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Comment by peeplaja | Hacker News Reader

Robert Cialdini, one of the people behind this study, is one of the most respected people in the field in the last 20 years.

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The husband of the other person behind the study is just upthread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3218604

He confirms that it's a grossly misrepresentative pop-psychology spin on a real study.

I have no opinion about this guy one way or the other.

Even brilliant people can make mistakes, and even brilliant scientists can be victims of their own preconceptions. I'm not trying to trash his life's work, I'm having serious doubts about the premises and results of this study specifically.

[Edit] Just a strange observation: yours is essentially an argument from authority (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority) and yet mods seem to love it.

Appeals to authority aren't necessarily fallacious if the authority is an authority in a relevant field.

While the authority may not necessarily be wrong, the appeal itself is vulnerable to being issued for fallacious reasons, namely if it is made to prevent critical reasoning about the original hypothesis. The idea that authorities are infallible is a trap. Nothing should be beyond scrutiny.

Not quite, It was pointed out it was a cited article, you called the author into question, and was shown the author is credible.

The only fallacies are coming from your posts, not from the article in question... :\

As I said many times in this thread: I called the study's conclusions into question, not the author.

> The only fallacies are coming from your posts, not from the article in question... :\

After fighting you guys for the last our without one single person agreeing with me, I'm inclined to say you're right. I should probably stop posting now. It wasn't my intention to upset anyone. I'm sorry.

Don't be sorry. You haven't hurt anyone's feelings (and if you have, they were too fragile to survive long on HN). It's fine to defend your arguments and later realise you're wrong. That doesn't make you a lesser person - on the contrary, you're someone who now knows one more thing. That's good. If HN can do that more often, that's good.

> After fighting you guys...

Competitive much? :)

No. That's why I quit this discussion.

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