Just because the defendant is actually guilty, doesn’t mean the prosecutor should be able to get away with making a tenuous case! (I wrote more about this in my memoir.)
But was Metz acting as a “prosecutor” here? He didn’t say “this proves Scott is a hereditarian” or whatever, he just brings up two instances where Scott said things in a way that might lead people to make certain inferences....correct inferences, as it turns out. Like yeah, maybe it would have been more epistemically scrupulous if he said “these articles represent two instances of a larger pattern which is strong Bayesian evidence even though they are not highly convincing on their own” but I hardly think this warrants remaining outraged years after the fact.
Just because the defendant is actually guilty, doesn’t mean the prosecutor should be able to get away with making a tenuous case! (I wrote more about this in my memoir.)
It feels like bad praxis to punish people for things they got right!
But was Metz acting as a “prosecutor” here? He didn’t say “this proves Scott is a hereditarian” or whatever, he just brings up two instances where Scott said things in a way that might lead people to make certain inferences....correct inferences, as it turns out. Like yeah, maybe it would have been more epistemically scrupulous if he said “these articles represent two instances of a larger pattern which is strong Bayesian evidence even though they are not highly convincing on their own” but I hardly think this warrants remaining outraged years after the fact.