out of business, and as I understand it merely failing to follow basic journalistic practices because the story matched up with what they want to believe wouldn't have been enough to get a defamation ruling against them. They're only in legal trouble because they repeated the false claims after concluding they were false.
1. It's very easy to be fooled by someone who is bent on fooling you, especially where they've got strong motive to do so.
2. It's very easy to fool yourself when you decide on a narrative and start looking for facts to support it.
I've long maintained, and I'm finding some good sources (skeptics-based work) that it's only in specifically seeking to uncover truth that you will do so. If you instead presume some previously-determined proposition, you're simply going to make a case for that argument. Most insidious is when you don't realise you're pursuing the second avenue. As Richard Feynman said, you're the easiest person to fool.
Susan Haack, in "Science, Scientism, & Anti-Science in the Age of Preposterism", Skeptical Inquirer Nov/Dec 1997 wrote:
A genuine inquirer aims to find out the truth of some question, whatever the color of that truth. This is a taugology (Websters: "inquiry: search for truth..."). A pseudo-inquirer seeks to make a case for some proposition(s) determined in advance.
Question your evidence, question your sources, question yourself, question your premises and propositions. Question them again. And then have someone else do the same, independently.
To draw another recent online element to this -- a week or so back a video clip circulated of the South African university student "fallist" movement claiming that science was a western imposition, and that it needed to be "decolonised". First, that neglects the long history of non-western science -- from the Middle East, Africa, Persia, India, and China. Second, it is contradicted by the motto of the Royal Society, from which the modern tradition of scientific inquiry did arise: "Nullius in verba" -- "On the word of no one". That is, science -- knowledge -- doesn't arise on the authority of any one person's voice, but on the fundamental testability and verifiability of facts.
A lesson Rolling Stone and Ms. Ruben-Erdely might take to heart.
> That is, science -- knowledge -- doesn't arise on the authority of any one person's voice, but on the fundamental testability and verifiability of facts.
This is what I call "real science". I call it so because it can only be found in books and movies. /sarc
In reality, we are told that "the science is settled" and "the consensus is that...".
There are definitely misuses of science, and a cult of scientism.
I've run across a few references in the past few days which inform on this. Bruce G. Charlton has written a number of works, most available online (or at least substantially), including Thought Prison, Not Even Trying, addicted to Dsiruption, and The Genius Famine.
Susan Haack, mentioned.
A fellow named Chris Reev has a G+ collection in which he's been posting similar items. Occasionally lost in the haze, but there's some exceptionally good critical work.
I'm also working my way slowly through Sara M. Watson's impressive, and quite possibly excellent, "Toward a Constructive Technology Criticism". Quite long-form (30k words), I've submitted this to HN though without traction.
Still another element comes by way of Jill Gordon's 1997 "John Stuart Mill and 'The Marketplace of Ideas'", which takes a close look at the origin of that particular metaphor. Gordon pointedly notes that the term itself isn't Mill's, and that he applies a number of specific conditions to what minority views do and don't deserve cosideration. In particular, that they are open questions (not settled fact), that they come from the minority, not some well-endowed establishment voice, that the questions are current -- no re-opening closed wounds of the past, at least not without considerable evidence -- that they represent "neglected interests" and that the side so considered be "in danger of obtaining less than its share".
Many appeals to the "marketplace of ideas" argument fail numerous of these tests.
There are further problems, including:
A lack of good faith on the part of those introducting concepts. A motivated message can do considerable harm to greater understanding.
The exchange and interplay of ideas is not analagous to exchanges-in-goods-or-services, particularly in that there's no rivalrous transfer and compensation. That market metaphor is quite weak when examined closely.
Or, in short: there are in fact times that the science is settled and consensus exists. The exceptions almost always prove to highlight failings already listed above: Piltdown man (a manifest and motivated fraud). The corporate-and-fincially-motivated disinformation campaigns on negative effects of lead, asbestos, tobacco, pollution generally, CFCs, and CO2/global warming. Continental drift and plate tectonics was a case in which a considerable revision of geological understanding came together from multiple elements of compelling evidence. Some initial resistance to the idea was a valid conservative response, but with increasing and strongly-corroborating evidence and mechanisms, the theory was accepted. Keep in mind that this required energy and causal factors (radioactive decay and an understanding of the Earth's structure and formation) as well as much evidence of previous continental arrangement: similar landforms, fossil records showing prehistoric animal and plant ranges explained by different landmass arrangements, creep and strain measurements showing actual movements, base in part on satellite and Moon-based position measurement, magnetic field reversals evident in mid-Atlantic ridge core samples, undersea topography, radioactive dating, etc., etc., etc.
During the same period in which plate tectonics went from initial proposal to settled fact, the recognised age of the Earth itself increased from a few tens of millions of years to 4.5 billion. That's hugely significant in our understanding of numerous of Earth's processes, and humans' roles, impacts, and dependencies upon them.
The question of "real" science rapidly gets to "no true Scottsman" territory. I think though that there's a strong case to be made without relying on sophistry and tautology.
I wrote something on this a while back; basically how people will often shield themselves behind the proclamation of, "but science!" while not realizing many discoveries have come about by doubting commonly established axioms:
Good. Yet another reason we have a flood of cable cutters and record level distrust in media.
Shame that the same journalists that played the same game with Iraq, and are doing so with Syria and Russia aren't facing the same. Something to be said about the bigger lie.
In my dealings with journalists for some larger magazines and TV stations, all of them had a story already in their head, I just needed to supply the sound bites. Were they interested in the real story? No.
Yes. Standard size of a jury in a civil case in Federal court is 8-10 jurors, depending on how long the trial is scheduled to last. They used to seat 2 people as alternate jurors but later got rid of alternates in Federal court, so now you just seat enough people that you can afford to lose a couple over the duration of a long trial and still have at least 6 remaining. Otherwise, civil juries can be as few as 6 jurors or as many as 12 + however many alternates. A rough rule of thumb would be something like minimum number of jurors required + 1 juror for each week of trial.
Given that this was a Federal case, the jury size would not depend upon the state, nor would it depend upon the type of case insofar as we're talking about civil cases. Except where defined by statute, the size of a state court jury in a civil case is decided entirely by agreement between the judge and the parties.
Readit News
Why do you think they did not go with a real one? What lies they wanted to hear?
Perhaps in many cases they involve non-students, or are off-campus, or don't sound as horrific (even if they are), or they are investigated seriously already (without help from a journalist), or the perpetrator or victim might reinforce a stereotype that the journalist doesn't want to contribute to.
It doesn't mean the stories are less bad, or that there isn't a problem, just that the journalist has nothing to gain by writing about them. And some might actually contradict the politically-correct solutions being proposed.
This is a great analysis of the incentives which lead to that being the case (and it's a bit more complex than made-up stories simply being more interesting than real ones): http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/
Calling her a journalist disgraces the entire profession (which hasn't exactly been covering itself in glory lately).
Dead Comment
But when you do so, you clearly label it as fiction.
She began with the conclusion, and fabricated observations to fit it. This means the "conversation" is exactly as ridiculous as the false pretenses guiding it.
The whole idea of "campus rape" seems to be based on (small) surveys conducted with broad definitions of "rape" which most people would not accept. Definitions often include consensual sex which the respondent regretted after the fact, and drunk sex with forgotten/unknown consent.
We don't actually know if they were lies. Certainly they weren't vetted as facts sufficiently for basic journalistic standards. And they probably wouldn't hold up in court. But that doesn't mean they are lies. Lots of truths wouldn't hold up in court, or be printable in a publication of repute.
We know this due to the excellent investigative reporting of the Washington Post and others, to the damning report made by the CJR, and now to to this jury verdict which determined that the story was untrue, that Rolling Stone knew (or should have known) that it was untrue, and that Rolling Stone acted with reckless disregard for the truth in publishing the story.
> Lots of truths wouldn't hold up in court, or be printable in a publication of repute.
That's true, but not relevant. Merely publishing something you think is true but couldn't prove in a court of law doesn't put you at risk of losing a libel suit.
Sabrina Erdeley has herself written that she went out looking for a particular story. This is among the reasons why she is liable. In the US the standard for that is much, much higher than just failing to hold up in court. It takes actual malice.
http://www.cjr.org/investigation/rolling_stone_investigation...
Despite the main part of the story being based on someone's lie, RS could theoretically prove that they weren't being "reckless", given all the resources they poured into this story, including 80 hours of fact-checking work [1] -- being reckless is different than being incompetent/stupid. But reading the Columbia Journalism Review's investigation [2]:
> The checker did try to improve the story’s reporting and attribution of quotations concerning the three friends. She marked on a draft that Ryan - “Randall” under pseudonym - had not been interviewed, and that his “shit show” quote had originated with Jackie. “Put this on Jackie?” the checker wrote. “Any way we can confirm with him?” She said she talked about this problem of clarity with Woods and Erdely. “I pushed. … They came to the conclusion that they were comfortable” with not making it clear to readers that they had never contacted Ryan.
-- then what is? The RS reporter claims to have "exhausted all the avenues for finding the friends" and yet soon after the story was published, the Washington Post managed to find all 3 friends, who weren't at all unwilling to talk to the paper. Had RS talked to the friends, RS would have almost immediately realized that they would have to do additional reporting. The U.S. law protecting media from libel suits against public figures is very strong, but I can definitely see how a jury would decide against RS.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/rolling-stone...
[2] http://www.cjr.org/investigation/rolling_stone_investigation...
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Glass
There is still a pending civil lawsuit from the fraternity. That one will probably settle soon now that this one has been resolved.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law
For other parties, at least the mob that trashed fraternity building should be prosecuted.
Of course one very real victim here is people who actually have been raped or assaulted at campuses. Their stories will now be harder to believe.
It's profoundly easy to be fooled by someone who's bent on fooling you. We know that "Jackie" from the story was misleading both Rolling Stone and its reporter Sabrina Ruben-Erdely.
I can see a strong case for negligence claims against RS and Ruben-Erdly. Both should have pursued fact-checking and cross-referencing single-source claims, especially when made against other people and institutions. And that's pretty much what the court here has found.
I would strongly support criminal claims against "Jackie". -Erdely. Both sh
This is to say that the platform approach has the advantage of allowing actually informed/skeptical/intelligent people to do the talking. They can discuss subjects they know, at their own pace. Contrast with traditional journalism, where even when things go right you're still dealing with someone who's reporting on things outside their profession, probably on a deadline, and beset by an industry (public relations) basically devoted to deceiving them.
This is to say I'm actually fairly sure the platform approach, at least from first principals, beats the traditional approach in terms of quality.
(On a side note, I just had an awful thought: are there PR people reaching out to the top HN authors?)
That definitely happens on other social new/media. I'm not sure why HN would be any different?
I agree with this. At least with site comments you get to read a variety of viewpoints and viewpoints are actively criticised so if some facts or perspectives are dubious it's usually really obvious. This isn't true when you stick to one news article which is sometimes nothing better than a long-form comment if it's poor journalism anyway. There is the hive mind aspect with commenting communities which is bad but you get similar group think on news sites and you have to engage your critical thinking skills at some point.
Gawker and it's empire, though, were an outlier, for example making a business model such as it was out of "actual malice", it was only a matter of time until they were brought down.
And taking a step back, I think it's vital that our system has effective feedback like court cases such as this, especially in the post-New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan) era where the bar has been set so high for "public figures" that, all things considered, libel and slander law is non-operative for pretty much everyone but scientists (who are't public figures and who's reputation is vital for their careers, such suits don't make sense and therefore are seldom pursued without serious damages being on the line).
When you put it all on the table you damn well need to be sure on the bet you are taking
1. It's very easy to be fooled by someone who is bent on fooling you, especially where they've got strong motive to do so.
2. It's very easy to fool yourself when you decide on a narrative and start looking for facts to support it.
I've long maintained, and I'm finding some good sources (skeptics-based work) that it's only in specifically seeking to uncover truth that you will do so. If you instead presume some previously-determined proposition, you're simply going to make a case for that argument. Most insidious is when you don't realise you're pursuing the second avenue. As Richard Feynman said, you're the easiest person to fool.
Susan Haack, in "Science, Scientism, & Anti-Science in the Age of Preposterism", Skeptical Inquirer Nov/Dec 1997 wrote:
A genuine inquirer aims to find out the truth of some question, whatever the color of that truth. This is a taugology (Websters: "inquiry: search for truth..."). A pseudo-inquirer seeks to make a case for some proposition(s) determined in advance.
Question your evidence, question your sources, question yourself, question your premises and propositions. Question them again. And then have someone else do the same, independently.
To draw another recent online element to this -- a week or so back a video clip circulated of the South African university student "fallist" movement claiming that science was a western imposition, and that it needed to be "decolonised". First, that neglects the long history of non-western science -- from the Middle East, Africa, Persia, India, and China. Second, it is contradicted by the motto of the Royal Society, from which the modern tradition of scientific inquiry did arise: "Nullius in verba" -- "On the word of no one". That is, science -- knowledge -- doesn't arise on the authority of any one person's voice, but on the fundamental testability and verifiability of facts.
A lesson Rolling Stone and Ms. Ruben-Erdely might take to heart.
This is what I call "real science". I call it so because it can only be found in books and movies. /sarc
In reality, we are told that "the science is settled" and "the consensus is that...".
I've run across a few references in the past few days which inform on this. Bruce G. Charlton has written a number of works, most available online (or at least substantially), including Thought Prison, Not Even Trying, addicted to Dsiruption, and The Genius Famine.
Susan Haack, mentioned.
A fellow named Chris Reev has a G+ collection in which he's been posting similar items. Occasionally lost in the haze, but there's some exceptionally good critical work.
I'm also working my way slowly through Sara M. Watson's impressive, and quite possibly excellent, "Toward a Constructive Technology Criticism". Quite long-form (30k words), I've submitted this to HN though without traction.
http://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/constructive_technolog...
Still another element comes by way of Jill Gordon's 1997 "John Stuart Mill and 'The Marketplace of Ideas'", which takes a close look at the origin of that particular metaphor. Gordon pointedly notes that the term itself isn't Mill's, and that he applies a number of specific conditions to what minority views do and don't deserve cosideration. In particular, that they are open questions (not settled fact), that they come from the minority, not some well-endowed establishment voice, that the questions are current -- no re-opening closed wounds of the past, at least not without considerable evidence -- that they represent "neglected interests" and that the side so considered be "in danger of obtaining less than its share".
Many appeals to the "marketplace of ideas" argument fail numerous of these tests.
There are further problems, including:
A lack of good faith on the part of those introducting concepts. A motivated message can do considerable harm to greater understanding.
The exchange and interplay of ideas is not analagous to exchanges-in-goods-or-services, particularly in that there's no rivalrous transfer and compensation. That market metaphor is quite weak when examined closely.
Or, in short: there are in fact times that the science is settled and consensus exists. The exceptions almost always prove to highlight failings already listed above: Piltdown man (a manifest and motivated fraud). The corporate-and-fincially-motivated disinformation campaigns on negative effects of lead, asbestos, tobacco, pollution generally, CFCs, and CO2/global warming. Continental drift and plate tectonics was a case in which a considerable revision of geological understanding came together from multiple elements of compelling evidence. Some initial resistance to the idea was a valid conservative response, but with increasing and strongly-corroborating evidence and mechanisms, the theory was accepted. Keep in mind that this required energy and causal factors (radioactive decay and an understanding of the Earth's structure and formation) as well as much evidence of previous continental arrangement: similar landforms, fossil records showing prehistoric animal and plant ranges explained by different landmass arrangements, creep and strain measurements showing actual movements, base in part on satellite and Moon-based position measurement, magnetic field reversals evident in mid-Atlantic ridge core samples, undersea topography, radioactive dating, etc., etc., etc.
During the same period in which plate tectonics went from initial proposal to settled fact, the recognised age of the Earth itself increased from a few tens of millions of years to 4.5 billion. That's hugely significant in our understanding of numerous of Earth's processes, and humans' roles, impacts, and dependencies upon them.
The question of "real" science rapidly gets to "no true Scottsman" territory. I think though that there's a strong case to be made without relying on sophistry and tautology.
http://khanism.org/science/doubt/
Deleted Comment
Shame that the same journalists that played the same game with Iraq, and are doing so with Syria and Russia aren't facing the same. Something to be said about the bigger lie.
Criminal juries are always 12 jurors.
(I'm a jury consultant)