Originally Posted by
jon c.
Your factually suspect response certainly belongs somewhere else. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the topic at hand.
We are presented with an interesting study that relates to advocacy and safety for urban riders. And a segment of the audience feels the need to question the veracity of the study and the competence of the scientists involved while introducing all manner of extraneous BS simply because the study notes racial demographics.
The study is about a cohort of fellow cyclists and the danger of riding in urban settings. It has nothing to do with the public education system or whether or not blacks play the piano. It's hard to imagine why anyone would think those topics to be relevant.
Cyclists face more danger riding is some areas than in others. Considering that reality and contemplating potential solutions is not inherently controversial or political. There's no good reason to make it so.
Originally Posted by
Koyote
It's the
Gish gallop approach that has become popular among the anti-truth, anti-science crowd. They just throw out a huge number of 'counter-arguments' that are irrelevant, poorly-reasoned, factually incorrect. But as long as they throw out LOTS of such arguments, it becomes impossible to refute all of them, and the discussion is irretrievably dragged off-topic. I think most such people do it without consciously realizing it - they've learned the behavior and just mimic it.
thank you both for coherently and fairly summarizing the issue and discussion.
we are cyclists. we should all be concerned about the safety of other cyclists, black, white, urban, rural. the kind of “logic” being used here by a few posters is exactly what leads to this kind of inequity. nobody in this day and age will say outright “we don’t care about ____ people, let’s not build safe infrastructure where they live,” but they will invoke all kinds of ******** misdirection and appeal to mistrust of government to prevent progress or change. the results are pretty clear.