“Well that’s all well and good. But have you really seen all the data? Because unlike you I’ve actually seen the data, and it paints a very different picture.”
Cedric Rousos and his wife Sally invited Cedric’s old school friend, Daniel, and his wife over for dinner last night.
It was a pretty good evening, involving several bottles of wine. They even broke out the port. They had a lot of fun and talked a lot of shit.
The only time that things became tense was when the subject of vaccinations came up. You see, Daniel has seen some very compelling YouTube videos and comments in Facebook groups that have convinced him that all the doctors around the world are secretly plotting to give everyone autism.
Daniel pressed his views to the point that Cedric could no longer hold his tongue. The ensuing argument didn’t go that well for Daniel. It wasn’t a fair fight, largely because Cedric is a doctor and actually knew what he was talking about.
In fact, after a few minutes, Daniel’s debating technique involved merely cramming the word “data” into each and every sentence that spewed from his mouth. Sometimes two or three times in a sentence.
However, he was never being specific. He was never referring to “the data contained in the double blind peer reviewed study conducted by X”. He was more keen to very generally refer to “the data”.
As everyone who regularly gets hammered by debating opponents knows, "the data" is the nebulous body of hypothetical information that, if it existed, would really come in handy at a given point in an argument.
It’s a tried and tested last resort of the defeated debater.
Or at least that’s according to our data.