In response to the 2/15/13 post, “It Seems That CSCOPE is the Root of All Evil (Part 4 of 4),” a reader writes:

SC,

If I were Dr. Labay, I would be furious about the way this was presented.

SC Response JV,

I’m genuinely curious. What about this do you think would make him furious? 

Looking forward to your response.

SC,

I felt that it was degrading and insulting.  However, I am genuinely impressed with your astoundingly quick response.  It was “Anti-CSCOPE Argument #11.” 

It portrays him as, “An evil genius / incompetent… hood winked a whole State…” 

The response WAS good and thorough, but the introduction was in a negative manner.  It’s like “Rapist caught” and slandering an innocent person, then later, stating that it was an error… that the accused was a wonderful person.  There is a statistically-significant amount of people, when data are presented in the negative, they believe / accept it, and, regardless of trying to correct it, always has a stain on it, a questionable belief.

SC Response A-ha.  Now I understand. Kind of like, “The controversial CSCOPE program…”  But here is the sad part.  That wasn’t my introduction.  As with all the Anti-CSCOPE arguments, the characterizations came straight from the anti-blog sites and related comments.  I agree that it is insulting and I understand your disgust.  I felt the same way.  Which is why I wrote the posts.  Those who hate something are publicly vocal.  Those who love something are privately vocal.  And those who just find something useful say nothing.  Knowing that, I decided to defend a useful tool or at least show that the Anti-CSCOPE Loonies do not have logic on their side. 

The primacy / recency effect tells us what happens last is what we remember most vividly. So…

Dr. Labay and the CSCOPE team are consummate professionals who built a remarkably useful tool in relative obscurity.  Their reward? To be publicly insulted and denigrated by a power hunger state senator and a host of fringe actors.  It makes me sad, because my Momma raised me to believe that Texans are better than that.  I wonder what their Momma’s think?

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