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Got into a shouting match over fluoride at a city council meeting in 2019 and it changed how I look at the whole argument
I sat in a packed room on a Tuesday night back in 2019 in a small town outside Boise. The council was taking comments on whether to keep fluoride in the water and about 60 people showed up. A dentist stood up and gave a calm 3 minute talk with a chart. Then a guy in the back got the mic and said the dentist was paid off, and the place just erupted. I remember this older woman near me yelling that she had read a study from 1998 that proved it was poison. I tried to ask her for the name of the study later in the parking lot and she could not remember it or where she found it. That night is why I stopped getting into it online. Now when someone drops a number or a study in a debate I just ask where they got it and nine times out of ten they go quiet, or they send a link to a blog that links to another blog. Has anyone here ever actually traced one of these claims back to the source paper? I want to know if I am just unlucky or if this is how it always goes.
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adam91923d ago
That parking lot moment is like every family group chat argument ever. Someone's aunt posts a meme about how some random thing causes cancer and when you ask for the source its just a screenshot of a Facebook post. I've started doing the same thing you do, just asking where the number came from, and it's wild how fast the convo dies. My brother in law once swore up and down about a stat he heard on a podcast, I looked it up, and the podcast was quoting a tweet. It's blogs citing blogs citing a guy who heard it from another guy. Feels like most people don't want to know the truth, they just want to win the room.
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