Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Pond, James Pond
Firstly, I noted one of the supporters of full background checks touted the "90% of Americans support universal background checks" statistic that I seem to recall TFL members have claimed is false: if that is the case, it still seems to carry weight with some.
|
Welcome to the world of (at least) American politics. Statistics don't have to be true. All they need is for a few high-profile people to make a claim and then it's "out there". It's self-fulfilling. The "proof" is that someone of notoriety, someone "trustworthy", said it, so it's "true".
I wish I could find a link to a study I saw a few years back. The authors tracked claims made on websites. They found that once they reached a certain saturation level, some claims were actually reinforced by appeals to authority of their original source. In other words, something is said on one site, picked up by dozens of others and eventually the origin is "unknown". At that point, the older sources become the basis for "proof" that the claim is correct. Sometimes, the original source "A" would use other sources "B" as "A's" supposed "original" source when those sources "B" had in fact obtained the information from "A"....
Know what I mean?