Specious Arguments Research Articles

A resolvable controversy in avian conservation

Twenty years of squandering an opportunity to save an iconic species from extinction are summarized. In 2005, an article that was featured on the cover of Science announced the rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) in Arkansas. Despite a subsequent report of sightings in Florida by another group of ornithologists, the persistence of this elusive species became controversial when nobody managed to obtain a clear photo. Video footage that was obtained in Louisiana and Florida between 2006 and 2008 should have resolved the issue, but there was a breakdown in rational discourse after critics became entrenched in the position that the species is extinct. After openly and aggressively attacking relatively weak evidence that was presented in the original article, critics used specious arguments behind the scenes to delay the publication of the strongest evidence for a decade. The bulk of this material was finally published in Heliyon in 2017, but the critics have never addressed it. In 2021, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announced a decision to declare the Ivory-billed Woodpecker extinct without addressing the strongest evidence for persistence.

Update on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) Scandal

The Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) is an elusive bird that has repeatedly been feared extinct only to be rediscovered during the past hundred years. The most recent rediscovery, which took place in Arkansas, was announced in an article that was featured on the cover of Science in 2005. Despite published reports of sightings in Florida and Louisiana in the years that followed, the issue became controversial when nobody managed to obtain a clear photo and critics attacked relatively weak video evidence that was presented in the original article. The issue began to develop into a science scandal when the critics used specious arguments to delay the publication of the strongest evidence, which consists of three videos that were obtained during encounters with birds that were identified in the field as Ivory-billed Woodpeckers and that show field marks, body proportions, flights, and other behaviors that are consistent with that species but no other species of the region. The scandal culminated in a decision by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to declare the species extinct in 2021, which was made without addressing the strongest evidence. An update is given here on recent developments. The decision to declare the species extinct was based on a five-year review of evidence for persistence. During an interview, it came to light that the person who performed the review was unaware of basic facts about the strongest evidence. Evidence that was obtained at another site in Louisiana [Latta et al., “Multiple lines of evidence suggest the persistence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) in Louisiana,” Ecology and Evolution (2023)] is discussed and compared with the strongest evidence. Videos obtained with a drone on a sunny day often show white markings that do not correspond to actual field marks. It is demonstrated that a video that was purported to show an Ivory-billed Woodpecker on the basis of apparent white markings is apparently a Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus). The bird in that video appears to have black trailing edges on the dorsal surfaces of the wings, which are consistent with the Pileated Woodpecker, not the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. The wingbeat frequency and an upward swooping landing also seem to be consistent with the Pileated Woodpecker but are not consistent with historical accounts of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker or flights appearing in videos that contain the strongest evidence.

A Science Scandal that Culminated in Declaring the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) Extinct

The Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) is an ultra-elusive bird that has repeatedly been feared extinct only to be rediscovered during the past hundred years. An article that was featured on the cover of Science in 2005 announced the most recent rediscovery in Arkansas, which was the first report of this species by ornithologists in several decades. Another group of ornithologists reported a series of sightings in Florida the following year, but the issue became controversial when nobody managed to get close enough to an Ivory-billed Woodpecker for a long enough period of time to obtain the clear photo that is regarded as the standard form of evidence for documenting birds. In Louisiana and Florida, video footage was obtained during three encounters with distant birds that were identified in the field as Ivory-billed Woodpeckers. The videos show field marks, body proportions, flights, and other behaviors and characteristics that are consistent with the Ivory-billed Woodpecker but no other species of the region. The five most compelling events in the videos are the focus here, but several additional events are also discussed. During four of the most compelling events, the audio track contains sounds that are consistent with the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Extensions of previous results include a size comparison and a wingspan estimate that are used to fortify the analysis of two videos from Louisiana. Takeoffs with deep and rapid wingbeats and loud ‘wooden’ wing sounds, which were overlooked during previous analysis of a video that was obtained in Florida, are consistent with an account by Tanner. Additional events in the Florida video are also discussed, including a sudden maneuver during a swooping flight that coincides with ‘spring-like’ sounds. This issue started to evolve into a science scandal when critics, who had become entrenched in the position that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is extinct, used specious arguments to cause a long delay in the publication of evidence that should be sufficient to establish persistence. After openly targeting relatively weak evidence, critics avoided engaging in open discourse on the strongest evidence after it was finally published. Some of the leading science journals helped to enable the scandal by failing to provide diligent oversight and publishing biased reports on the status of this issue. The scandal culminated in a decision by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to declare the Ivory-billed Woodpecker extinct, which was made in the absence of an open discourse on the strongest evidence and in the wake of an unprecedented spike in published reports of sightings during the searches in Arkansas, Florida, and Louisiana.

Nature versus nurture-on the origins of a specious argument.

The concept of heritability parses out genetic and environmental causes of diseases and does not fit the underlying biology of complex diseases that arise from interactions among genetics and environment. Exposomics places environment on a similar scale as genomics and allows for more modern research approaches that estimate time-varying genome by exposome interactions. By addressing the biological underpinnings of disease comprehensively, we will find the “missing heritability” which is not solely based on genetic variation but is instead driven by time, life stage, and geographic variability in our exposome as it interacts with our genome.

Fault lines of food fraud: key issues in research and policy

Following major criminal cases in the food system, such as the Horsemeat and fipronil egg scandals, the phenomenon of food fraud has emerged as a priority concern for supranational (e.g. European Union) and domestic policymakers and regulatory authorities. Alongside this, there is increasing interest from academics working in both the natural and social sciences (but rarely together), where we see common and overlapping objectives but varied discourses and orientations. Consequently, various framings about the nature, organisation and control of food fraud have emerged, but it is not always clear which of these are more reflective of actual food fraud realities. This article analyses three key areas in the literature on food fraud where we see fault lines emerging: 1. food fraud research orientations; 2. food fraud detection and prevention (and the dehumanisation and decontextualisation associated with analytical testing); and, 3. food fraud regulation and criminalisation. We argue that these fault lines raise questions over the plausibility of knowledge on food frauds and in some cases produce specious arguments. This is significant for food fraud policy, strategy and operation, in particular in terms of how we generate expectations about the actual realities of food fraud and corresponding actions that are realised, and make knowledge practically adequate.

The Photo-Text in the Mussolini Era

In the 1930s, Fascism’s Mythopoeia found in propaganda photobooks a comfortable space in which to configure itself. The layout of the photobooks draws on the experiments carried out by the editors of “Campo Grafico” [1933 - 1939] and by eclectic personalities like Guido Modiano; with reference to photography, on the other hand, from the modernist style developed by the amateurs of photographic circles reworking the experience gained by the European avant-gardes since the previous decade. All these innovations led to a rethinking of the usual relationship between image and text, gaining a new and a much more dynamic interaction between visual and textual. Through the analysis of some of the most important photobooks of the Fascist Era, the following article aims to show some aspects of the verbal and visual rhetoric which the Fascist regime used to generate an articulated model of the world in which to believe, even if its appearance differed radically from what one saw with one's own eyes or experienced on one's own skin every day. In propaganda photo books, the facts are emphasized, even judged, in order to construct a specious argument that leaves no room for doubt.

Fault lines of food fraud: key issues in research and policy

Following major criminal cases in the food system, such as the Horsemeat and fipronil egg scandals, the phenomenon of food fraud has emerged as a priority concern for supranational (e.g. European Union) and domestic policymakers and regulatory authorities. Alongside this, there is increasing interest from academics working in both the natural and social sciences (but rarely together), where we see common and overlapping objectives but varied discourses and orientations. Consequently, various framings about the nature, organisation and control of food fraud have emerged, but it is not always clear which of these are more reflective of actual food fraud realities. This article analyses three key areas in the literature on food fraud where we see fault lines emerging: 1. food fraud research orientations; 2. food fraud detection and prevention (and the dehumanisation and decontextualisation associated with analytical testing); and, 3. food fraud regulation and criminalisation. We argue that these fault lines raise questions over the plausibility of knowledge on food frauds and in some cases produce specious arguments. This is significant for food fraud policy, strategy and operation, in particular in terms of how we generate expectations about the actual realities of food fraud and corresponding actions that are realised, and make knowledge practically adequate.

Judicial Disclosure & the Judicial Mystique

Judges in the American legal system are expected to be neutral. To this end, judges are required to recuse themselves whenever their impartiality might reasonably be questioned. Yet, this requirement is by and large designed to be self-policed. This self-policing structure is a deviation from the ordinary presumptions of adversarial litigation, not the least because it depends upon the presumption that judges are disinterested about whether they are improperly interested. To compensate for this, a robust body of common law has developed that requires judges to disclose facts about themselves that might affect their neutrality, even if they do not believe that recusal is required. The nature of judicial disclosure obligations is surprisingly under-theorized both in the case law and the scholarly literature. The case law, especially, has been prone to ground the bases and limits of judges' disclosure obligations on formalistic and often quite specious arguments that, this essay concludes, tend to reach a defensible result for misguided and often contradictory reasons. This essay further concludes that the extent of a judicial actor's disclosure requirements tend to be inversely correlated with the durability of their judicial status. The more robust a judicial actor's claim to judicial status, the more the judicial actor is protected from disclosure by what I call the “judicial mystique,” the presumption that the judge is the mere embodiment of rules governed state power and may therefore be interchanged with any other judge without an appreciable effect on the outcome of any given case. Hence, Supreme Court judges disclose very little about themselves, whereas arbitrators are subject to exceptionally rigorous disclosure obligations. The essay then considers the peculiar place of military judges along this continuum and offers a close reading of the D.C. Circuit's decision in In re Al-Nashiri, 921 F.3d 224 (D.C. Cir. 2019), which vacated the rulings of a military judge, in part, because of his failure to disclose the extent to which he was seeking post-retirement employment from the Department of Justice in a high-profile case.

A Critical Discussion of Daniel A. Bell’s Political Meritocracy

Abstract“Meritocracy” is among the political phenomena and political orientations found in modern Western democratic systems. Daniel A. Bell, however, imposes it on ancient Confucianism and contemporary China and refers to it in Chinese using loaded terms such asxianneng zhengzhi賢能政治 andshangxian zhi尚賢制. Bell’s “political meritocracy” not only consists of an anti-democratic political program but also is full of logical contradictions: at times, it is the antithesis of democracy, and, at other times, it is a supplement to democracy; sometimes it resolutely rejects democracy, and sometimes it desperately needs democratic mechanisms as the ultimate guarantee of its legitimacy. Bell’s criticism of democracy consists of untenable platitudes, and his defense of “political meritocracy” comprises a series of specious arguments. Ultimately, the main issue with “political meritocracy” is its blatant negation of popular sovereignty as well as the fact that it inherently represents a road leading directly to totalitarianism.

The Rhetorical Canons of Construction: New Textualism's Rhetoric Problem

New Textualism is ascendant. Elevated to prominence by the late Justice Antonin Scalia and championed by others like Justice Neil Gorsuch, the method of interpretation occupies an increasingly dominant place in American jurisprudence. Yet, this Comment argues the proponents of New Textualism acted unfairly to reach this lofty perch. To reach this conclusion, this Comment develops and applies a framework to evaluate the rhetoric behind New Textualism: the rhetorical canons of construction. Through the rhetorical canons, this Comment demonstrates that proponents of New Textualism advance specious arguments, declare other methods illegitimate hypocritically, refuse to engage with the merits of their opponents’ arguments, and believe their method provides the best plain meaning.

Economic History, Historical Analysis, and the “New History of Capitalism”

This article presents a critical survey of ten books from the history of capitalism, a newly emerging subfield of history. At their best, the books offer provocative insights and vivid descriptions of some of the darker episodes of our economic past. Yet specious arguments and failures of analytical reasoning sometimes undermine these books' effectiveness as social criticism. I highlight insights from the field of economic history that would strengthen the work of historians of capitalism. I also suggest some opportunities for dialogue, if not collaboration, between the two communities of scholars.

Law, Farce, and Counter-Kingship in the Semur Fall of Lucifer

Introduction: Lucifer and World of Basoche In this essay I offer a new reading of fall of Lucifer, opening episode of Passion de Semur, a fifteenth-century Burgundian mystere extant in a single copy dated 1488. This two-day religious play, which dramatizes Lucifer's fall through Christ's resurrection, is a composite work, augmented in several stages, perhaps over more than a century. Graham Runnalls has meticulously reconstructed work's textual evolution, from a simple Passion Play to a more extensive drama featuring Old Testament episodes and a host of new comic and grotesque characters. (1) The entire first section of play (lines 1-3419), from angelic fall to John Baptist's appearance, was probably added during a second stage of revision. (2) This added section features allegorical characters and episodes such as traditional debate between Ecclesia and Synagoga and trial of heaven preceding Christ's incarnation, as well as a greatly expanded cast of devils. (3) Such an extensive expansion may have involved several different revisers, yet, Runnalls notes, all modifications in Stage II reflect a tendency towards learned, literate and scholarly: use of Latin lines, introduction of allegorical characters, dramatization of a wide range of apocryphal sources, long speeches including didactic sermons, complex versification--all of these features are of a piece, stylistically. (4) Building on these observations as well as suggestive remarks made by play's editor, Lynette Muir, I analyze Semur's distinctive Lucifer episode in relation to a learned, literate, and performative milieu: world of culture and festive performance in late fifteenth-century Burgundy. The Lucifer episode, in which this slippery figure makes elaborately specious arguments, dallies with dubious allegorical characters, and is crowned king of world, creates a parodie spectacle that recalls traditions of local festive societies and associations of law clerks (basoche societies), which shared many performative practices, including mounting comic plays and yearly electing their kings in public ceremonies. While auspices for Semur play are unknown, and we cannot link drama to any one such fraternity, prominence of mock discourse combined with particular parodie action shows influence of basoche culture on play's reviser. I contend that Passion de Semur, and Lucifer sequence in particular, not only feature mixture of grotesque and sublime that is typical of mysteres, but more specifically foreground a set of vocational identifications and performative practices prominent in Burgundian civic life. (5) The Lucifer sequence highlights cultural importance of basoche societies while obliquely referencing threats of censorship and repression under which they operated during fifteenth century. While recent criticism of Passion de Semur has highlighted its ties to contemporary piety, I look closely at Lucifer episode in relation to secular performance traditions to show how religious drama might have promoted interests of particular urban groups and performed political commentary. (6) While identities of play's reviser(s) are unknown, author of fall of Lucifer segment was clearly learned in rhetoric and terminology. Jody Enders argues, Medieval students' extensive training in disputation would have impressed upon them dramatic potential of rhetoric of judgment in a wide variety of contexts. (7) It is in tradition of clerks of royal courts, or basochiens, of Paris and other grandes villes, including Dijon in Burgundy, that we find most vividly what Marie Bouhaik-Girones calls the intimate link between judicial practice and theatrical practice during this period. (8) Originating in Paris, societies of law clerks, essentially legal apprentices, formed during Middle Ages for purposes of vocational improvement and common amusement. …

Moral Collapse in a Warming World

In his definitive book A Perfect Moral Storm, ethicist Stephen Gardiner argues that the way forward in a climate-changed world is so difficult in part because we “do not yet have a good understanding of many of the ethical issues at stake in global-warming policy.” We remain confused about such vital questions as who should take responsibility for the current condition, how to preserve equity between generations, and how best to think about our responsibility toward nonhuman animals. The resistance of governments to taking action, attempts by various players to throw sand in the eyes of the public, and specious arguments used to justify an unwillingness to do what is necessary all add to our moral bafflement.

Canadian High School Athletics and the Sof Continuing Gender Discrimination

In most Canadian jurisdictions, high school athletics are still governed by outdated and sexist views about participation. The author argues that the current approach is discriminatory and violates human rights laws. In addition, a careful analysis of the jurisprudence reveals a host of specious arguments that keeps athletically talented female athletes from competing with the males. A more progressive response to the current situation is required that embraces an ethic of inclusion and excellence.

Exposé of misleading claims that male circumcision will increase HIV infections in Africa.

Despite over two decades of extensive research showing that male circumcision protects against heterosexual acquisition of HIV in men, and that includes findings from large randomized controlled trials leading to acceptance by the WHO/UNAIDS and the Cochrane Committee, opponents of circumcision continue to generate specious arguments to the contrary. In a recent issue of the Journal of Public Health in Africa, Van Howe and Storms claim that male circumcision will increase HIV infections in Africa. Here we review the statements they use in support of their thesis and show that there is no scientific basis to such an assertion. We also evaluate the statistics used and show that when these data are properly analyzed the results lead to a contrary conclusion affirming the major role of male circumcision in protecting against HIV infection in Africa. Researchers, policy makers and the wider community should rely on balanced scholarship when assessing scientific evidence. We trust that our assessment may help refute the claims by Van Howe and Storms, and provide reassurance on the importance of circumcision for HIV prevention.

Reply to “Should the Gibbs Analysis Be Revised?”

Plots of surface tension vs log [surfactant] show a steep linear decline until the CMC is reached. Conventional “Gibbs analysis” declares that the air/water interface is saturated with surfactant throughout this linear region, thereby enabling an area-per-molecule to be determined. We have previously provided evidence from four independent experimental methods that cast doubt on the “saturated interface” concept. In the preceding paper, Laven and de With question our results with deceptively authoritative but specious arguments devoid of any new experiments (e.g., they explain our conductance data by postulating the presence of two different coexisting micellar structures). However, consider the Gibbs analysis from strictly an intuitive standpoint. The Gibbs analysis demands that surfactant in the bulk phase (even at submillimolar concentrations) causes a dramatic decline in the surface tension of an interface that is already saturated. The Gibbs analysis also forces the conclusion that initial saturation...

The Numerical and its Application in the Interval Estimates and Hypothesis Test

The whole unknown parameters estimation and hypothesis testing is the most common and most commonly used statistical inference,so clarify the relationship between them is very important.Clearing both unity and not uniformity will help to amend the emergence of some specious argument of statistical work. In this paper, some differences were analyzed on interval estimation and hypothesis testing of statistical inference theory,the scope of their application of two methods was discussed, the dualityof Neyman —Pearson hypothesis testing and confidence interval was described Then provided the method of determining the unknown parameters’ confidence interval in hypothesis test.at the same time, it provided the ideas how to solve the problem of refusal field of hypothesis test througn confidence interval . As the confidence interval of the statistics varies with the selected significance level and sample size, it is heavily influenced by subjective factors.

Reply to Commentaries

My first reply in this symposium is to Reis regarding his elaborations of Mitchell's ideas that lend to comparisons of the Relationalists and the Intersubjectivists. I concur with Reis that differences between the two have less to do with language use per se than their views about analytic authority, to which I add the issue of analytic attitude. In replying to Clement, I underscore her important elaboration that Kohut's self psychology revolution has for Relational Psychoanalysis. In my final reply I address Jacob's argument that my comparison of the Relationalists and the Intersubjectivists is mired in “category errors” as well as my conflation of the “explanatory versus the phenomenological” levels of abstraction, which leads to spurious comparisons of the two theories. I argue instead that the “levels of abstraction” is essentially a specious argument that complicates rather than clarifying both theories use of language. If illusion is defined as a false appearance, a belief that does not have its correspondence in the physical world, the current view in neuroscience is that everything the brain constructs is an illusion. Selves do not exist in the physical world; our perception of the self is a construction of our brain. Therefore, the self can also be described as an illusion. We essentially imagine ourselves. But we should not depreciate or disparage belief in illusions as false conceptions; if the self is an illusion and the feeling of agency is an illusion, these are illusions without which we cannot live. (Modell, 2008, p. 362) All theories are metaphors; metaphors help us bridge from the theory to the phenomenology. (Thelin, 2005)

Comparecencia del Prof. Pablo de Lora ante la Comissió de Medi Ambient i Habitatge del Parlament de Catalunya (4.3.2010)

In his address, Mr de Lora talks about the future prohibition of bullfighting as a spectacle and congratulates the Catalan Parliament for laying the way open for this initiative. Mr de Lora lays out in some detail the cruelty inflicted on bulls as well as the high risk to other animals associated with the event such as horses. He seeks to dispel what he feels is the specious argument that its ongoing existence is linked with culture and history and quotes a well-known advocate of bullfighting, Mario Vargas Llosa, as admitting that it is “impregnated with violence and cruelty”. He also quotes the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, stating that unrestricted liberty gives way to moral degradation in society and in the specific case of bulls in bullfighting, causes unacceptable harm and cruelty. He concludes by arguing that animals must benefit from a set of moral rules to protect them, comparing their plight with weaker members of human society such as the disabled and children, whom we seek to protect.

In the Eyes of the Christian Writer al-Hārit ibn Sinān Poetics and Eloquence as a Platform of Inter-Cultural Contacts and Contrasts

AbstractWhile ostensibly aspects of poetics are best discussed within a purely literary perspective, in fact they can hardly be disconnected from their socio-cultural and religious frameworks. Al-Hārit ibn Sinān was a Christian scholar and writer who lived under Muslim rule towards the end of the ninth and apparently also the beginning of the tenth century, precisely at the time when the first fruits of the idea of the Qur‘ān's stylistic inimitability (i’ğāz) began to ripe. Although this concept played a role also in interfaith polemics throughout the Middle Ages, our author shows his temperance and restraint by praising the style of the Bible (he would appear not to have read the books of the Old Testament in the original Hebrew but demonstrated understanding and a feeling for the text through another Semitic language: Syriac), both because as a Christian living under Muslim rule he was loathe to arouse an overt controversy with the society in which he lived, and also because glorifying the style of Holy Scripture, which he had apparently inherited from the Syriac-Byzantine culture, was an important tendency in and of itself in both Jewish and Christian literature (in England, for example, upsurges of this tendency have occurred even in modern times). Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the fact that our author did compare the poetics of four cultures: that of the Hebrews, that of the Greek (or rather Greek-Byzantine, rūm), that of the Syriac elements and that of the Arabs. He even tries to prove, using somewhat specious arguments, that the Hebrew portions of the Bible contain rhymes. His positions thus deserve to be considered retrospectively also in an interfaith and intercultural context.