TheBelleOfTheBall
GlobeAnd(nolonger)EmpireVille
While Dave already skewered Margaret Wente’s Saturday column on class and caste over at The Beaver, it was impossible not to return to it, based on the following sentence:
…To prove his (latest) case, Mr. (Charles) Murray (of ‘Bell Curve’ fame) compares data from two fictitious neighbourhoods called Belmont and Fishtown….
Now.
Two things.
First, even in the most social of social sciences you can’t ‘prove’ anything.
Instead, you can only find supporting evidence that keeps an hypothesis (i.e. the ‘case’) going, or, on the flipside, you find evidence that completely destroys it.
The hypothesis/case, I .
But here’s the real thing.
Real evidence is cannot be ‘fictitious’ either way.
Unless, of course, you are peddling codswallop and/or wurlitzering the same.
OK?
.
