She searched for pressure cookers, and police came to her house asking her, among other things, whether they own pressure cookers and if they know how to make a bomb out of pressure cookers. Those are the facts.
Accurate. The word you are looking for is accurate. At the current time, we don't know why they visited her house for sure.
We don't know that she was asked about pressure cookers because she googled them. That's inference, not fact.
Above statement is 100% accurate... and completely and utterly stupid and most definitely not worth publishing.
Indeed you are accurate as well in saying that we do not know why they visited her house for sure. But publishing an article that adds a "maybe not" to the claimed series of events brings us no closer to finding that out.
In fact, your example touches on a larger point. An article like that about God would, if presented logically, have to conclude that there is insufficient evidence that God exists- all we have to go on are people's individual written accounts, and no hard evidence.
Compare that to this situation... where all we have is an individual written account and no hard evidence.
Fact 1) Woman claims she was visited by some type of joint task terrorist police force
Fact 2) She claims that they asked her husband about pressure cookers and whether they knew how to make a bomb with it
Fact 3) She claims to have searched for pressure cookers on Google earlier
Let's just try and verify if those facts are indeed true and/or related before hand-waving the whole thing off as a "Maybe not!" because there is no "hard evidence".. okay?
Anyway. You've just stated that we have three entirely unverified facts. How is "maybe, maybe not" the incorrect response to that?
Am I the only one who grew up with M-XX fireworks and loved using them for a couple weeks a year? Exploding mushrooms and dropping them down crawdad holes was the extent of my nefarious behavior...
Here's a good video of one of the fun ways to use M-66 firecrackers:
What a strange tactic to try and bring truth to a truly peculiar story by introducing another completely uninformed person's ramblings and insinuations.
Here are two facts:
1) She searched for pressure cookers
2) The police officer asked her if her and her husband own a pressure cooker and/or knew how to make a bomb with it
Trying to start a conversation around a picture of fireworks she had on her Facebook account posted on Independence day contributes EXACTLY ZERO to settling the 2 disturbing facts we are trying to consolidate.
"They mentioned that they do this about 100 times a week. And that 99 of those visits turn out to be nothing. I don’t know what happens on the other 1% of visits and I’m not sure I want to know what my neighbors are up to." https://medium.com/something-like-falling/2e7d13e54724
There is no proof it was a result of her searches.
Well in any case, at least we're back to the original claims so let's try and get to the bottom of it:
The police do what 100 time a week? Go to random houses and ask odd pressure cooker bomb related questions?
Again how is this statement supposed to do to dispel the original Google search = police visit suspicion. The cop probably doesn't want the suspected terrorist to get too jumpy. In any case.. who cares how the cop is trying to justify his strange visit to this particular household. He's certainly not going to explicitly say "Well we know you searched for pressure cookers so we wanted to see what that's all about". Or is that the kind of "proof" you're hoping to see here.
The goal here should be to try and verify the woman's claims. Not try and find 100 reasons to dismiss it in the fastest manner possible.
Evidently in Boston they do.
I agree completely, the goal is to verify the claims, and thankfully someone is trying to: http://twitter.com/kashhill
Some hysterical Facebook user saw that she had posted a picture of a bunch of fireworks (in classic statistical failings, so many are claiming that no one could possibly call in for hers given that there are many other pictures of fireworks on the tubes. Those people have no understanding of odds), and in the shadow of Boston felt that this was a critical thing to tell the police about. The police pretty much have to follow up on all such things, so they go and talk to them, again in the shadow of the Boston bombings, asking about Boston bombing type things (because street-level law enforcement is often looking backwards, assuming the same crimes are the new norm).
Yes, a picture of fireworks absolutely explains why they would ask about a pressure cooker. Whether she had previously been looking up pressure cookers or backpacks (if that is actually true at all) almost certainly has nothing to do with this, but she knew where to go with it for maximum interest.