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Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Clearly Precious Information ....

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word:
* "A growing body of evidence..."[8] (Where is the raw data for your review?)
* "People say..." (Which people? How do they know?)
* "It has been claimed that..." (By whom, where, when?)
* "Critics claim..." (Which critics?)
* "Clearly..." (As if the premise is undeniably true)
* "It stands to reason that..." (Again, as if the premise is undeniably true—see "Clearly" above)
* "Questions have been raised..." (Implies a fatal flaw has been discovered)
* "I heard that..." (Who told you? Is the source reliable?)
* "There is evidence that..." (What evidence? Is the source reliable?)
* "Experience shows that..." (Whose experience? What was the experience? How does it demonstrate this?)
* "It has been mentioned that..." (Who are these mentioners? Can they be trusted?)
* "Popular wisdom has it that..." (Is popular wisdom a test of truth?)
* "Commonsense has it/insists that..." (The common sense of whom? Who says so? See "Popular wisdom" above, and "It is known that" below)
* "It is known that..." (By whom and by what method is it known?)
* "Officially known as..." (By whom, where, when—who says so?)
* "It turns out that..." (How does it turn out?)
* "It was noted that..." (A commonly used start of a line by Auditors with poor workpapers or little evidence)
* "Our product is so good, it was even given away in celebrity gift bags." (True, perhaps, but not relevant.)
* "See why more of our trucks are sold in Southern California than in any other part of the country." (Southern California is a big vehicle market.)
* "Nobody else's product is better than ours." (What is the evidence of this?)
* "Studies show..." (what studies?)
* "(The phenomenon) came to be seen as..." (by whom?)
* "Some argue..." (who?)
* "Up to sixty percent..." (so, 59%? 50%? 10%?)
* "More than seventy percent..." (How many more? 70.01%? 80%? 90%?)
* "The vast majority..." (All, almost all, more than half—how many?)

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