You know I hate to be boring and complain about missing poll options ...

No, it actually wasn't. You fell for the industry shill research that didn't hold up to peer review.

Irony, my good man. Irony. (Would have though my re-quoting you made that obvious). And ironic too, in the other sense, that you should have taken everything else that was serious (and factual) in that post as "reversed from fact."

Really, suggesting question the data rather than the theory was too far over the top.

Now that was deadly serious. To quote British astrophysicist Arthur S. Eddington, to the same effect, "No experiment should be believed until it has been confirmed by theory."

Less provocatively, as science commentator Scott Johnson explained on Ars Technica, "Scientists know that every study is imperfect or incomplete in some way and are especially skeptical of results that contradict—rather than build upon—the existing science."

You gave yourself away before even getting to your suggestion that trepanation might have had valid science behind it.

I never suggested that trepanation might have valid science behind it. Stop making things up! Or is this misunderstanding a manifestation of your naive philosophy of science?

You gave yourself away when you used the phrase "the scientific method" by the way. Perhaps you should stop arguing and try instead to understand?

The smoking thing was based on actual research and observation, not a guess.

That research was very controversial you know. Before we interfere with people's freedoms, shouldn't we be ironclad certain? I mean evidence based medicine should never make a recommendation based on a guess.

If actually following the scientific method is excessively purist, what do you suggest?

There's no such thing as "the scientific method." That went out with Francis Bacon. Actual science is simply not that purist, that's the point. In science and especially in medicine you must make guesses. Not "wild" guesses, but educated ones, guesses based ultimately on research.

If you read that and yell OMG everyone stop using salt now ...

Who said stop using salt now? And why on earth would anyone pay them the least bit of attention, even if their claims had been backed up by numerous studies with glowing P-values? It wouldn't seem to fit with how we know the body to function (i.e. you kinda need Na and K ...). It is a basic principle of science, is it not, that where the data disagrees with theory, question the data.

Anyway, I thought people whose diets were high in salt were being told to lower their salt intake (not eliminate it), which advice is probably still good.

Trepanation was another such wild guess.

Was it? I would have thought it was evidence based, but I doubt we'll ever know.

Yes, studies can be wrong, but that is quite different from just making wild guesses and extrapolations and acting as if it has anything to do with science.

Obviously. However what I originally wrote, that you objected to was: "[W]e make guesses based on current knowledge ... some turn out to be bad. Folks do some [more] empirical work, stats show the guess was wrong, we move one" [emphasis added]. So that observation is not all that pertinent. And if you re-read my statement you'll see that the discussion of the pros and cons of low salt intake is simply more grist to my mill.

Evidence based medicine should NEVER make a recommendation based on a guess. A guess should lead to a study which (once repeated) should lead to a recommendation.

Don't be such an insufferably purist twonk. It's all guesses, your recommendation based on repeated studies (employing P-values no doubt) included. If it's evidenced based it's guesses with some sort of evidentiary basis.

Remember the low salt craze?

You mean the one based on numerous repeated studies? For which see:

• Tuomilehto J, Jousilahti P, Rastenyte D, et al. Urinary sodium excretion and cardiovascular mortality in Finland. Lancet. 2001;357(9259):848-851
• Nagata C, Takatsuka N, Shimizu N, Shimizu H. Sodium intake and risk of death from stroke in Japanese men and women. Stroke
• Umesawa M, Iso H, Date C, et al; JACC Study Group. Relations between dietary sodium and potassium intakes and mortality from cardiovascular disease. Am J Clin Nutr. 2008;88(1):195-202
• He J, Ogden LG, Vupputuri S, Bazzano LA, Loria C, Whelton PK. Dietary sodium intake and subsequent risk of cardiovascular disease in overweight adults. JAMA. 1999;282(21):2027-2034

Turns out ...

... rather unsurprisingly that --as with most things --there's an optimal (but as yet not established) intake of sodium and potassium salts. (Notwithstanding the therapeutic use of salt-restriction with hypertensive patients.) Fall too far on either side and you risk adverse CV effects. Golly!

But that is beside the point. The point is that even with studies our scientific knowledge is never perfect. We would still be trapaning patients, or failing to mention that opiate use, smoking or overeating may have adverse health consequences, were we to wait for the level of certitude you require.

Meanwhile here on Earth it turns out that the advance of Medicine of the last century means that a woman dying in childbirth is considered a rare event, while diseases that were a death sentence when I was a child are now curable. And all the while the ingrates in the peanut gallery, armed with their naive purist philosophies of science and their 2nd option bias take pot-shots at the people who do real work advancing science and who may, shock horror, on occasion be wrong.

So much for scientific medicine.

You don't mean that we ... gulp ... know more about medicine now than we did 10 years ago? And that we will ... teeth chatter ... might know more in another 10 than we do today?! That's it, no more Western medicine for me ---it's sweat tents all the way.

Seriously though, we make guesses based on current knowledge ... some turn out to be bad. Folks do some empirical work, stats show the guess was wrong, we move one. Or we use invalid stats, statisticians complain, we clean up our act. We move on. That is scientific Medicine.

[B]y what rationale are we bound to interpret facts about somebody in the best possible light?

By the same rationale that causes us, in establishing guilt, to rely upon the presumption of innocence of which this basic rule is but a corollary. And yes, I'm being awfully prescriptive.

Considering the fact that very few of us are saints, giving someone the best possible benefit of the doubt is almost certainly giving them too much credit.

That may be so, but the risk of not giving them too much credit is much outweighed by not giving them enough, for few of us are demons either. Colour me a lunatic if you will.

One the greatest hazards of breaking the rule is exposing oneself in public as an ass [Asinus sp., not arse ... well arse as well.] A common example are the fools who shoot off in anger at a statement that seems to them ridiculous before asking themselves, "could this possibly be irony?" But in general, if you make no honest attempt to understand what someone actually might mean , most especially when it seems at first absurd, but instead read them through the lens of presumptive guilt (which lacks for evidence just as much as innocence) you are systematically depriving yourself of even of the possibility of understanding them.

Similarly one ought not begin a conversation upon the presumption that one's interlocutor is less intelligent, less educated, less reasonable, motivated by less honestly motivated &c. where evidence is not yet available to make any of these out.

In particular allegations of wrongdoing, such as fraud, ought to be supported by evidence. If you see someone making a factually incorrect statement, and nothing else, a reasonable person will infer ignorance rather than deception. There being a lot of ignorance to go round.

However, these are rebuttable presumptions and the longer a conversation continues, the narrower the focus of the light becomes. More than once I've been tempted to write something along the lines of "common decency requires me to view your statements in the best possible light ... but you are making that task very challenging indeed.."

And if there are obvious potential ulterior motives present

The same thing that may motivate us to outright dishonesty might motivate us to believe some disinformation we have received, no?

AC wrote "And yet, James Madison also signed, along with all the other Founding Fathers, the first Bible printed in new nation, which also bears a note by the founders that it was to be used in the schools." You think it beyond reason that they may hold this earnestly to be true?

Actually, it's the "law of gravity," not the "theory."

Well if scientists say it's a Law all the more reason to shield our children from these lies. After all there is clear Biblical authority that gravity is not a law at all (Luke 24:51).

Is AC misinformed or liar? You decide

What basis do we have for making that decision? We are bound to presume AC is merely misinformed, since it is that interpretation of available facts which casts AC in the best possible light.

So, if a State chooses to not teach their children what is accepted in the scientific community, should this be their prerogative? [emphasis added]

The children are not the State's.

Nobody knows what triggered the use of art in humans. ...

I'm going with beer. ;)

*A* source I will grant you, but not *the*.

No contest. I misspoke. What I should have written was that it was the source of value particular to official currencies. And I agree with your following passage. Clearly the exchange function is a huge part of the value we derive from state issued currency and yes, giving it that "certain value", is aimed at encouraging its use.

While I'm correcting my words, I note that I should not have drawn a distinction between currencies using the termsvoluntary and coercive --terms which are so value laden. Perhaps optional vs mandatory, necessary or simply official currency is more level-headed. And really, of all the coercion that states have at various times practised, "encouraging" the use of money is hardly the most egregious.

[W]itness the number of places that use the dollar/yuan/euro/etc. as their preferred currency, despite having a competing official currency.

When you think about it, isn't this more grist for the mill? What I mean is this: having abandoned the use of some commodity of universally agree upon value (eg. gold) and underpinning the value of one's currency on one of the two certainties, the Prince must safeguard his ability actually to raise taxes. This requires at least two things, an functioning bureaucracy and a healthy economy.

If you were to trash your economy, as the Zimbabwean government effectively did, leaving hardly anyone to tax, you can hardly expect one's currency to maintain it's value, a fortiori, if at the same you time massively increase it's supply (as was done). And note, I don't mean this to be an exhaustive explanation of the demise of the $Z. However, it does appear that the use of, particularly USD, in place of the municipal currency is especially rife precisely in places where there is no good functioning bureaucracy, whether through political instability, corruption, incompetence or all of the above. and where the economy is perilous.

As well as the local acceptance, the international exchange value of an official currency is, at least in part, a vote of confidence in the national economy and economic credentials of the issuing government. But of course here too the value that comes from being an exchange technology is of primary importance, The exchange rate of a currency from day to day is being largely determined by money purchases by those wishing to do business elsewhere.

Umm, perhaps you should clarify. "legal tender" is entirely an exchange technology.

It isn't though. The mere fact of being an exchange technology does not make something legal tender, eg. BTC. That's the point.

... even in fairly recent US history bankers have been known to shut their doors and disappear.

Why did they feel it necessary to disappear? They were not, by any chance, seeking to avoid the power inherent in legal tender to compel the settlement of debts?

What is this fascination people have with paying taxes as a measure of a currency's validity?

The "fascination" is that taxation is the source of the value of official currencies. Morevoer, this has long been a fascination for people inquiring into the nature of money.

This doesn't affect the "validity" of currencies qua exchange technologies of course, but it does radically distinguish official currencies from those which are "entirely an exchange technology." Or to put it another way (as I hinted at above), currencies such as BTC function entirely by virtue of voluntary agreement between users, currencies such as USD function (at least in part) by virtue of state coercion. A statement such as "a [currency's] only value is what people agree to" is more accurately applied to a voluntary currency than it is to a coercive currency.

Used to be taxes were collected in cows and grain, not because they were currency ...

As an interesting side note, in fact they were currency, and in the case of grain even something approaching legal tender (though that is anachronistic). In ancient Mesopotamia the three recognised divisions of currency were barley, silver and gold. And even onto this day pigs remain an important exchange technology in highland New Guinea.

However, this is only a side note, because the reason taxes used to be collected as commodities rather than as "money" was largely that Princes had not yet heeded Adam Smith's advice. They do now.

Dollars, Euros and Yuan (or Renminbi for the pedants out there) have value not merely because of "what people agree to," but because they are necessary for avoiding imprisonment. Safeguarding one's personal freedom might arguable be regarded as intrinsically valuable. And yes, I'm being deliberately provocative here.

The use of 'money' (which term can scarcely be defined) or 'currency' in these contexts leads to confusion. We need to distinguish between 'currency' as an exchange technology --which function BTC (XBT), does share with the traditional 'currencies' listed; and 'currency' as legal tender. As BTC is not anywhere legal tender, it is a category error to compare it to USD, EUR or CNY. BTC, in contradistinction to USD &c, only derives its value inasmuch as "people agree" to use it.

Currency, qua legal tender, derives its value from two properties mere exchange technologies do not possess:

1) It can be used by a debtor to compel their creditor to settle a debt.
If you owe me a million bucks, I can refuse to accept BTC to the current market value of >$1mill. I cannot refuse to settle the debt should you offer me actual money (err ... I mean legal tender). Similarly ... a court (in most common law jurisdictions) cannot generally make order for payment in specie. Eg. If I had failed to perform upon a promise to deliver up a said amount of gold, (unless the facts were exceptional enough to enliven the court's equitable jurisdictions enabling it to make an order for specific performance for instance), you would only be able to force me (via the court) to repay this in legal tender money (though we may be free privately to settle in BTC).

2) It can be used in satisfaction of a person's tax liability.
And if you value your personal freedom, it is definitely advisable to settle your tax liability. Thus my provocation above.

Essentially what distinguishes private exchange technologies from official currencies (and from which the latter derive their value), not surprisingly, is the power of the state. Until such time as states around the world grant BTC the status of legal tender (don't hold your breath), it is wise to follow the example of TFA and the critique of TFA, avoiding the C-word (or the M-word) and focus instead on the practicalities of BTC as an exchange technology.

I think many people have, throughout the history of civilization, gotten that impression, yes.

And, one imagines, most especially when their particular civilisations were in decline. Not that we would know what that feels like.