Some of you may have noticed that I don't really visit P&N anymore. This probably makes most of you very happy, as my approach here was never popular (except, perhaps, with the largely silent minority). I attempted, however unsuccessfully, to bring facts and logic to the argument. SNIP
From your linked article:
In 2005, amid the strident calls for better media fact-checking in the wake of the Iraq war, Michigan’s Nyhan and a colleague devised an experiment in which participants were given mock news stories, each of which contained a provably false, though nonetheless widespread, claim made by a political figure: that there were WMDs found in Iraq (there weren’t), that the Bush tax cuts increased government revenues (revenues actually fell), and that the Bush administration imposed a total ban on stem cell research (only certain federal funding was restricted). Nyhan inserted a clear, direct correction after each piece of misinformation, and then measured the study participants to see if the correction took.
Just to take the first two items:
There were in fact WMDs found in Iraq.
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/Iraq_WMD_Declassified.pdf
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,200499,00.html
Two artillery shells were also used as IEDs, one of which was successfully detonated but without fatalities or serious injury. What we did NOT find in Iraq were the WMDs manufactured after 1991, which almost certainly never existed. This however is not the question asked and graded.
Government revenues did in fact decline after the Bush tax cuts - or did they? Even proponents of tax cuts admit there will be an immediate decline in tax revenue, but argue that the increased economic growth will eventually increase government revenues. Bush cut taxes in 2001, 2002, and 2003. Here's the actual data on income tax revenue from 1996 through 2007, with projections beyond, from USgovernmentrevenue.com:
http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/downchart_gr.php?chart=10-total&state=US&local=
This shows government revenue from income tax as dropping in 2001, 2002, and 2003 (anyone remember anything major that happened in 2001?) but actually increasing in 2004 (first fiscal year on the Bush-revised tax codes) and increasing again in 2005, 2006, and 2007. But we also know that, absent any changes in the economy or the tax code, revenue would have gone up, if only from our growing population sending new people into the workforce. So the question then becomes did income tax revenue decrease
from what it would have been absent the tax cuts? This is a much harder question because it is inevitably subject to spin and interpretation. Here's the pro-tax cuts spin
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2007/01/Ten-Myths-About-the-Bush-Tax-Cuts
and the anti-tax cuts spin.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=692 Note that neither side can absolutely know this. The conservative Heritage Foundation takes its baseline from projected 2006 income taxes before the tax code revisions, then assumes that any increase is due to the economic effect of the tax cuts. The liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities takes actual tax receipts and works backward to derive the revenue lost to government, a method which will never register any economic benefit to tax cuts. So where does the fact, the economic affect of the Bush tax cuts, actually lie? You tell me.
These are the first two test items mentioned in your quote, and neither is completely true. Half-truths and exaggerations like this are one reason people find it so hard to change their minds or admit they were wrong. As a fellow engineer I'm irritated when people use words and concepts imprecisely. I have no problem admitting I'm wrong - I've had to do it a couple of times on these forums - but the quality of "facts" varies wildly, and it can take a lot to convince me I'm wrong. (Or sometimes just a little, as I've deferred to Legendkiller and Darwin among others for simply knowing so much more about a subject.) But proclaiming a fact, even giving a link to a fact, doesn't necessarily make it so. Really very little in this world can be measured and known, accurately and with repeatability. Thus very few things we believe are truly facts.
Personally I had no problem with your posting, logic or opinions, although I didn't always agree with your conclusions or even necessarily your facts. I appreciate logic, but then logic, like facts, can lead one astray too.