Bruce Dale said this to Honorentheos:
Bruce E. Dale
on June 24, 2019 at 6:17 pm said:
...So prove your point. Compare the Book of Mormon with what you think is a typical 19th century religious document, or any other document you think “represents” the 19th century. State your hypothesis. State your Bayesian skeptical prior. Identify all the evidence, pro and con, relevant to your hypothesis. You must include both positive and negative correspondences…not just a handful of cherry-picked points.Weight the evidence. Do a rigorous statistical analysis of your findings, as we have done.
Bolding added because I CANNOT believe what I am reading. In their paper, the Dales defined correspondences as items that are mentioned in both books, which means by definition the correspondences between the two books were limited to POSITIVE correspondences ONLY.
Even though their own cherry-picking was perverse, they still asserted the following in the paper:
The Dales wrote:It is a common error (deliberate or otherwise) to consider only a few pieces of evidence when examining the truth or falsity of a given hypothesis. In the extreme, this practice is called cherry-picking. In cherry-picking, evidence against one’s existing hypothesis is deliberately excluded from consideration. This practice is, of course, dishonest.
In spite of stating the above, note that the addition of what the Dales defined as negative correspondences were taken from and limited to only those items specifically mentioned by Coe in one or two interviews, and were not based upon the book.
So why do they NOW insist to a commenter that they
"must include both positive and negative correspondences..." from the two documents being considered?
Do they now recognize that a comparison between two books requires that ALL correspondences, positive and negative, must be considered, in order to avoid misrepresenting the possible correlations or lack thereof between the two books?
This flip-flop is incredible. What a farce.