“If this is not a claim where I have a depth of understanding, then I want to stop for a second and, before going further, just investigate the source,” Mr. Caulfield said. He copied Mr. Kennedy’s name in the Instagram post and popped it into Google. “Look how fast this is,” he told me as he counted the seconds out loud. In 15 seconds, he navigated to Wikipedia and scrolled through the introductory section of the page, highlighting with his cursor the last sentence, which reads that Mr. Kennedy is an anti-vaccine activist and a conspiracy theorist.
They're literally advocating their readers engage in the logical fallacy of "gult by association (fallacyfiles.org)." This can be fun. For example, you can point out to vegans that Hitler was a vegetarian and therefore you find vegetarians/vegans distasteful.
"Mr. Kennedy is an anti-vaccine activist and a conspiracy theorist.". Gee that sounds defamatory, doesn't it?.
The author would have to prove Kennedy is against all vax, and that it isn't actually a conspiracy perpetuated by multiple entities.
If only 99% are doing it, could any logical and reasonable conclusion be reached?
It doesn't matter. The speaker doesn't have an effect on the objective truth of a statement. It's a logical impossibility. Otherwise, a statement could be true when uttered by one individual and the very same statement could then be false when said by another.
(post is archived)