Hey, welcome back - can’t imagine you’ll be around long, but always happy to point out just how little you understand basic facts.
You’re right: plants don’t have antibodies. However, rabbits do, and scientists do this thing where they inject rabbits with virus particles so that they generate those antibodies. You can then purifybthose antibodies from their blood. We then take viral extractions (e.g. ground up leaf issue suspended in buffer), boil it in detergent, run it on a gel, and blot the contents of that gel onto a membrane. We then probe that membrane with the antibodies we got from those rabbits, often attaching a protein that makes it possible to detect the proteins with chemiluminescence. Again, it’s called a western blot, and shockingly, I’ve done it enough times to speak about this without copy-pasting or looking up anything. In fact, I’d love to see you find anything from my posts that isn’t in quotes or a link and find the source for it. Feel free to Google search as much as you want, these are my words and my experiences, as well as those of my colleagues.
I’ve already responded to your claim on fractals. I know what they are.
But regardless of your own sources, you aren't answering the basic facts I'm presenting you with, so I will just start listing them every post until you respond.
1. There are no fungi in the soil of the plants I'm using, and they have plentiful health-supporting microbes available.
2. They are watered to exactly the same extent as surrounding plants, which do not experience these symptoms. They also have the same soil source as those plants, and they're drawn from the same seed lot.
3. They exist in the exact same closed and regulated environment as other plants, receiving the same amount of light, same climate, same pesticides, everything.
4. The greenhouse is consistently treated week-to-week with the same pesticides aimed at eliminating all insect pests, including thrips, whiteflies, leafhoppers, aphids and mites.
5. Plants receiving these inoculations show these symptoms on both inoculated and distal leaves, showing that there is clearly movement of whatever is causing these symptoms through the plant.
6. Plants receiving these inoculations contain viral particles, as detected by electron microscopy, polymerase chain reaction (amplification of the two RNAs present in these tissues), western blot (direct and specific detection of the coat protein from these viruses using antibodies), and northern blot (direct and specific detection of the RNAs using full-length sequences as a probe). None of these are present in uninoculated plants, nor in buffer-inoculated plants.
7. I can inoculate new plants with purified particles from these inoculated plants and see the same symptoms on those new plants.
Note that I'm not disagreeing that variables like overwatering or lack of nutrients could have substantial effects. However, it is your point that the symptoms I've presented to you are the result of something that differentiates these plants from others. Would you care to tell me what that cause is, given the above controls?
...Seriously? You think that full blades of grass dying in a field in a specific pattern are equivalent to very specific cells dying in a pattern on a single leaf? I don't know where you're getting this fractal BS, but you don't seem to understand the difference between a full plant response and a localized cellular response. Whether they have similar patterns or not has nothing to do with it - you can't simply proclaim that whole plant death and a localized cellular response are functionally equivalent. The comparison to shingles (another virus-caused disease) actually reinforces the point. Shingles is a cell-based response and not a full-body death response. If we're using your analogy, it would be like saying that a shingles rash with a very specific pattern is basically the same as a portion of the population dropping dead in the same pattern.
You also just happened to ignore what those two articles actually said. Again, the first one you posted was detailing virus-induced symptoms transmitted by mites. The second and third detailed symptoms caused by a fungal infection, meaning a disease state brought about by a microorganism. It is your claim that these three articles are all wrong: that the mites caused every symptom that appeared on those plants, and that overwatering was the sole means by which those ringspots were generated. Your articles blatantly disagree.
Your examples of overwatering are similarly selective. First off, we're talking about a very different plant now, one with a lot of individual blades that have gone necrotic in a very specific pattern. It's not similar to ringspots forming on individual leaves, particularly as that is a specific, localized chlorotic response, whereas this is just wholesale death of many members of a given plant species in a given area. Second, the article points to fungi as the culprit, stating that overwatering is not killing the plants, but feeding the fungi (you do realize, by the way, that fungi are themselves infectious diseases, right?). The second article says multiple times that fungicides ameliorate the problem, indicating that the fungi is causing the harm. The third article challenges the usage of fungicides on the basis of what effects they have on good soil microbes, but they similarly state that it is caused by fungi, and their usage of beneficial microbes to outcompete the harmful ones similarly shows that it is the microbes that are essential to the health of this grass. So, once again, a ringspot symptom (very different from anything I've presented) is caused by an infectious organism (a fungus) that can be treated in a variety of ways. You're not helping your point.
You have the most conveniently selective memory and reading skills I've ever seen.
Let's start with your selective memory. You conveniently forgot that my greenhouse is sprayed weekly to kill insects, which, yes, include mites. You similarly forgot that my plants are watered by drip irrigation, a very different watering system from the usual lawn, bluegrass or otherwise. Finally, you forgot that my soils are autoclaved to remove fungi, returning beneficial microbes to the soil thereafter. So, even if you're somehow correct that these symptoms are ringspots coming from something else, they don't apply to the samples I've been using.
The first paper shows specific examples of different symptoms caused by, wait for it, Brevipalpus transmitted viruses or BTVs. It shows examples of those viruses in the mites directly, showcasing symptoms brought on by a wide range of viruses and clarifying which symptoms appear with which kind of infection. Note that there are an array of symptoms, and that if we use Occam's Razor (you love it so much, after all), you would have no means whatsoever to explain these differences. You would just have to assume that mites cause extremely varied symptoms. Yes, mites do cause damage to the leaves. No, mites have never caused ringspots to form in any pattern across leaves.
First, you keep asserting that ringspots can form by other means, and yet you have not provided any support for that claim. Scratching a leaf does not induce specific symptoms like this. It causes wilting and some general chlorosis, but we're not talking about those symptoms. We're talking about ringspots. Where is your evidence that rub inoculation causes ringspots to form? I can answer that: there is none. Previously, I've performed these same experiments with controls, inoculating plants with buffer lacking any infectious material. They do not show ringspots.
Second, remember that list of questions I posed below? You know, the ones you completely ignored that explain why things like this (rub inoculation) cannot explain the symptoms seen? We're not just talking about inoculated leaves here, we're talking about movement through the plant. Even if I somehow generated ringspots on the leaves simply by rubbing them, that doesn't explain the appearance of symptoms on distal leaves. If we're still using Occam's Razor, you would now have to add in an additional assumption: that rub inoculation of one leaf somehow shows injury on leaves that are uninoculated. A virus spreading through the plant doesn't have any similar assumptions associated with it. Similarly, you would have to include assumptions that two distinct viral RNAs just happen to be present only in plants with these symptoms, that virions can be isolated from these plants, and that those virions can be used to generate the same symptoms on other plants via multiple different inoculation methods. If you're correct that injury to the plant has the fewest assumptions, how does it explain any of this? You seem to think that the virus is, itself, an assumption, yet it is the only means by which we can explain the fact that all these things are consistently occurring. It is far more assumptive to claim that a non-specific factor is the cause of these symptoms.
I didn't inoculate the uninfected plants. I inoculated the infected ones, which involved just rubbing the surface of a single leaf with a pestle contaminated with the virus.
Again, you keep making these statements about ringspots, yet you do not provide any evidence to support your claims. Show me an example of a ringspot generated by over-watering.
Occam's Razor doesn't really apply in this case, but let's assume for the moment that it does. What assumptions do we have to make to believe that that caused these symptoms? Well, overwatering causes a number of different symptoms, so we would have to believe that it only caused these symptoms and no others, which doesn't fall in line with expectations. We would have to believe that it consistently only caused these symptoms in plants that also were rub inoculated with the virus, another point that doesn't fall in line with these results. Finally, we would have to believe that plants watered consistently by drip irrigation were overwatered, despite a full greenhouse of other plants that were watered in exactly the same way, none of the others of which showed signs of infection. So, not only would you have to make the assumption that ringspots can form in overwatered plants, but you would have no explanation for the differences between plants.
Now, let's apply Occam's Razor to the infection. I inoculated half of these plants, they all were treated the same way beyond that inoculation. After a period of 10 days, inoculated plants showed ringspot symptoms. Others did not. I was able to extract and purify virion particles from all infected plants, none from uninfected plants. I was able to detect viral RNA from both RNAs included in these viral particles. I was able to take viral particles isolated from these plants, rub inoculate them on new plants, and produce the same symptoms. Tell me: where's the assumption in here?
Yay for jumping to conclusions! You can add good bacteria back to sterile soil, as is done partly through the fertilizer added to our water source (a supply that is filtered multiple times and treated with antifungals) and partially by directly mixing soil with a bacterial mixture intended for the purpose.
But all of this is besides the point. You could present 50 different reasons why my plants may not have been healthy, but you’ve provided none that explain the symptom we’re seeing. If autoclaved soil could cause this symptom (note: it cannot), why did it only appear in inoculated plants? Why did the symptom spread through those plants from inoculated leaves? Why can I extract and purify virus particles from these plants and not from uninoculated plants? Why can I take the leaf material from these plants, grind it up, dilute it, and use it to inoculate another plant, generating the same viral particles containing the same RNA sequences? Why will those inoculations consistently generate the same symptoms, regardless of changes to watering, soil microbes, insects present, season of year, time of day, temperature, weather, length and duration of day and night cycles, presence of fertilizer, degree of human handling, other plants present in the same soil, or any of the other variables I can insert into this experiment? Why do we never see symptoms of this sort in plants not infected with a ringspot virus?
I noticed that I forgot the overwatering theory. These plants are watered by drip irrigation, meaning that all my plants received the same amount of water over time. The plants I had not inoculated remained asymptomatic, while the inoculated plants showed ringspot symptoms. So that's a third theory down. Want to try again?
You've been doing nothing but making claims about the ringspot being the result of some other means. You said you have plants that had these symptoms and magically were cured by fertilizer? Show me. Where are your pictures?
As for your theories about where they came from, I'm afraid both are bunk. The greenhouse in which I do my work uses autoclaved soil, meaning that anything alive in it (fungi included) are killed. The same greenhouse is also sprayed weekly for thrips, aphids and whiteflies, meaning that those insects are not an issue.
As for the image... I'm honestly shocked you haven't noticed my profile picture, though I will point out that Virtuoso came to comment on this debate without any contact from me. He reached out to me, not the other way around.
Honestly, sounds like a better idea than it would be in practice. It's one thing if Somebody actually wanted to engage on fundamental assumptions that microbiologists and virologists engage in, which I have no doubt we do (I don't think there's a profession that doesn't do this) and I don't doubt that they do cause problems with our research. My impression is that Somebody is really only interested in dismissing evidence using personal opinion, which means he's not particularly interested in an evidence-based approach. He thinks we're all fraudsters, giving him sufficient reason to dismiss all evidence as fake and turning a debate like this into an exercise in futility. He doesn't want to prove us wrong because, by his own admission, he can't: every study on viruses is fraudulent because none of them support his view. All he can do is introduce doubt, and even that is not the result of any careful analysis of the facts, but rather a series of broad claims.
Like I said, not interested in providing you something simply because you're craving an opportunity to dismiss yet another piece of evidence based on limited personal experience. I've shown other people those virions, don't feel the need to respond to your bait just to have you dismiss them offhand with absolutely no evidence or reasoning.
As for these symptoms, actually, I'd love to see those images. There are many examples of mosaic symptoms and chlorosis in plants that haven't been watered or received sufficient nutrients, but ringspots are pretty unique. So, please, present your photos.
Not really. You'll notice that the ringspots are more individual on the inoculated leaves and radiate out from the vascular tissue of the leaf on the distal leaves, so we can see differences like that. We can also inoculate into different plants and see different symptoms, but that's about it.
Black Plague is actually caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis. It causes buboes to form on the skin, which may bear some similarity to these, though in reality these are more chlorotic lesions caused by a necrotic response in the leaf tissue. You can actually see some of that necrosis in that second image.
I was thinking the same thing myself, though apparently Somebody's added more things he's all too happy to dismiss without evidence, so I give the school district at least some credit for doing more to justify their views and defend them.
Excuse me? What dignity is there in posting a photo that you will instantly dismiss? I'll open this up to everyone else: if you want to see my virions, I'd be more than happy to show you. I love the pictures I have, and I like to show them off wherever I can. I'm not going to use them to give Somebody more of an ax to grind because all he cares to do is dismiss based on his own personal beliefs. If he wants to believe I'm "a coward and a fraud", he's welcome to do so. For the rest of you, the virus produces some really cool symptoms. It's worth checking out:
Yes, because this kind of post makes it just so inviting to show you work that took me months to grow, extract, purify, fix and image. It’s great to know that you’ve made it your mission to complain about assumes fraud to the point that you wish to bring this to court. I’d love to see you try - it will be thrown out immediately.
Let’s face it, you have no interest in whether I’m actually a virologist or whether I have evidence, and I don’t feel any reason to provide you with evidence when I know the response will just be to dismiss it offhand. For all your claims that you have this vast expertise, the sum total of your response to every picture has been nothing but speculation about what else the images could be. If saying I’m a virologist makes me a psychopath, then the same applies to you. I can’t help but notice that you never provided evidence of your expertise, nor any images showing that other electron micrographs can be easily mistaken for viruses. Besides that, you want evidence, yet you have already proclaimed it false. So, tell me again why I should bother presenting my work to someone who believes it to be fantasy? Because you’ll belittle me if I don’t? Seems like you’ll do that regardless.
What makes you think I'm not a virologist? Even if I sent you the pictures I have, you would have no evidence that I had personally taken them, no reason to believe that they are my virus particles, even if you somehow believed that they were virus particles. Let's face it, you dismissed me the moment I said I was a virologist, so it doesn't really matter whether I am or not. It doesn't matter whether my pictures meet all 11 of the criteria you stated because you can just declare them fake without any support, logical or evidence-based. You don't care who is talking to you - you know you're right, so anyone who says differently is either stupid or in on some massive conspiracy.
And speaking of authority, remind me, who was the person who proclaimed that they were proficient with electron microscopy, knew how to spot a fake, and could overrule any scientist who included them in their publications? All I'm doing is claiming that I have taken such pictures and know the contents of those pictures to be accurate. The only one here claiming to know more than any scientific authority about the existence of viruses is you.
Beyond that... do you even know what a psychopath is? Proclaiming that I have authority to state something is true isn't psychopathic behavior.
If your goal is to dismiss evidence regardless, then you don't care what images I provide. You will find any excuse, and I highly doubt you care enough to make it more than just "you Photoshopped it." I'm not sure what you consider to be scientific, but assuming your conclusions are true before you're presented with any new evidence is not scientific in the slightest.
He’s tagging me because RM blocked him, though he could just as easily post without tagging anyone in response to him, so I don’t really get it either. I also have a hard time understanding how someone who proclaims to be an expert in electron microscopy can ignore someone who has prepared viral stains of his own lab-grown virus. But hey, that story’s probably BS anyway.
I’m sorry, who posted a debate devoted to the practice of disproving viruses? Do you see me posting debates claiming that viruses exist? If anyone here has an agenda to uphold, it’s you. I’m just making clear that your supposed observations are little more than assertions without any meaningful support. You’ve had a debate with someone over the topic, and I don’t care to have it with you because I’ve seen that you are largely unwilling to engage in meaningful debate over the existence of viruses, chiefly because you dismiss everything based on an easily disprovable conspiracy theory. But hey, you do you. And if you want to believe that my personal diet experience is not what it actually is, again, be my guest. It’s my experience, it’s anecdote, it’s not meant to be evidence. If you plan to show me a peer-reviewed study proving that diet is the sole cause of gut problems, be my guest, though I’m sure you’ll view the very idea of peer review as tainted, and thus will have nothing beyond your own unsubstantiated claims and those of others like you to support your views.
Sounds like speculation to me. Where is your research that shows that diet and toxins are the sole causes of gut health problems?
As for your response to norovirus, I'm not going to reengage in the debate you've had here, but suffice it to say I think you're wrong. I'm a virologist myself, though I work with plants, and I've taken my own pictures of my own virus. It's pretty clear, though, that you are dead set on not believing that any virus exists, chalking every image, no matter how clear, up to "tricks and deceptions". If that's the route you're taking, then you're not going to manage to convince me you're right unless you have an awful lot of proof.
As someone who worked in food microbiology, I can say that there is no doubt that contaminated food often is the result of bacteria and viruses. In the case of the latter, the way viruses like norovirus transmit between people clarifies that it cannot come solely from a chemical.
As for my diet, it's quite a bit more balanced now, but back when I was living on my own, I'd often eat pieces of sourdough bread for a meal here and there (it may be more healthy, but your point would be pretty minor if it didn't include a variety of bread types), boil up some pasta and eat it without any sauce or topping, and pair it with sugary drinks. Breakfast was often cereal and milk with little else. So, in effect, I tried the diet you say was so detrimental as to make me sick. I should clarify that I know that diet would eventually do a great deal of harm to me, but your point was that I should be able to see the effects over the course of two days. I would have this diet for weeks at a time.
One, I’m 90% certain I accidentally conducted the first part of that test several times when I was living on my own. I went for several days at a stretch without eating anything more than cereals and breads, and while I was certainly not the most energetic person at the time, I recall no symptoms such as those you describe. Human beings can and do survive on a variety of diets without severe adverse reactions, and while I have little doubt that the latter diet is healthier in the long term for the vast majority of people, the assumption that the former brings on sickness within a 2 day span seems more than a little difficult to believe.
Two, the rest your describing has a sample size of one: me. Even repeating it several times, all it would tell me is how I, personally, respond to these two diets. If I wanted to be thorough about this, I would have to do a randomized trial with a lot of very different people placed on similar diets, and repeat it regularly. Even that may yield unclear results, as the test may yield very different results depending on which grains, dairy products, and sugars we consume. Beyond that, it’s also subject to error. If I get sick because of contaminated lettuce or chicken, the results suddenly skew towards the diet you proclaim is so problematic.
You're being rather selective in your reading of my posts. I said that there are a number of gut diseases that are widely researched. I did not say that leaky gut syndrome is itself widely researched. Unless you consider leaky gut syndrome to be a catch-all term for all gut diseases and you consider all research to be divorced from any efforts to establish causation (and therefore diagnose specific gut diseases), I see it as very easy to showcase how the research that has been done is separate from any establishment of leaky gut syndrome as a real diagnosis.
Again, I've never challenged the notion that there are gut diseases. I'm similarly not challenging the idea that there are diseases that affect the intestinal barrier. Your articles actually support the point I was making earlier: that the microbiome of the gut is incredibly important to gut health (the only exception to that is the second paper, which focuses on immune response and its effects on gut health).
If your goal is to convince me that leaky gut syndrome exists, though, you're not doing a very good job. Simply saying that there's a lot of fraud in the system that leads to everyone effectively dismissing this as a diagnosis doesn't accomplish that - all it tells me is that you believe in an extremely wide-reaching conspiracy theory that you haven't justified exists. From what I've read, there are two big problems with the way this syndrome is presented. First, if we're just basing it on symptoms, leaky gut syndrome is that it's so incredibly vague that it can't be used as a diagnosis. It gives us no indication of causation, simply proclaiming that something has happened to make the membranes in the gut more permeable and lumping all those who experience them together into one large basket. That leads to the second problem: increased permeability of the gut is the result of an incredibly large and wide-ranging number of causes. Proclaiming that there are single diets or treatments that will address all instances of this nebulous disease puts an awful lot of people at great risk of getting far worse without meaningful intervention. I have no doubt that there exist patients for whom these treatments have worked, but there is a difference between that effectiveness in those patients and general effectiveness across all or even most cases.
If by "doctors" you mean a single doctor, then yes, there's a doctor involved. I can't help but notice that he doesn't cite research, he simply assumes that leaky gut syndrome exists and functions from that assumption. I don't know what this is meant to show me, but if your goal is to convince me that things like leaky gut syndrome exists and can be solved via nutrition alone, you will have to do better than show me videos of a single doctor professing his views on the topic.
As for being educated on the issue, I've worked with professors who have studied a lot of this in animals, and I've read a great deal of papers from medical doctors and researchers who have researched the subject. They all talk about just how complex an issue gut health is, and while nutrition is a consistent part of the equation, it is your claim that nutrition is solely responsible for gut health. I'd like to see your support for that claim.
I’m recognizing that health is affected by diet, yes. Nutrition and food science exist for a reason. We probably greatly disagree on the degree to which specific diets affect health, and clearly we disagree more generally about the causes of disease. By the by, leaky gut syndrome is not recognized as a medical condition, and while things like irritable bowel syndrome certainly do and are affected by diet, I don’t think either paleo or whatever a “normal human diet” is resolve those problems. I’ve read studies that show that low carb, low fat diets do help (largely because they are generally more complex and harder to break down without specific gut microbes present, many of which don’t find an irritable bowel to be a very hospitable environment), though the patients still have and experience the harms of IBS.
Upside down donkey? That's... a new one. Don't think Luke Perry died because he believe in germ theory. As for those 11 criteria, a) you presented that for the first time in the final round, b) you never justified why all 11 criteria are necessary to validate any electron microscope image, c) even if this was a requirement, as I explained in my RFD, it's not required for Con to win. You keep trying to foist the burden of proof onto Con when it's up to you to prove the resolution true: viruses can't exist. He didn't have to prove anything except that there is some uncertainty regarding their existence, and he did far more than that.
No one here or elsewhere is arguing that vaccination protects you against all illness, though I'm getting the impression that you really don't care what we actually think.
Dude, this was 2 years ago. I don't remember the specifics of what led me to post on there. I recall Magic asking me to vote on it - I didn't end up doing that, but I did keep track of the comments for a while. Not sure what incited the need to post in that particular instance and for that particular purpose.
As for issues with F-16's RFD... again, dude, this is 2 years ago. I'm not going to try to go back through the debate and piece together whether he came up with a reasonable RFD at this point. All I can say is that it's pretty damn unlikely that he saw my post and thought "well, I guess it's time to rationalize a decision for Death23's opponent!" If you want to call him out for shifting the burden onto you, go ahead. I've seen it happen in numerous RFDs, several of which were on my own debates.
...There was exactly one vote on that debate before I commented. One. You had 3 people vote against you afterward, two of whom gave you extensive RFDs focused entirely on the substance of the debate, and both of whom (we’re talking Raisor and F-16) are more than capable of providing meaningful feedback without any input from me. It’s honestly more insulting to them to proclaim the entirety of their RFDs as solely rationalizing based on emotion, effectively so tainted by my quotes that they refused to see basic reason.
This is sounding more and more like you just didn’t like the voting against you on that debate. You haven’t provided any reason to believe that any of those votes were the result of rationalizing a result based chiefly on my comments. Instead, you claim that you know they did it. You want to blame it on me because, hey, it’s easier than just accepting that not everyone found your arguments convincing. If you want to claim I interfered by calling you out for your behavior in that debate, that’s your prerogative. It was not my duty, whether as a moderator or as a member of the site, to be egalitarian in every comment I posted. I explained, at length, where I saw the problems and why they applied to you specifically. I won’t apologize because I don’t think I have anything to apologize for in this instance. Considering how many people Jared my guts on DDO, comments like these were just as likely to push those who read them to vote for you, yet you seem to believe that my opinion had so much power and sway against you that I swung the debate without ever casting a vote or requesting one. I even removed votes against you.
If you didn’t want me to comment here, probably not the best idea to call me out.
It’s your assertion that any of the voters who posted a vote on that debate after my comments (hard to tell how many that is, given that it was 2 years ago) did so largely or solely because they agreed with my stated problems with your tactics. If that happened, you would expect them to mention something about it, at the very least mentioning the definitional issue. The only one I see doing that is Petfish, and since he’s not a friend of mine on the site, he’s not all that likely to have stumbled across it via my news feed. Again, at worst, I directed him here, where much of the issues with the rules were already discussed in the comments, though he justifies his point allocation using entirely separate means.
I acknowledge that I was an authority on the site, which may have led some debaters to agree with me offhand. It’s also entirely possible that people rationalize their votes using mine and my comments as a basis. However, I don’t see evidence of that here. Yes, I took a side, on a basis I made quite clear. Yes, it could feasibly have been used as a basis for voting against you. But simply because it was possible doesn’t mean it happened.
Yes, I do recall it now. I’m not going to get back into the issues I presented there, but I will note a couple of things. First, I think you’re attributing way too much reach to my opinion. Both of the people who voted against you based on arguments did so for reasons that had nothing to do with my comments, with arguably Petfish being the only one who showed any sign of agreement (not able to find his RFD at the moment, so I can’t confirm). So I don’t see how my comments poisoned the well, as you claim. Second, I don’t see how posting in the comments necessarily poisons the well. Voicing displeasure with a tactic is personal opinion, and whether others may agree with that opinion or not hardly seems any different than posting an extensive RFD and having people give similar reasoning subsequently. I don’t see why posting that material in the comments did anything that a vote wouldn’t have done, and that would have been my alternative means of voicing displeasure. Maybe you thought a PM would have been better, but the comments were already replete with you and Magic arguing extensively over this very subject. At worst, my comments brought your debate to the attention of more people, but I don’t see evidence that they did active harm to you, especially considering most of the later points went to you.
Hey, welcome back - can’t imagine you’ll be around long, but always happy to point out just how little you understand basic facts.
You’re right: plants don’t have antibodies. However, rabbits do, and scientists do this thing where they inject rabbits with virus particles so that they generate those antibodies. You can then purifybthose antibodies from their blood. We then take viral extractions (e.g. ground up leaf issue suspended in buffer), boil it in detergent, run it on a gel, and blot the contents of that gel onto a membrane. We then probe that membrane with the antibodies we got from those rabbits, often attaching a protein that makes it possible to detect the proteins with chemiluminescence. Again, it’s called a western blot, and shockingly, I’ve done it enough times to speak about this without copy-pasting or looking up anything. In fact, I’d love to see you find anything from my posts that isn’t in quotes or a link and find the source for it. Feel free to Google search as much as you want, these are my words and my experiences, as well as those of my colleagues.
I’ve already responded to your claim on fractals. I know what they are.
But regardless of your own sources, you aren't answering the basic facts I'm presenting you with, so I will just start listing them every post until you respond.
1. There are no fungi in the soil of the plants I'm using, and they have plentiful health-supporting microbes available.
2. They are watered to exactly the same extent as surrounding plants, which do not experience these symptoms. They also have the same soil source as those plants, and they're drawn from the same seed lot.
3. They exist in the exact same closed and regulated environment as other plants, receiving the same amount of light, same climate, same pesticides, everything.
4. The greenhouse is consistently treated week-to-week with the same pesticides aimed at eliminating all insect pests, including thrips, whiteflies, leafhoppers, aphids and mites.
5. Plants receiving these inoculations show these symptoms on both inoculated and distal leaves, showing that there is clearly movement of whatever is causing these symptoms through the plant.
6. Plants receiving these inoculations contain viral particles, as detected by electron microscopy, polymerase chain reaction (amplification of the two RNAs present in these tissues), western blot (direct and specific detection of the coat protein from these viruses using antibodies), and northern blot (direct and specific detection of the RNAs using full-length sequences as a probe). None of these are present in uninoculated plants, nor in buffer-inoculated plants.
7. I can inoculate new plants with purified particles from these inoculated plants and see the same symptoms on those new plants.
Note that I'm not disagreeing that variables like overwatering or lack of nutrients could have substantial effects. However, it is your point that the symptoms I've presented to you are the result of something that differentiates these plants from others. Would you care to tell me what that cause is, given the above controls?
...Seriously? You think that full blades of grass dying in a field in a specific pattern are equivalent to very specific cells dying in a pattern on a single leaf? I don't know where you're getting this fractal BS, but you don't seem to understand the difference between a full plant response and a localized cellular response. Whether they have similar patterns or not has nothing to do with it - you can't simply proclaim that whole plant death and a localized cellular response are functionally equivalent. The comparison to shingles (another virus-caused disease) actually reinforces the point. Shingles is a cell-based response and not a full-body death response. If we're using your analogy, it would be like saying that a shingles rash with a very specific pattern is basically the same as a portion of the population dropping dead in the same pattern.
You also just happened to ignore what those two articles actually said. Again, the first one you posted was detailing virus-induced symptoms transmitted by mites. The second and third detailed symptoms caused by a fungal infection, meaning a disease state brought about by a microorganism. It is your claim that these three articles are all wrong: that the mites caused every symptom that appeared on those plants, and that overwatering was the sole means by which those ringspots were generated. Your articles blatantly disagree.
Your examples of overwatering are similarly selective. First off, we're talking about a very different plant now, one with a lot of individual blades that have gone necrotic in a very specific pattern. It's not similar to ringspots forming on individual leaves, particularly as that is a specific, localized chlorotic response, whereas this is just wholesale death of many members of a given plant species in a given area. Second, the article points to fungi as the culprit, stating that overwatering is not killing the plants, but feeding the fungi (you do realize, by the way, that fungi are themselves infectious diseases, right?). The second article says multiple times that fungicides ameliorate the problem, indicating that the fungi is causing the harm. The third article challenges the usage of fungicides on the basis of what effects they have on good soil microbes, but they similarly state that it is caused by fungi, and their usage of beneficial microbes to outcompete the harmful ones similarly shows that it is the microbes that are essential to the health of this grass. So, once again, a ringspot symptom (very different from anything I've presented) is caused by an infectious organism (a fungus) that can be treated in a variety of ways. You're not helping your point.
You have the most conveniently selective memory and reading skills I've ever seen.
Let's start with your selective memory. You conveniently forgot that my greenhouse is sprayed weekly to kill insects, which, yes, include mites. You similarly forgot that my plants are watered by drip irrigation, a very different watering system from the usual lawn, bluegrass or otherwise. Finally, you forgot that my soils are autoclaved to remove fungi, returning beneficial microbes to the soil thereafter. So, even if you're somehow correct that these symptoms are ringspots coming from something else, they don't apply to the samples I've been using.
The first paper shows specific examples of different symptoms caused by, wait for it, Brevipalpus transmitted viruses or BTVs. It shows examples of those viruses in the mites directly, showcasing symptoms brought on by a wide range of viruses and clarifying which symptoms appear with which kind of infection. Note that there are an array of symptoms, and that if we use Occam's Razor (you love it so much, after all), you would have no means whatsoever to explain these differences. You would just have to assume that mites cause extremely varied symptoms. Yes, mites do cause damage to the leaves. No, mites have never caused ringspots to form in any pattern across leaves.
http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/orn/mites/Brevipalpus_californicus.htm
First, you keep asserting that ringspots can form by other means, and yet you have not provided any support for that claim. Scratching a leaf does not induce specific symptoms like this. It causes wilting and some general chlorosis, but we're not talking about those symptoms. We're talking about ringspots. Where is your evidence that rub inoculation causes ringspots to form? I can answer that: there is none. Previously, I've performed these same experiments with controls, inoculating plants with buffer lacking any infectious material. They do not show ringspots.
Second, remember that list of questions I posed below? You know, the ones you completely ignored that explain why things like this (rub inoculation) cannot explain the symptoms seen? We're not just talking about inoculated leaves here, we're talking about movement through the plant. Even if I somehow generated ringspots on the leaves simply by rubbing them, that doesn't explain the appearance of symptoms on distal leaves. If we're still using Occam's Razor, you would now have to add in an additional assumption: that rub inoculation of one leaf somehow shows injury on leaves that are uninoculated. A virus spreading through the plant doesn't have any similar assumptions associated with it. Similarly, you would have to include assumptions that two distinct viral RNAs just happen to be present only in plants with these symptoms, that virions can be isolated from these plants, and that those virions can be used to generate the same symptoms on other plants via multiple different inoculation methods. If you're correct that injury to the plant has the fewest assumptions, how does it explain any of this? You seem to think that the virus is, itself, an assumption, yet it is the only means by which we can explain the fact that all these things are consistently occurring. It is far more assumptive to claim that a non-specific factor is the cause of these symptoms.
I didn't inoculate the uninfected plants. I inoculated the infected ones, which involved just rubbing the surface of a single leaf with a pestle contaminated with the virus.
Again, you keep making these statements about ringspots, yet you do not provide any evidence to support your claims. Show me an example of a ringspot generated by over-watering.
Occam's Razor doesn't really apply in this case, but let's assume for the moment that it does. What assumptions do we have to make to believe that that caused these symptoms? Well, overwatering causes a number of different symptoms, so we would have to believe that it only caused these symptoms and no others, which doesn't fall in line with expectations. We would have to believe that it consistently only caused these symptoms in plants that also were rub inoculated with the virus, another point that doesn't fall in line with these results. Finally, we would have to believe that plants watered consistently by drip irrigation were overwatered, despite a full greenhouse of other plants that were watered in exactly the same way, none of the others of which showed signs of infection. So, not only would you have to make the assumption that ringspots can form in overwatered plants, but you would have no explanation for the differences between plants.
Now, let's apply Occam's Razor to the infection. I inoculated half of these plants, they all were treated the same way beyond that inoculation. After a period of 10 days, inoculated plants showed ringspot symptoms. Others did not. I was able to extract and purify virion particles from all infected plants, none from uninfected plants. I was able to detect viral RNA from both RNAs included in these viral particles. I was able to take viral particles isolated from these plants, rub inoculate them on new plants, and produce the same symptoms. Tell me: where's the assumption in here?
Yay for jumping to conclusions! You can add good bacteria back to sterile soil, as is done partly through the fertilizer added to our water source (a supply that is filtered multiple times and treated with antifungals) and partially by directly mixing soil with a bacterial mixture intended for the purpose.
But all of this is besides the point. You could present 50 different reasons why my plants may not have been healthy, but you’ve provided none that explain the symptom we’re seeing. If autoclaved soil could cause this symptom (note: it cannot), why did it only appear in inoculated plants? Why did the symptom spread through those plants from inoculated leaves? Why can I extract and purify virus particles from these plants and not from uninoculated plants? Why can I take the leaf material from these plants, grind it up, dilute it, and use it to inoculate another plant, generating the same viral particles containing the same RNA sequences? Why will those inoculations consistently generate the same symptoms, regardless of changes to watering, soil microbes, insects present, season of year, time of day, temperature, weather, length and duration of day and night cycles, presence of fertilizer, degree of human handling, other plants present in the same soil, or any of the other variables I can insert into this experiment? Why do we never see symptoms of this sort in plants not infected with a ringspot virus?
I noticed that I forgot the overwatering theory. These plants are watered by drip irrigation, meaning that all my plants received the same amount of water over time. The plants I had not inoculated remained asymptomatic, while the inoculated plants showed ringspot symptoms. So that's a third theory down. Want to try again?
You've been doing nothing but making claims about the ringspot being the result of some other means. You said you have plants that had these symptoms and magically were cured by fertilizer? Show me. Where are your pictures?
As for your theories about where they came from, I'm afraid both are bunk. The greenhouse in which I do my work uses autoclaved soil, meaning that anything alive in it (fungi included) are killed. The same greenhouse is also sprayed weekly for thrips, aphids and whiteflies, meaning that those insects are not an issue.
As for the image... I'm honestly shocked you haven't noticed my profile picture, though I will point out that Virtuoso came to comment on this debate without any contact from me. He reached out to me, not the other way around.
Honestly, sounds like a better idea than it would be in practice. It's one thing if Somebody actually wanted to engage on fundamental assumptions that microbiologists and virologists engage in, which I have no doubt we do (I don't think there's a profession that doesn't do this) and I don't doubt that they do cause problems with our research. My impression is that Somebody is really only interested in dismissing evidence using personal opinion, which means he's not particularly interested in an evidence-based approach. He thinks we're all fraudsters, giving him sufficient reason to dismiss all evidence as fake and turning a debate like this into an exercise in futility. He doesn't want to prove us wrong because, by his own admission, he can't: every study on viruses is fraudulent because none of them support his view. All he can do is introduce doubt, and even that is not the result of any careful analysis of the facts, but rather a series of broad claims.
Like I said, not interested in providing you something simply because you're craving an opportunity to dismiss yet another piece of evidence based on limited personal experience. I've shown other people those virions, don't feel the need to respond to your bait just to have you dismiss them offhand with absolutely no evidence or reasoning.
As for these symptoms, actually, I'd love to see those images. There are many examples of mosaic symptoms and chlorosis in plants that haven't been watered or received sufficient nutrients, but ringspots are pretty unique. So, please, present your photos.
Not really. You'll notice that the ringspots are more individual on the inoculated leaves and radiate out from the vascular tissue of the leaf on the distal leaves, so we can see differences like that. We can also inoculate into different plants and see different symptoms, but that's about it.
These images are from my own samples:
https://imgur.com/a/D9DUwZO
https://imgur.com/a/NaHj89j
No need to apologize. Lots of misconceptions when it comes to what viruses and bacteria, respectively, cause in terms of disease. It's all good.
Black Plague is actually caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis. It causes buboes to form on the skin, which may bear some similarity to these, though in reality these are more chlorotic lesions caused by a necrotic response in the leaf tissue. You can actually see some of that necrosis in that second image.
Glad you like them! I've got some pictures of my own, but I'm having a hard time uploading them at the moment.
I was thinking the same thing myself, though apparently Somebody's added more things he's all too happy to dismiss without evidence, so I give the school district at least some credit for doing more to justify their views and defend them.
Excuse me? What dignity is there in posting a photo that you will instantly dismiss? I'll open this up to everyone else: if you want to see my virions, I'd be more than happy to show you. I love the pictures I have, and I like to show them off wherever I can. I'm not going to use them to give Somebody more of an ax to grind because all he cares to do is dismiss based on his own personal beliefs. If he wants to believe I'm "a coward and a fraud", he's welcome to do so. For the rest of you, the virus produces some really cool symptoms. It's worth checking out:
https://bugwoodcloud.org/images/768x512/1402031.jpg
https://bugwoodcloud.org/images/768x512/5332064.jpg
Yes, because this kind of post makes it just so inviting to show you work that took me months to grow, extract, purify, fix and image. It’s great to know that you’ve made it your mission to complain about assumes fraud to the point that you wish to bring this to court. I’d love to see you try - it will be thrown out immediately.
Let’s face it, you have no interest in whether I’m actually a virologist or whether I have evidence, and I don’t feel any reason to provide you with evidence when I know the response will just be to dismiss it offhand. For all your claims that you have this vast expertise, the sum total of your response to every picture has been nothing but speculation about what else the images could be. If saying I’m a virologist makes me a psychopath, then the same applies to you. I can’t help but notice that you never provided evidence of your expertise, nor any images showing that other electron micrographs can be easily mistaken for viruses. Besides that, you want evidence, yet you have already proclaimed it false. So, tell me again why I should bother presenting my work to someone who believes it to be fantasy? Because you’ll belittle me if I don’t? Seems like you’ll do that regardless.
What makes you think I'm not a virologist? Even if I sent you the pictures I have, you would have no evidence that I had personally taken them, no reason to believe that they are my virus particles, even if you somehow believed that they were virus particles. Let's face it, you dismissed me the moment I said I was a virologist, so it doesn't really matter whether I am or not. It doesn't matter whether my pictures meet all 11 of the criteria you stated because you can just declare them fake without any support, logical or evidence-based. You don't care who is talking to you - you know you're right, so anyone who says differently is either stupid or in on some massive conspiracy.
And speaking of authority, remind me, who was the person who proclaimed that they were proficient with electron microscopy, knew how to spot a fake, and could overrule any scientist who included them in their publications? All I'm doing is claiming that I have taken such pictures and know the contents of those pictures to be accurate. The only one here claiming to know more than any scientific authority about the existence of viruses is you.
Beyond that... do you even know what a psychopath is? Proclaiming that I have authority to state something is true isn't psychopathic behavior.
If your goal is to dismiss evidence regardless, then you don't care what images I provide. You will find any excuse, and I highly doubt you care enough to make it more than just "you Photoshopped it." I'm not sure what you consider to be scientific, but assuming your conclusions are true before you're presented with any new evidence is not scientific in the slightest.
He’s tagging me because RM blocked him, though he could just as easily post without tagging anyone in response to him, so I don’t really get it either. I also have a hard time understanding how someone who proclaims to be an expert in electron microscopy can ignore someone who has prepared viral stains of his own lab-grown virus. But hey, that story’s probably BS anyway.
I’m sorry, who posted a debate devoted to the practice of disproving viruses? Do you see me posting debates claiming that viruses exist? If anyone here has an agenda to uphold, it’s you. I’m just making clear that your supposed observations are little more than assertions without any meaningful support. You’ve had a debate with someone over the topic, and I don’t care to have it with you because I’ve seen that you are largely unwilling to engage in meaningful debate over the existence of viruses, chiefly because you dismiss everything based on an easily disprovable conspiracy theory. But hey, you do you. And if you want to believe that my personal diet experience is not what it actually is, again, be my guest. It’s my experience, it’s anecdote, it’s not meant to be evidence. If you plan to show me a peer-reviewed study proving that diet is the sole cause of gut problems, be my guest, though I’m sure you’ll view the very idea of peer review as tainted, and thus will have nothing beyond your own unsubstantiated claims and those of others like you to support your views.
Sounds like speculation to me. Where is your research that shows that diet and toxins are the sole causes of gut health problems?
As for your response to norovirus, I'm not going to reengage in the debate you've had here, but suffice it to say I think you're wrong. I'm a virologist myself, though I work with plants, and I've taken my own pictures of my own virus. It's pretty clear, though, that you are dead set on not believing that any virus exists, chalking every image, no matter how clear, up to "tricks and deceptions". If that's the route you're taking, then you're not going to manage to convince me you're right unless you have an awful lot of proof.
As someone who worked in food microbiology, I can say that there is no doubt that contaminated food often is the result of bacteria and viruses. In the case of the latter, the way viruses like norovirus transmit between people clarifies that it cannot come solely from a chemical.
As for my diet, it's quite a bit more balanced now, but back when I was living on my own, I'd often eat pieces of sourdough bread for a meal here and there (it may be more healthy, but your point would be pretty minor if it didn't include a variety of bread types), boil up some pasta and eat it without any sauce or topping, and pair it with sugary drinks. Breakfast was often cereal and milk with little else. So, in effect, I tried the diet you say was so detrimental as to make me sick. I should clarify that I know that diet would eventually do a great deal of harm to me, but your point was that I should be able to see the effects over the course of two days. I would have this diet for weeks at a time.
Thank you for voting, appreciate the extensive RFD and feedback!
Two things about your study design.
One, I’m 90% certain I accidentally conducted the first part of that test several times when I was living on my own. I went for several days at a stretch without eating anything more than cereals and breads, and while I was certainly not the most energetic person at the time, I recall no symptoms such as those you describe. Human beings can and do survive on a variety of diets without severe adverse reactions, and while I have little doubt that the latter diet is healthier in the long term for the vast majority of people, the assumption that the former brings on sickness within a 2 day span seems more than a little difficult to believe.
Two, the rest your describing has a sample size of one: me. Even repeating it several times, all it would tell me is how I, personally, respond to these two diets. If I wanted to be thorough about this, I would have to do a randomized trial with a lot of very different people placed on similar diets, and repeat it regularly. Even that may yield unclear results, as the test may yield very different results depending on which grains, dairy products, and sugars we consume. Beyond that, it’s also subject to error. If I get sick because of contaminated lettuce or chicken, the results suddenly skew towards the diet you proclaim is so problematic.
You're being rather selective in your reading of my posts. I said that there are a number of gut diseases that are widely researched. I did not say that leaky gut syndrome is itself widely researched. Unless you consider leaky gut syndrome to be a catch-all term for all gut diseases and you consider all research to be divorced from any efforts to establish causation (and therefore diagnose specific gut diseases), I see it as very easy to showcase how the research that has been done is separate from any establishment of leaky gut syndrome as a real diagnosis.
Again, I've never challenged the notion that there are gut diseases. I'm similarly not challenging the idea that there are diseases that affect the intestinal barrier. Your articles actually support the point I was making earlier: that the microbiome of the gut is incredibly important to gut health (the only exception to that is the second paper, which focuses on immune response and its effects on gut health).
If your goal is to convince me that leaky gut syndrome exists, though, you're not doing a very good job. Simply saying that there's a lot of fraud in the system that leads to everyone effectively dismissing this as a diagnosis doesn't accomplish that - all it tells me is that you believe in an extremely wide-reaching conspiracy theory that you haven't justified exists. From what I've read, there are two big problems with the way this syndrome is presented. First, if we're just basing it on symptoms, leaky gut syndrome is that it's so incredibly vague that it can't be used as a diagnosis. It gives us no indication of causation, simply proclaiming that something has happened to make the membranes in the gut more permeable and lumping all those who experience them together into one large basket. That leads to the second problem: increased permeability of the gut is the result of an incredibly large and wide-ranging number of causes. Proclaiming that there are single diets or treatments that will address all instances of this nebulous disease puts an awful lot of people at great risk of getting far worse without meaningful intervention. I have no doubt that there exist patients for whom these treatments have worked, but there is a difference between that effectiveness in those patients and general effectiveness across all or even most cases.
If by "doctors" you mean a single doctor, then yes, there's a doctor involved. I can't help but notice that he doesn't cite research, he simply assumes that leaky gut syndrome exists and functions from that assumption. I don't know what this is meant to show me, but if your goal is to convince me that things like leaky gut syndrome exists and can be solved via nutrition alone, you will have to do better than show me videos of a single doctor professing his views on the topic.
As for being educated on the issue, I've worked with professors who have studied a lot of this in animals, and I've read a great deal of papers from medical doctors and researchers who have researched the subject. They all talk about just how complex an issue gut health is, and while nutrition is a consistent part of the equation, it is your claim that nutrition is solely responsible for gut health. I'd like to see your support for that claim.
I’m recognizing that health is affected by diet, yes. Nutrition and food science exist for a reason. We probably greatly disagree on the degree to which specific diets affect health, and clearly we disagree more generally about the causes of disease. By the by, leaky gut syndrome is not recognized as a medical condition, and while things like irritable bowel syndrome certainly do and are affected by diet, I don’t think either paleo or whatever a “normal human diet” is resolve those problems. I’ve read studies that show that low carb, low fat diets do help (largely because they are generally more complex and harder to break down without specific gut microbes present, many of which don’t find an irritable bowel to be a very hospitable environment), though the patients still have and experience the harms of IBS.
Acknowledging the existence of viruses does not mean we dismiss or undercut the importance of basic nutrition.
Happy to do it.
Upside down donkey? That's... a new one. Don't think Luke Perry died because he believe in germ theory. As for those 11 criteria, a) you presented that for the first time in the final round, b) you never justified why all 11 criteria are necessary to validate any electron microscope image, c) even if this was a requirement, as I explained in my RFD, it's not required for Con to win. You keep trying to foist the burden of proof onto Con when it's up to you to prove the resolution true: viruses can't exist. He didn't have to prove anything except that there is some uncertainty regarding their existence, and he did far more than that.
No one here or elsewhere is arguing that vaccination protects you against all illness, though I'm getting the impression that you really don't care what we actually think.
If you’re not going to engage with basic facts about immunization and infectious disease, then don’t bother commenting here.
Wow... just... wow.
Lovin' it. Back to you.
Sorry, won’t get to this. Been flattened by a cold.
Nah, man. I'm a scooper. Ain't got time to peel.
I admitted that it's possible someone could have used my comments as a basis for rationalizing their vote. That's as far as I'm willing to go.
Dude, this was 2 years ago. I don't remember the specifics of what led me to post on there. I recall Magic asking me to vote on it - I didn't end up doing that, but I did keep track of the comments for a while. Not sure what incited the need to post in that particular instance and for that particular purpose.
As for issues with F-16's RFD... again, dude, this is 2 years ago. I'm not going to try to go back through the debate and piece together whether he came up with a reasonable RFD at this point. All I can say is that it's pretty damn unlikely that he saw my post and thought "well, I guess it's time to rationalize a decision for Death23's opponent!" If you want to call him out for shifting the burden onto you, go ahead. I've seen it happen in numerous RFDs, several of which were on my own debates.
Here or there?
I honestly have no clue what you're talking about. No one asked me to post here and I posted of my own volition on the debate you're referencing.
...There was exactly one vote on that debate before I commented. One. You had 3 people vote against you afterward, two of whom gave you extensive RFDs focused entirely on the substance of the debate, and both of whom (we’re talking Raisor and F-16) are more than capable of providing meaningful feedback without any input from me. It’s honestly more insulting to them to proclaim the entirety of their RFDs as solely rationalizing based on emotion, effectively so tainted by my quotes that they refused to see basic reason.
This is sounding more and more like you just didn’t like the voting against you on that debate. You haven’t provided any reason to believe that any of those votes were the result of rationalizing a result based chiefly on my comments. Instead, you claim that you know they did it. You want to blame it on me because, hey, it’s easier than just accepting that not everyone found your arguments convincing. If you want to claim I interfered by calling you out for your behavior in that debate, that’s your prerogative. It was not my duty, whether as a moderator or as a member of the site, to be egalitarian in every comment I posted. I explained, at length, where I saw the problems and why they applied to you specifically. I won’t apologize because I don’t think I have anything to apologize for in this instance. Considering how many people Jared my guts on DDO, comments like these were just as likely to push those who read them to vote for you, yet you seem to believe that my opinion had so much power and sway against you that I swung the debate without ever casting a vote or requesting one. I even removed votes against you.
If you didn’t want me to comment here, probably not the best idea to call me out.
It’s your assertion that any of the voters who posted a vote on that debate after my comments (hard to tell how many that is, given that it was 2 years ago) did so largely or solely because they agreed with my stated problems with your tactics. If that happened, you would expect them to mention something about it, at the very least mentioning the definitional issue. The only one I see doing that is Petfish, and since he’s not a friend of mine on the site, he’s not all that likely to have stumbled across it via my news feed. Again, at worst, I directed him here, where much of the issues with the rules were already discussed in the comments, though he justifies his point allocation using entirely separate means.
I acknowledge that I was an authority on the site, which may have led some debaters to agree with me offhand. It’s also entirely possible that people rationalize their votes using mine and my comments as a basis. However, I don’t see evidence of that here. Yes, I took a side, on a basis I made quite clear. Yes, it could feasibly have been used as a basis for voting against you. But simply because it was possible doesn’t mean it happened.
Yes, I do recall it now. I’m not going to get back into the issues I presented there, but I will note a couple of things. First, I think you’re attributing way too much reach to my opinion. Both of the people who voted against you based on arguments did so for reasons that had nothing to do with my comments, with arguably Petfish being the only one who showed any sign of agreement (not able to find his RFD at the moment, so I can’t confirm). So I don’t see how my comments poisoned the well, as you claim. Second, I don’t see how posting in the comments necessarily poisons the well. Voicing displeasure with a tactic is personal opinion, and whether others may agree with that opinion or not hardly seems any different than posting an extensive RFD and having people give similar reasoning subsequently. I don’t see why posting that material in the comments did anything that a vote wouldn’t have done, and that would have been my alternative means of voicing displeasure. Maybe you thought a PM would have been better, but the comments were already replete with you and Magic arguing extensively over this very subject. At worst, my comments brought your debate to the attention of more people, but I don’t see evidence that they did active harm to you, especially considering most of the later points went to you.
I have some vague recollection of what you’re talking about, though I can’t for the life of me remember the specifics. Could you give me a link?
Think I’d be up for that, though I may want to challenge the basic definition of life if this is it.