How not to argue

I have recently adopted  a new method of engaging with contributors, by inserting responses in their actual comments before publising them. I think this speeds up and simplifies the exchange of ideas.

 

In doing so in a recent contribution from a Mr Ladd, I found it necessary to insert so many responses that I thought it might be helpful to others to see how I marked his work (about 3 out of ten, since you ask, and that's on a generous scheme giving marks for spelling and presentation).

 

I think his contribution (in defence of Dr Goldacre) a wonderful exercise in how not to argue. Mr Ladd is of course free to respond at length. By the way, if there are any readers who think that I may have a point about Dr Goldacre's behaviour, it would be a great comfort if you would say so. I know one or two have done so, but if that is really all the support I have here, in the face of a great and painful misrepresentation by a prominent person,   I feel I may have been wasting much of my time here over the past several years. 

 

Mr Ladd's post, with my responses interleaved:

 

1. Peter Hitchens: “What ‘suggestion’? I made no suggestion.”

This is a false claim made by Peter Hitchens. You did make a suggestion, you wrote: “Such hospitals would be a much better use for all the money we currently pour into grandiose ‘security services’.”

Here you suggest how public money might be spent in a way in which it is not apparently spent now. Looks like a suggestion to me.

** PH: It's a statement of opinion contrasting what exists with what might exist. As a newspaper columnist, I have no power to propose or dispose. As a newspaper columnist wholly outside the political mainstream, who neither seeks nor receives the patronage of the powerful, my expressions of opinion are exactly that. Had I said :'I urge that we cancel the security budget and spend the cash saved on reopening mental hospitals', it would indeed have been a suggestion. But I didn't, because I know perfectly well that no such thing will happen, whether I urge it or not ( as Mr Ladd also perfectly well knows). It was, at most a statement of regret.

2. “Again, I simply did not say this.” [that terrorist atrocities could be prevented]

Again this is a false claim made by Peter Hitchens about his own words. Actually, he wrote “they would not have been able to kill”. If they were not able to kill, their atrocities would have been prevented. QED.

***PH writes: People should be careful about the use of the word 'false' . Mr Ladd may disagree with my interpretation of my own words, which are here displayed for anyone to check. But it might occur to him that I might have a better idea of my intended meaning than either he or Dr Goldacre . By 'false' he means he disagrees with me. But why does he? I explain at length that I disagree with the classification of these incidents as 'terrorist' at all. The people are mentally ill, probably because of drug abuse. Their actions are not co-ordinated, and do not even have the fanatical and immoral rationality of the terrorist murder. I show in the posting that they are far more comparable with the 40 or so incidents each year in which innocent people are horribly killed by mentally ill persons in politically meaningless incidents of violence. Had we not adopted the 'Care in the Community' policy, such patients would be cared for in hospitals, not roaming the streets. So they would not kill passers-by.***

Mr Ladd takes up his case: 

Peter Hitchens: “Its use without any qualification suggests that a discussion of three particular incidents applies to every terrorist atrocity, or to terrorist atrocities in general. I don’t think this, and didn’t say it.”

“Suggests”? Now you are the one misrepresenting other people’s work!

***PH writes. No. The deduction is quite legitimate, based on a reading of Dr Goldacre's text, by contrast with Dr Goldacre's inventions, which are not.

This is not what Dr Goldacre necessarily meant, and looking at his tweet ...

***PH. Mr Ladd is not paying attention. I am not here referring to Dr Goldacre's Tweet, which explained almost nothing. I am referring to his subsequent defence of his behaviour,  which he asked me to publish here and which I did publish here, despite my misgivings and despite my repeatedly urging him to try again, and not to post something so embarrassingly bad.

In that defence he explained that he had objected to my column item because he believed it called for a widespread programme of pre-emptive incarceration. As I have shown, I called for no such thing***

Mr Ladd ....it’s not how I would interpret it – he included your full text (I’m glad to see your apology for accusing him of taking your writing out of context)

***PH: This was not an apology to Dr Goldacre but to another contributor, to whom I had made this incorrect claim. I thought and think it important, in such discussions, to admit immediately and without reservation any error of this kind.I wish others were so careful***

Mr Ladd... so to me it is perfectly clear he meant *those terrorist attacks (***PH: Once again, a large part of my point is that these attacks are not in fact terrorist at all. Why cannot Mr Ladd acknowledge this important point?***) to which we have already referred* could have been prevented. But you don’t want to read it that way - it suits your purposes to read it in a different way that you can then complain about.

***PH: Well, having thought of it, and written it,  I think I should have a reasonable idea of what I intended, perhaps better than anyone else's. If there *is* another interpretation, then anyone seeking to make it must surely produce quotations which support it. None does. However many times I challenge the Goldacre faction to produce quotations which justify their interpretation, they fall silent.

 

Mr Ladd continues...

Peter Hitchens: “What justification can be found for the word ‘widespread’ in my actual words?”

You state confidently that if we'd have done this instead, the murders in Woolwich, Ottawa and Sydney “would not” have happened – not might not, not probably would not, but “would not” - those killers would have been locked up before they'd ever had the chance to kill.

***PH: Actually I don't think I used the phrase 'locked up' . I said 'in mental hospitals'. Mr Ladd has invented the phrase 'locked up'.

Mr Ladd:

'Dr Goldacre has attempted to explain, using mathematics and statistics the consequences in terms of numbers, showing how many non-violent people would be removed from society along with the violent ones if money was spent as you suggested it would be better spent.'

***PH: No, he has calculated what would happen if the 'Minority Report' policy of preventive incarceration, which I do not advocate, was adopted. As I did not and do not advocate any such thing, but rather that mentally ill people should be given hospital beds rather than expected to cope on their own in the non-existent 'community' , this is irrelevant to the point.***

Mr Ladd:
' It is not Dr Goldacre’s fault you are only interested in writing rhetoric, not the actual consequences of your rhetoric.'

**PH: No doubt many legislators find their ideas have led to unintended consequences. But one has to advocate the policy first, for it to have such consequences. I have simply not done so. The reopening of residential mental hospitals, my only desire, would (alas) require no effort to go out and find patients. The difficulty would be in building enough places. ***

Mr Ladd:(quoting me)

“Next, what justification can be found for the use of the word ‘incarceration’, a synonym for imprisonment?”

Probably all the writings you have produced over the years referring to people with mental health problems being placed on a “locked ward”. '

***Such wards exist in our current system. I have visited them, and spoken at length to people who work in them. They are tragic places of desperate sadness. Nobody goes out and drags people into them pre-emptively. In some cases, the families of those in them wish there were more such places, and struggle to obtain beds for suffering men and women, which illustrates just how sad their plight has become. It is a matter of fact that people known to me have been placed in such wards. I have mentioned this fact to emphasise the tragic possibilities of drug abuse. I neither oppose nor advocate the existence of locked wards. I just note that they exist, and that people end up in them following certain types of voluntary behaviour.

 

Incarceration can be used as a synonym for imprisonment but its meaning is not identical. It can simply mean “confined”. Both your phrasing “locked ward” and Dr Goldacre’s “incarceration” emphasise confinement.

***This is not true. I did not use 'locked ward' anywhere in in this context. The word 'incarcerate' is in fact etymologically specific to prison, being based on the Latin word 'Carcer' meaning prison. Dictionaries and encyclopaedias do not settle conceptual arguments. But dictionaries do settle arguments about the meanings of words. Here is what the Oxford English Dictionary says:
'Etymology: < participial stem of medieval Latin incarcerāre: see incarcer v. and -ate suffix
Thesaurus »
1. trans. To shut up in prison; to put in confinement; to imprison.1575 J. Rolland Treat. Court Venus ii. f. 23v, 'Tratour I sall thy corps Incarcerate'.
1637–50 J. Row Hist. Kirk Scotl. (Wodrow Soc.) 238 'Mr. Andro Melvill, by great moyen..obtained leave that a servant should be incarcerated with him in the Tower'.
1654 in W. Ross Aberdour & Inchcolme (1885) xi. 329 'The Session desires the Bailȝie to cause apprehend and incarcerate presently Margaret Currie.'
1833 L. Ritchie Wanderings by Loire 57 'We were incarcerated a whole day in the prison.'
1575—1833
***

Mr Ladd(once again quoting me):

 

“Does Dr Goldacre believe that the housing of mentally ill people in hospitals under the full-time care of nurses and doctors is a form of imprisonment?”

He doesn’t use that word. You misrepresent him again.

***PH. Actually, he does. 'Incarcerate' is beyond doubt a synonym for imprisonment. And while 'Same to you with brass knobs on' may be an effective retort in the playground, the counter-accusation of 'misrepresentation' can't really be made to stick against me for representing the word 'incarceration' as meaning 'imprisonment'. Because that is exactly what it does mean. In this particular passage, Mr Ladd clearly exposes himself as a partisan commentator on the issue. No impartial person would have made this claim***